One day build

Yesterday I not only got BoB's mouth working, I designed, printed, and assembled this.  It's an RC pan mount for my Mobius camera.  It's designed to be temporarily mounted to RC vehicles for onboard footage, and is inspired by Andrew Newton's video.  I won't go so far as to say everything on the design turned out as intended, and I will probably tweak some things and reprint it, but all in all I'd call it a successful one day build.

BoB's mouth - Custom PCB fabricated and installed

This morning I got the chance to etch, drill, build, test, install, and program the custom PCB that drives the led array for BoB's mouth.  These first couple images are of the board being tested on the bench, before going into the robot.

The leds mount to the back of the board and are spaced to fit in the holes printed into the robot's body.  This meant mounting the board was a simple matter of press fitting the leds into the holes, soldering up power, ground, data, and clock, and adding a few lines of code to the walking program to produce a simple pattern on the array.

The next step is to do *something* with the eyes - what I haven't decided yet, and decide on a name.

BoB's mouth prototyped

So the standard 3D print for the BoB robot comes with eight 3mm holes for the robot's mouth.  I've got some flat topped 3mm leds that go perfectly in these holes, so I figured that's what I'd do with them.  I want to be able to make patterns on the array and so need to be able to individually light each led.  Doing this directly with the Arduino eats up all the available I/O, and doesn't leave any room for expansion, so I got some MCP23008 I/O expander chips.  I figured I'd be making a custom board to handle the leds, so I ordered the SOIC package from Digikey.  I got a chance to work with them today and using an Adafruit SMT breakout pcb for SOIC I breadboarded the circuit and used the Adafruit supplied MCP23008 library to write some Larson scanner software.

The next step is to design and fabricate a custom board to fit the chip, leds, resistors, and all the connections into BoB's head.  After that he gets "eyes" with an ultrasonic sensor.

Newest build

We are visiting family over the holidays, and my father in law has a collection of some pretty nice tools.  I typically come with a project in mind so I have something to do while we're here, and this is the project for this trip.  It's a custom designed RC flight box with space for my transmitter, parts, tools, batteries, and propellers.  I didn't want to spend a lot of effort on it, not knowing how I'd like the design, so the construction is dead simple 1/2 inch ply wood with glue and nailed butt joints.  As you can see I still need a dowel for the handle.

Air boat on ice

Last summer I built an airboat out of pink insulation foam and scrap 1/8 plywood. With a -2 degree wind chill the pond is kind of "stiff" so I took the boat out onto the ice.  Turns out it runs pretty fast, but not really in a straight line for very long!

Newest Robot

On black Friday I got a great deal on a 3D printer.  One robot I've always liked that requires 3D printing is a BoB.  The design files for the mechanics are available on Thingiverse.  So not long after I got my printer set up and had a couple of prints under my belt my BoB came out.  Four 9-gram servos and some small screws later and the mechanics were done.  Everything went together without a hitch.

Then I added an Arduino Pro Mini, a boost regulator, a battery pack, a switch, and about an hour of programming.

I've got the 3mm leds for the mouth and the ultra-sonic sensor for the eyes, adding them is next, but that will have to wait until I get home from Christmas travels.

Testing my new Mobius action camera

I got a Mobius action camera for my birthday the other day.  I plan to use it mostly to flying video, but recently the weather has not cooperated.  Wanting to see it work, I mounted it on Clifford the little red robot and shot some video from his point of view.