killercarrot

All of the robots I have built have failed in fights, and usually at the axles/wheels, it's like a running joke. So why should it be any different with this featherweight? Meathammer was designed back in 2005/06 when using 4 drill motors was a bit of a novelty... it was made more novel still by mounting the epicyclic gear cages directly to the chassis, which unfortunately sends all the drive shocks back through the gearbox. The original version ran for a number of fights at modelworld 2006? and even won some, especially the sumo, which favoured its very low profile. I've just rebuilt the gearboxes with all metal gears, and tested it, and it seems it should last for at least one fight… but as I put it in the car after testing, I noted one of the wheels had nearly fallen off. Mark that bolt for Lockthreading! All this got me thinking if I could make something less likely to lose a wheel, break a gearbox etc I have a huge pile of bits and bobs that were destined for heavie...

For two years in a row I've missed out joining in with Ian Watts robot bash at the Uni. So I'm making sure I've got something running before it swings around again. So I welded a couple of new gearbox cages into the 4 wheel push bot, and dug out a set of Electronize speed controllers. I fitted the titanium plate that has been cluttering the basement for a decade and have been doing some testing with a set of LiON batteries that used to belong to a cordless strimmer, which fell apart from overuse. I've run it up and the battery doesn't really have enough life to power 4 motors, but is useful for testing. I've stuck some old NiMH units on a charge cycle to see if they have enough life for a bout or two. The only things I actually need to "buy" are a 2.4GHz radio set, as the old 40MHz stuff is against the rules these days, so I've ordered a Hobby King 4 channel set for £20 off ebay. Strangely yesterday Mentorn emailed a bunch of robot folk to...

I bought two Gakken walker kits from ebay last Christmas, and finally got round to doing something with them. I disconnected the propellors, and the reduction gears and fixed the couplings to a couple of rotation hacked servos. I laser cut some servo mounts and hung them on some brass tubing to join the two sets together.

I've been pretty dismissive of 3D printers, chiefly because I view them as complex, fiddly, erratic, temperamental and inelegant machines. If you want a lumpy thimble made very, very... very slowly they are perfect. If you want anything even moderately useful, then you probably need a machine bigger than you can afford, and it will still be slow... and probably breakdown... or print 80% of the thimble then suddenly have a funny turn and stop, or bung up or something. They are a bit like "classic" cars, where "classic" means poorly designed, 1970's British monstrosity. However the #BuildBrighton folk organised a 3D group, so  I thought I'd rock up and see if they couldn't dispel my negativity now I actually have a part I need to make  (a collet for the "gun" on my Dalek.) The #BuildBrighton 3D printer group started with a talk from Alex about OpenSCAD , which is a simple scripting language that allows geometric primitives to be comb...

Build Brighton is a top place, full of electric lasers and 3D, but it's an absolute sod to find. So I decided to add a little bit of trim ( or flare as they might say in "Office space" ) to the inconspicuous BB doorbell. A quick measure, and a few minutes with the #BuildBrighton jigsaw on some scrap mdf left over from the Dalek, and I had a some shapes. I sanded them down, and primered them up, then gave a quick splash of the ever useful "Plastikote" enamel paint. Final job was to stick the blocks to the wall using a couple of dobs of Gripfill, that way if we want to get rid of them, it's a ten minute job with a crowbar. So that's Donation bot's cousin, Welcome/Direction Bot... I guess we could tap the power to the doorbell to run a couple of LEDs but for the minute, job done.

So, for a bit of light relief I bought a few of Justin's LED Christmas tree kits. I think the original idea was to have a relatively easy kit to put together on Saturday workshops in the run up to Christmas, but they seem to have become quite popular with all manner of folk. Anyway, the kit is based around a couple of well made pcbs, a bag full of components, and the simple instruction that +ve is UP. It took about 10 mins to solder all the bits together, and with a huge amount of satisfaction over the end result. Justin and his Christmas tree kits can be found here: http://cyber-lane.com/ The Build Brighton Christmas workshops will be running each Saturday from 30th November to 21st December from 10am – 2pm. Entrance is completely free. Kits are priced between £2 and £5. #BuildBrighton can be found here: http://www.buildbrighton.com/blog/

The Strandebeest model I ordered on ebay arrived, and I've put it together. Great value for just £7.98. I reckon they must have lots of surplus stock as these kits usually cost about £40. I put it together this morning, and am delighted.

Unortunately last week I found that the spiders seemed to have eaten all the electronic magic from the old 70's transistors and gubbins in my old Hacker radio, and after an hour of poking about with a multimeter I decided to remove the old stuff and replace it with "newer" gubbins. Tonight I aim to get some bluetooth radio goodness going by hacking an old Jabra bluetooth earpiece that has singularly failed to of any use in taking calls, and  connect it up to a little amp circuit I built years ago as an Altoids tin amp for my guitar. I 'll then connect the amp to the lovely Celestion speaker in the old Hacker radio. (One of the fascinating things I found when dismantling was that the "tone" control was provided by a wad of folded loo roll) I have also impulsively ordered a silver nitride 12V igniter which was dangled in front of me on twitter by Cool Components . I actually do have a project to  add this to... ages ago (2008) I built a "fireball sho...

