Hello! =)
I will update about the big event in Stockholm, and also about the charity event I did with R2 on Christmas Eve shortly.
In brief: R2 and the 501st collected a lot of money to battle children’s cancer in early December, and on Christmas Eve, I took R2 with me to visit poor children in Stockholm to give them a happier Christmas.
I managed to get a few 501st friends and a magician with me to help out with this. Kudos to them!
Anyway, back to what this update is about!
After the Sci Fi convention, I decided to work on my new controller again, and it has gone great!
This is my old electronics board. Well. Was.
I removed all components and started installing components on the new board..
Three layers worth of circuit boards, 3 Arduino computers.. and more to come!
Complete with two motor controllers, one sip ring connector board..
Many of the cables are run on the backside in order to keep the front as clear as possible.
All ground connectors are run through the aluminium plate, by the way.
This is the arm controller that I’ve been working on. I will change it some more, but for now, this is what I can do.
I will draw a better version in my CAD software and send it to Shapeways to print for me in plastic! That will be sweet!
This is still a “beta” but it is really getting a lot better!
Plenty of boars inside. The curved piece was made from styrene with a blowtorch.
It sits great on the arm…
And it even works!
Since this beta, I’ve replaced the touch screen, which had a crack through it, and been working hard on the code for the controller.
This is what the controller touch screen looked like before I started:
A fairly easy way with text. Nothing fancy.
However, it turned out to be quite hard to actually touch those lines, as they are really thin, and my fingers are .. well .. not.
So, after spending a good couple of hours with my head into the code, this is what I’ve made it to look like instead:
And when moving to another page..
… and when you select an item, this is what it does now:
In addition to that, I’ve done many tweaks when it comes to things like speed, motor controllers, dome control, and the sound effects for the dome.
When I started with this controller, I was not happy with the level of control I had over my robot, but after tweaking the code and changing things around, it really starts coming together in a way that I am really happy with!
Next step is to design the proper arm holder and draw it up in my CAD software!
Stay tuned! =)
