Pictures of the Project

Status of the Project: 4 Years Later.

Johnny is my new soldering buddy now. And I've gotten down to pretty much scale size. Looking over this old blog has been a fun experience. I mean look how huge it was?!

Removed are the Uno and shields to run the motors.

The current setup is this:

Hack-a-day Pro Trinket
2 NPN transistors
A tamaiya(sp?) track and wheel set.
Some molded poly carbonate
9v
3v
MG90 Servo
3D Printed head.

He's actually pretty cool. Still want to add movie sounds, I was think Pi Zero or something.

Will update with pics.

Sound and Mouth Lighting Testing

JohnnyBot's on a Roll!!

 Much work has been done on the bot over the last month, after getting some new motors and wheels the robot is finally wired up.

I was going to go with the body that I created out of floor boards and then cover the outside with cut aluminum. But after looking at the price of motors and the different options available, I found a good deal on an entire lower chassis. This chassis is almost perfect for my testing purposes but budget constraints are what they are.

After checking out various rover platforms, I think I like the dagu tracked chassis the best and may upgrade to that chassis later on down the road.

The deal I got was the chassis, an arduino mega, new motorshield, and sensor shield. It also included the motors, and a battery holder (6AA for a total of 9V). As well as an additional UltraSonic Sensor.

The instruction manual was very poorly written, and after hooking up the motorshield under the chassis and hooking up the batteries, the entire thing started on fire and much of the electronics suffered from smoke damage.

I figure it was a faulty shield, as I had everything insulated and routed properly in the chassis, but after testing some of the other electronics, the damage was contained within the chassis itself. So, maybe it wasn't the best deal after all, as it almost burnt down the entire robot, but I had another mshield around that I knew actually worked so I hooked it up, did some experiments and the robot was back on task.

I decided to use the mega as the main controller for now, because there simply isn't a way to attach the computer to the bot yet, as space is limited. In the future, I plan to add a few risers, and maybe a plate to cover the whole thing to get it up and running with wifi and text to speech and all that other fancy stuff.

I also built some electrical components that are onboard JohnnyBot, some of these include the UltraViolet Headlights and BrakeLights, a Piezo Buzzer that I'm using for exhaust sounds right now. And some photoresistors that are used for photovorious activities.

Much of this was as simple as connecting 330 ohm resistors to anodes, and 1K's for the CaS, I think I used a 10K for the Piezo that was attached via cathode. Pretty easy stuff really.

Much of the robot uses velco for holding stuff on, as it doesn't really move too fast. I'm currently modified my custom chassis for increased damage control and stability but this base works well for development purposes. I'm thinking about using 18V drill motors for the final version of the robot, or maybe some brushless 450 helicopter motors with ESC's via RF. The brushless motors would be lighter and fairly inexpensive but wouldn't hold up if the chassis was very heavy. Drill motors would allow for less control, but far more torque. They are also more expensive, but I plan to scour garage sales this summer for a solution for this.

Another thing that I still need is some sort of remote control, as my bluetooth shield from Seeeed went kaput. I'm thinking of just getting a cheap slave, then upgrading to a silver smirf, or maybe gold in the future to fit the needs of the project.

Anyway, that's all for now. Leave some comments, as there are none. Thanks :)

Body Building And Torque Concerns

It's been a long week at Wicked Web Creations. I'll be happy to have less projects on my workbench as more and more of my projects progress toward completion.

After spending most of the month in the shop, wiring up my classic truck; I've been making steady progress on the Johnny 5 Project.

There have been some trials and trebulations along the way, to be sure, but I have high hopes for the future of this project.

A main concern of the robot will be getting enough torque to adequetely propel the bot while using minimal cost. If this was a better time for me financially, I would be able to provide a more reliable solution than the plans that are currently underway. That being said, I have proposed a feasible solution for my power needs.

The main problem with this project is to provide a workable solution for power while keeping costs and weight low.