Before all the nonsense with Angelina Jolie pretending to be a computer nerd (seriously), and our Colonial Cousins making up stuff about inventing computers at a model railway club... the  name Hacker was synonymous with Radios... The Hacker brothers created the DYNATRON brand in the 1920's (how cool a name is Dynatron?) I'm a little tired of listening to 6Music through my phone, so this Thursday's #BuildBrighton project will be to resurrect the Hacker as a bluetooth speaker... or something. Spiders will likely be harmed in this project... look away now.

I managed to get the little Jansen style walker up and running on radio control. Probably overloaded the central supports with a huge 5 cell AA Nicad pack, and 7 channel Rx... and indeed it did "realign" the gears, which caused a bit of skipping. However the point of the exercise was to see if it would take a radio signal, and it does. If it takes a radio signal it means I wan swap in an Arduino and use the PWM channel. On another tack I nipped down to #buildbrighton last  Thursday and with Adam's help disassembled a Dalek voice changer helmet, and stuck the sound circuitry into the head of our "real" Dalek. It works after a fashion, and flashes the dome lights too. Once I've done the hard work building the neck section, I'll strat wiring stuff up properly.

I've won an ebay auction for a Dalek Voice changer helmet, £13 for some basic dalek sounds, which I can shove in my Dalek, seems like a bargain.

I rebuilt the servo mounts and everything seems sort of sorted. There's lots of flex due to the wonky gears, but it seems to move. I think i need to add some tension springs to keep the legs pointing in the right direction, they get easily deflected. Also my birthday present has turned up: a Gakken Rhino walker

I've had trouble getting enough torque out of the tiny HS50 servos that were fitted to the walker, so last night at #BuildBrighton I added a pair of meaty old 3003's from an old antweight robot. It works, buuut I need to make some mounting brackets. Video taken on my iPod touch by Adam, who is trying for the "Bourne Identity" shakey cam effect.... but even so you can see the organic wriggle of the legs. Adam also had a bash at creating the walker mechanism using Lego mindstorms. (Originally I put the video on Vimeo, but 12 hours after uploading it's still sitting in a queue for conversion... so good old YouTube did the job)

Duff paint means poor coverage on the solar panels, but at least they are done. Neck next.

I've cut some temporary "solar panels" out of MDF until I can get round to cutting some aluminium, or maybe some of lexan I have littering my cellar. Anyway, primer coat has been applied, sanded, and a second coat added... I might spray them with a top coat tomorrow, simply because I'm keen to see some progress. I remember having the same issues with the hemispheres, there's just so many of them, each that requires filling, sanding, priming, undercoating, top coating, finishing etc... I also ordered up some indicator units for a LandRover Defender which are the same pattern as the ones used in the 70's Daleks, which I think my Dalek most closely matches. I had to cut slightly bigger holes in the side of the head to accomodate. That's about it, neck building next....I'm bidding on a new Dalek Voice changer helmet which seems a very cheap way of getting hold of ring modulator style electronics. 29 minutes to go!

I'm amazed the grey paint I used on the skirts about 8 years ago is still ok, and have added a coat to the waist section. Silver spray on the band, and some mesh from Wickes. Next step is to paint the "solar panels" and fit them.

I started building this Dalek so long ago I can't even remember when... I think it was probably 2002/3. Since then I've had half a Dalek taking up space in my basement, gathering dust. My recent visit to the Brighton mini Maker Faire sparked off a desire to do some creative things in the real world again, as I spend so much of my time in the computer world. So I joined the Planet Dalek forum, realised that my build is a little at odds with the plans (no much in the way of plans available back in 2002 when I started). I thought I'd bash on anyway, and this week I've been working on and off on the waist section. With luck I'll have the waist sort of finished by the weekend, but it's fiddly work.

When I posted last night I said I had a lot of half started projects lying around the house... I grabbed the camera and took a snap of those within arms reach in my underground batcave office... there are many many more things in the loft, and the garden, and scattered elsewhere.. this is just a taste. steam powered walking robot flash cotton fireball gun Heinzmann hub for electric bike project pneumatic axe featherweight robot speed controller rat nest from featherweight robot laser cut Jansen walker old lynx motion arm and antweight robot curtis speed controllers 4QD speed controllers... and stuff Mindstorms self levelling robot 1 Watt guitar tube amp high power cabling low pressure pneumatics antweight chassis  R2Duino  meaty 16 bar pneumatics Bosch 750's and such like Norgren 16bar ram, and 10 bar jobbie IR robot Shape memory allow tentacle, Altoid protoyping board etc o...