This is my attempt at building a drum machine from fritsl's walkthrough. I used two GM3 gearmotors from Solarbotics to drive the black tracks (also from Solarbotics). The project is centered around a Picaxe 28-pin project board. The microcontroller I used is a Picaxe 28X1.
This is my first project with the Picaxe system, and I like it. I had a steep learning curve, because this is the first microcontroller based robot I've actually wired and programmed. Interfacing to the project board was somewhat difficult with the documentation, but there are great walkthroughs on Lets Make Robots that made things easier. The Picaxe28 pin project board walkthrough was really helpful. Thanks fritsl.
The SRF05 ultrasonic rangefinder is the main sensor for Zip. I just barely got it interfaced to the Picaxe 28X1, and am now working out the code to synchronize the sensor reading with the head looking left, right and forward.
You may have noticed the absence of Zip's drumsticks in the picture. I will add the drumsticks and mini geared pager motors after I have the sensing and navigation portions of the code functioning.
It navigates around the unpredictable world, finds objects, and bangs out a beat on them.
I cannot believe you made this as your first robot!
Well done… but everyone be warned; This is NOT the way to help yourself to a smooth start! (Start with the start here, top menu, if it is my humble instructions that you are trying to follow)
Good luck on the project, Arm-atron!.. and heck, if you are not getting music from it, it’s still a good platforn to make something else out of
I’ve built several basic robot kits (Velleman Running Microbug, OWI-007 Robot Arm Trainer, OWI Rockit Robot, Solarbotics Symet FLED, Tamya Bulldozer Kit), and have built some simple pseudo-programmable (no inputs) robots for a college engineering class project.
On your ‘How to buy (!) or make a yellow drum machine’ page, I thought when you said:
I thought you meant that you recommended building a Yellow Drum Machine – I didn’t realize that the project you meant was an entirely different (and much simper) robot project. My mistake, but I was able to struggle through the Picaxe basics while trying to figure out how the Yellow Drum Machine was put together. I do wish I had started with your beginner robot project, because it would have made life much easier. But that’s okay.
It’s been a while since I last worked on Zip the Drum Machine. Tonight I finally found the annoying bug in the navigation algorithm: I had the left body turn and right body turn code switched in the if-else statements. That meant that if the clearest path was to the right, it turned to the left and vice versa! Now he is making much more intelligent navigation decisions.
Next I’m going to mount the battery pack, PICAXE project board and extra L293D driver chip properly (they’ve been sliding all over and were just haphazardly taped on).
(Start with the start here, top menu, if it is my humble instructions that you are trying to follow)