Installing PADAWAN

So I have been working on getting the PADAWAN system installed as much as possible for Planet ComiCon. First things first: I need a motherboard to mount all the different pieces to, so they're not just floating around inside the robot body or something. Also some way of getting to them easily. Based on some pictuers I've seen of someone else's build, I've decided to go with a wooden panel that can fold down once the rear door is removed. So, I picked up some wood at the store and cut it to about an 8x10 rectangle, and added my first few components, thus:

From top to bottom that's the playstation 2 remote control receiver, the arduino that runs everything (in blue), the mp3 player (in red), the motor driver for the dome motor (on the left) and the 5V regulator for the dome lights and speaker (on the right). Since the battery is 12V, I need to run it through the voltage regulator to feed the dome lighting system.

Incidentally, here you can see the slip ring in the middle of the dome which feeds the power up. You can see I've attached a small quick-connect plug on the end there, and bundled up the wires so they're not kicking around all over the place.

And here's the motherboard bolted inside the R2 unit. There's a hinge n the back so it will fold down, and I'm using velcro tie-downs to hold it up. The shot is a little dark, but you can see a lot of wires going up the right-hand pole to the dome motor, dome lights, and speaker (the black rectangle in the top foreground). It's one of those USB powered ones, so since USB is a 5v draw, I was able to put it in with the dome lights downstream from the regulator. Kind of a pain though, as once I snipped off the USB plug, the actual power wires within were very tiny, maybe 24-26 gauge.

On the back I mounted a big ol' power switch (I'm actually going to have to replace it with a DPDT (double-pole, double-throw: that means I can turn two circuits on at once) switch later, as I'll want this to toggle both the 12V and 24V circuits at the same time. The 24V circuit will be strictly for the foot motors, actually moving this sucker around).

And here's R2 on his brand new handtruck, ready for his debut :)

I think this week I might get back to 3-D printing body parts. After the con I'd really like to tackle as much body stuff as possible,and work on getting the legs together. Then snag some skins as soon as a set show up, and after that... I gotta figure out how to move this sucker around.

Oh, boy.

PADAWAN stage one: control and sound

Been a quiet week, mostly because of this stupid cold. I did manage to read up on the PADAWAN control system, and decided to go with it as it seemed a fairly simple way to get started. I dug out my old Arduino UNO, got a Lynxmotion wireless PS2 controller with a "level select", and an MP3 trigger board with a micro SD card.

First step: connect the PS2 to the arduino (the box on the left is the receiver. The level shifter is the circuit board it's plugged into).

Next up, a quick test to make sure we are getting the signals across. I load the arduino with a test program for the PS2 interface and give it a whirl:

At first I was getting garbage in the Serial Monitor, then I found out that the test program expected to run at 57.6Kbaud. I changed the Monitor's baud rate, and voila:

We are in business.

Next up was the MP3 trigger. It takes, as I said, a micro SD card to hold the mps. I downloaded the "official" sound set from astromech, as well as the PADAWAN sketch. The instructions say to copy the MP3s over one at a time so that they appear in order on the file, but when I did that, they were all hosed up. Some triggers played, some didn't. Nearly none of the triggers matched up to what they were meant to play.

A quick call for help on astromech revealed that OSX is a bit bad about this. I chucked the micro SD card into a Windows box, and lo and behold: a lot of metafiles created by OSX were throwing the system off. I deleted everything but the actual MP3s, loaded it back up, and was in business.

(Pictured: MP3 trigger board in red hooked to an amplified speaker for testing)

So, lessons learned:

• When running a sketch that sends output to the serial monitor, always be sure to double-check the baud.
• When copying files to an SD card where you really, really don't want anything on there but those exact files, avoid OSX. Maybe go with Windows or Linux.

Anyway, hopefully I'll feel good enough this week to get back to 3-D printing. In the meantime, I've got a drive motor and controller on the way, and the Radio Shack nearby is going out of business. I saw some SLA batteries there going cheap. Hmm...

Oh! Forgot to mention: Wednesday marked two months down, ten to go. I think I'm making good time, knock wood.