Wiring up the drives

Well, I heard from the frame guy that he mailed out the center ankle hardware Friday, so it should be showing up tomorrow or Tuesday. In the meantime, I'm prepping the center ankle itself and also wired up the drive controller.

After talking to a few people, I decided to go with a switch instead of a diode arrangement, chiefly because I intend to roll the R2 around sometimes with no battery inside it. So I mounted a switch just below the main power one to control power flowback from the motors to the controller:

Just so happens I had a DPST (double pole, single throw) switch left over from my proton pack build, so I just used that. It has both motors going through it, so I can toggle them both at once.

Anyway, the driver itself looks like this now:

On the left, the top 2 wires are going to the left foot, the middle two to the battery, and the bottom two to the right foot. I'm using landscape lighting wire as it's extremely flexible for 12-gauge.

On the right, the top two wires are going back to the signal pins on the arduino, where they control the actual movement. The bottom one is a ground going back to the arduino's ground pin.

(You can also see that the DIP switches have been toggled over to the correct configuration, with 1 & 2 off, and everything else on).

So that has come together very nicely. I'm hoping I can get it together pretty quickly and have the robot scooting around before too long. At least I should have it on its own 3 feet by the end of the week, if all goes well. In any case, this pretty much makes the wiring-up portion of the build complete. So that's pretty cool.

Getting ready to wire up

So now that the legs are on, it's time to thin about the foot drives. I've been working to get those fastened together, and finally got that done Saturday morning. Pictured here is a foot drive with the rear caster mounted and the ankle mount clamped on:

Now I've got to wire up the actual drives. I grabbed some sheet aluminum the other day and cut it to 6x7 inches so that it would mount inside of the leg braces on the frame. Since the motor driver is too big to fit on my current motherboard I'm breaking it off by itself. And since it's got a big heat sink on the bottom of it I went with a conductive base attached directly to the aluminum frame. Here is the driver--a Sabertooth 2x32 (2 motors & 32A each) mounted to the plate:

And here's the plate mounted inside the leg brace:

Pretty exciting. Hopefully the center ankle hardware will show up very soon, and I can get that done. In the meantime, I had a little side project over at Hammerspace this weekend, where one of our members is doing a two-part class on building lightsabers. He brought in a whole bunch of plumbing parts and whatnot, and we put them together however we liked. I took mine home for a little painting and touchup work, and this is the result:

Next class, hes' going to show us how to add sound effects, and make it compatible with the popular "blades" available out there. Very cool. I'm thinking I'm going to have to make some of these for gifts for my geeky friends.

Incidentally: this weekend marks not only Star Wars Celebration VII (wish I was there!), but also month 4 of this build. I now am 1/3 of the way through my projected build tome to get R2 up and running. I do believe I'm more than a third of the way through the build too, so feeling pretty good about that. Will I make it? Hope so. But we shall have to see.

Legs and drives: getting closer

Well, I've been working to get the legs together. And they're coming together pretty decent, all things considered. Still trying to decide how I want to attach some of the various bits.  I did manage to get some work on them done, however:

First I painted the outer legs...

...and then the middle one.
 

 Just for fun, I laid out all the stuff on one of the legs:

Eee, can't wait.

Anyway, tonight I got some bolts from the hardware store, and one of the wooden hubs that I sawed in half to make two proper sized ones. In any case, I was able to drill some holes using the hub as a guide and was able to bolt in one of the legs as a proof of concept. Very cool.

 Meanwhile, my drives and things came. The DDRII drives came from the same guys who do the temp wheels and mounting kits for Midwest R2, so they combined shipments for me. I got two full motorized drives, two mounting blocks to attach to the drives until I get my shells (the white things on the right), a stand-in center foot (the white thing in the top right-hand corner), and a wheel system for when I get the foot shell (top left). Lots of good stuff in here, solid as a rock too. Very glad I went with these guys.

More leg prep

So this week I got the aluminum parts to attach to the frame, including the hubs... and ran into a bit of a snag. It seems the frame and alum hubs are assuming 4 holes, like a square, whereas the legs themselves have six holes. What's more, the legs use 5/16" bolts and the frame 1/2". So it's kind of a bummer. I picked up some spacers and such, and I can do two of the bolts through the existing holes, but I think I might drill additional holes into the frame to accommodate.

Meantime, I've got ot finish 'dressing' the legs. I need to attach the panels, details, etc. I was thinking of using screws to fasten the booster covers in, or possibly keyhole slots. I'll try the latter first, hold the former as a reserve. Then I gotta fasten down the shoulders and glue in the details there. And I gotta do it before too much longer, because the drives and stuff are showing up on Monday!

No way I'm gonna get it done this week, what with my trip and all, but hopefully I can get the legs dressed and prepped for installation by mid-month. And then get the wheels and drives onto the frame proper and get that sucker rolling around. It's a tall order, but it's like the last real big thing before the skins and such.