POWER:
At first I thought about using a lawnmower battery or two to provide 12-24DC current that would use an ample motor shield(such as the Sabertooth) and then buy two big DC motors to spin the treads. While great in theory, my pocket book was a tad light to be able to accomplish this task.

So enters, theory 2. Use an adafruit shield with RC motors. Which is a good idea because I already had motors sitting around which saved me a pretty penny and the adafruit shield was only 15 dollars, so I could use it for other proto's even if it didn't have enough torque.

The adafruit shield is rated at 700mah stall current per channel and utilizes a 4 channel system for AWD control. So, surfing around polulo (sp?) revealed that I could indeed get some sumo motors for it that use the external gearbox. So, I could, in theory, get 4 medium power motors to work on the card without adding a heatsink and using the card under light duty.

These motors are cool if you can afford them and I may upgrade the bot to feature these in the future.

One problem I did run into was getting the right motors. After discovering that my little mshield would in no way make my salvaged printer motors move bike chain, was dissapointing, as it would have been a great way to reuse parts. So I junked the jb-welded motors with the roller blade wheels, ball bearings and all that other good stuff for a set of Dumas Rc 6V motors in the rear, and two Hacker Sprint 6V in the front. I'm using an 11.4 (?) V Lipo for the power supply, so I don't even notice a voltage drop when the system is running at full boar. Usually, the drop would be about 1V~1.2V per channel with this setup. I could have just as easily used a 7.2V RC or a pack of AA in a 9V config, but I like the idea of having the option to pump out more juice, just in case.

TORQUE:
The Dumas motors are running at 8mhz while the two hackers operate at the higher 16mhz signal to allow the back wheels to produce more low-end torque, while the front stays light and fast. 

The chassis of the robot is basically a tank config with a bot sitting on top to provide interaction. The bot sits about mid-ship, just above the rcbatt and the mshield, while the systems battery lights the rear, and the camera/touchscreen pilots from the front of the robot.

The systems battery is the heaviest component, next to the exoskeleton, and both components are mounted so they are weighted toward the rear. This is why, the back wheels need more torque. However, at this time, it is impossible to tell exactly how much torque I willl actually need to get the robot moving, as I have no access to a digital scale of any kind.

I'm betting at around a 80:1 geared system, would do a reasonable job, but for now the big dumas's will have to work.

****Fun Fact**** Dumas motors are ususally used in hobby boats, the big, reproduction ones and not the speed boat kind. Hacker Motors, or more specifically, the Hacker Sprint's that I'm using are typically used for airplane props, the Park Flyer model is the most popular that uses this particular model. 

Android: Stephanie Speck Gallery

Stephanie Speck Gallery

Made With:

 

 

In the movie, Johnny's friend Stephanie helped him to become accepted.

 

So I thought that a picture gallery for star who played Stephanie Speck would be appropriate for Johnny to have in his arsenal of software.

 

The above app is written and compiled for API level 17, or 4.2 JellyBean in layman's terms and makes use of a couple of different views and Toast notifications to signal picture changes.

 

The user can swipe the image gallery to progress through the images and select the image for larger display by touching with their finger.

 

This activity will later be added to Johnny's 5's main control app.

 

 

 

 

Neck Servo and Voice Lights

J5's Head Assembly

Little J needed a neck and voice lights to make him more like his big brother, and, after much research, I found it would be way too expensive to try and buy actuators and custom fit electronics to be able to allow for all the possible degrees of freedom that johnny would need to be like the big model. \

So, I simply glued a 9g micro servo on the top of the 3rd hands and then appled the custom voice box that I fabricated out of an old linsys router.

To make the box, I dismantled the front assembly and broke out the old led pins and then affixed new leds with a common cathode wiring scheme. The wire was harvested from an old PSU and then J5 held the whole thing together while the solder was hardening.

This setup allows for the Ultrasonic Sonar to be able to sweep and have a degree of planar freedom so that Johnny can look at you when he talks to you, and uninterrupted view of the flashing lights as he talks.

The lights will be wired up to the GIPO using WebIDE for remote automous control.