Quadru-Pet 1 – Part 3 – going analogDecember 2nd, 2009
The small body footprint of the initial design was causing me problems -- namely the coxa joints were too close together limiting servo movement. I’ve decided to use a piece of trusty meccano to serve as a new body until I can afford to get a custom aluminium body cut for me.
With a larger body I now have room to mount the electronics more effectively and there is also spare room for adding funky stuff such as sensors, head etc in the future.
There is also enough room to mount the battery pack beneath the body using a thick cable tie. This allows me to shift the battery pack forward and back allowing fine adjustment to the center of gravity.
I’ve managed to hack an old fat XBOX controller to use as my new control mechanism. This is a temporary solution until I can afford a blue-tooth receiver. I’ve done this by re-wiring the controller -- using the six wires in the default cable -- one for each of the analog pot data lines (LS horz/vert, RS horz/vert) the other two for power and ground.
Unfortunately, 2 of the 12 cheap Tower-Pro servos have burnt out -- limiting what I can do in terms of development of the gait and body movement. I’ve decided to invest in the superior quality Hi-Tec HS 645MG heavy duty metal gear servos. However, these come at a price so will probably purchase 4 at a time over the next year.
