That it is, my good man!
I know what you mean mate, 75% through project one and i’ve already imagined a million possibilities for other projects ha ha!
I look forward to pushing myself to learn much, much more.
Thank you
I look forward to pushing myself to learn much, much more.
Thank you
Cheers man!
Same here - then I set my boy’s birthday as a deadline to spur me on.
Yeah servos are the way to do it, however I aimed to.use materials I had to hand
the motors that have been added for arm movement will.have to be swapped out for servos soon as they dont hold the arms in position too well. Get yours back on the go buddy - will race you to get it finished ;-)
Nice!As soon as my son end
Nice!
As soon as my son end his 2WD, he already asked for a Wall-e project
What size is your Wall-e?
I’m trying to find a toy that we can then hack, but it’s hard to be sure from ebay poor description of sellers
Cheers!
You can’t beat a good Wall-e project
The Wall-e toy i got my hands on (well, i got two of them) are quite small - around 20cm tall i think?
I haven’t got it to hand, however i have added a few new photos showing the Arduino Uno inside; hopefully that will help with the scale!
Being my first project i would have preferred a bigger toy to hack; it was rather difficult for an amateur like myself to work in such a small environment so i had to call in help.
There are versions of the toy that already have the motors and gearing etc, which would be much easier to hack, however my lack of budget lead me to getting the non-motored one
I’ll give it a try, it
I’ll give it a try, it sounds so fun to hack a toy!
Do it… Do it… Do… it…!
I’ve only done this project but I cant recommend it highly enough!
Already got a second project mapped out and I havent even finished this blighter yet!
Happy hacking mate - I have little-to-no experience but if something I have done on this one intrigues or inspires I’ll be more than happy to help!
Wall-e Toy-Hack \O/ Can’t
Wall-e Toy-Hack \O/ Can’t wait to see it moving.
Looks good!
I’ll keep an eye on your build…
Cheers!
Thanks Enigmerald
I had him moving yesterday - he’s currently got tourette’s due to his coding not featuring control of the original PCB, however I added to it last night so hopefully today he will be under control
Movement is very slow at present due to him only running on a 9v battery - hoping to find some small, rechargable 12v cells and add a rechargable circuit onboard to remedy that. A rethink on the gearing is in the works too, as the geared motors I am using with it may well be enough to turn the tracks directly without the need of the improvised cog system, ha ha! I bought a backup toy shell in case something went wrong with the first build so going to use that to make a much better Wall-e mk2
I will film his current movement tonight once he has his new code on. Just need to find a camera as i use my phone to control it
UPDATE 4
Hardware
Just ordered some AA sized 3.7v, 5000mAh Li-ion rechargable Batteries.
While i await their arrival I’m going to look into regulating down to 12v as well as looking at methods to charge said batteries without removal from Wall-e.
I have also ordered some servos to hopefully add for his arms
Software
I have added to the Arduino sketch control for the sound on the original PCB plus the LEDs (currently they are floating and causing a form of robitic tourrette’s).
I will upload and test it tonight hopefully
I am also looking into a more intricate control method and increasing the number of bytes sent by the controller; it if currently sending a single character byte to dictate commands. I am hoping to add extra bytes for speed, control source etc.
Thanks mikronauts!
Cheers buddy!
I’m quite pleased with how it is going so far; it is moving (albeit slowly), eyes and suchlike are are all commandable etc.
I’ve got a second shell i bought as a backup in case build one ended up to Frankenstein-esque, so I’ve already started plotting MkII ha ha!
Wall-e Toy-Hack \O/ Can’t
Sorry for the double post.
UPDATE 5 - Tourette’s cured!
I spent last night adding LED control and sound control to my Arduino Sketch, as well as working out why Wall-e has random outbursts of song when asked to move…
I had a look over the wiring up that my partner in crime did for me, and the Motor Shield has A0-A5 and D2 pins available for use.
Trying to keep pins free for Ping sensor sorcery at a later date the original PCB (which had two sets of sounds, triggerable by two buttons) has been attached to D2 and D1. The thinking behind this being that D1 will be just the Tx for serial; with there been no return information required via serial it could be repurposed.
However after a bit of reading on the tinternet it turns out that the Motorshield uses D1 as an enable piun for one of the motors, thus causing a sound to be triggered when that particular motor is triggered to go forward!
I am going to rethink my pin configuration and resolder it soon.
My free pins should be:
- D2 - Soundset 2 pin
- A0 - LED Trigger pin
- A1 - Bluetooth Module
- A2 - Bluetooth Module
- A3 - Relocated Soundset 1 pin
- A4 - Free for PING!
- A5 - Free for PING!
Today is turning out to be a good day!
cool
And please keep us up to date about those 3.7V 5000mAh LiON batteries… those sound very interesting.
I have some 18650’s with similar specs that I am planning to use on HexPi.
** Cross-platform control app with JavaScript**
I saw you collected my rover, dilBot, and I assume it’s because of your control app problem. dilBot’s source code should give you a good starting place for a cross-platform JavaScript-based control app. It’ll run on nearly anything that has a web browser, including iOS and Android devices, of course, and you can easily hook up the existing UI to a Python Socket.io server. Unfortunately, the camera is a bit laggy (1 sec or so), but the rest of it works great.
If there’s interest, I can work to modularize the UI aspect so it can be easily customized for bots of any kind with configurable widgets for sensor readouts etc. Right now, of course, it’s tailored to my project.
Lastly, if you need some help with the JavaScript aspect, feel free to bug me; I work part-time as an instructor at a JavaScript-focused school and wouldn’t mind helping you along!
Edit: I wanted to clarify that you won’t be able to use Bluetooth in client-side JavaScript in a cross-platform fashion, you’ll need a server that recieves commands over a socket connection and sends the corresponding command over Bluetooth. Note that, although in-browser Bluetooth communication is possible, it can’t be done in a cross-platform fashion unless you use PhoneGap + BluetoothSerial, which might actually be a viable solution for you if you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty
Oh god, my Wall-e toy
Oh god, my Wall-e toy arrived yesterday (with Eve 
) but it’s half the size.
I will measure it but it looks like the cube is around 6 cm square. Time to learn swrambots or tinyduino
Here it isThe cube is even
Here it is
The cube is even smaller : 5x5x5 cm!
I really have to learn small controller and mtor driver
Oh my days!
That is a tad small!
A Nano and some microservos are the way I’d go 
Thanks buddy!
Cheers man, I appreciate your help! I had collected your bot with views of implementing something similar using a RPi and such in Project number two, but may try and push this little project a tad further first Will definitely pick your brains when it comes to Javascript; tis something I havent even got a basic understanding of. Thank you!
I can point you in the right
I can point you in the right direction when you’re ready, just let me know!
Definitely interesting in sharing code and techniques when you attempt Project #2, keep in touch!