Last weekend, before getting the sumo bot kit, I spent some time working on the balancing bot. I added a vertical length of Aluminum and mounted the electronics on it. The plate is 3/8 thick and about 5 inches long... it not only acts as a place to mount the electronics, but its main purpose is to raise the center of gravity (CG) higher. Confused?? Which is easier to balance in your hand, a pencil or a broom stick? (the correct answer is the broom stick). The greater the distance between your hand and the CG, the easier it will be to control.
Before ripping the motor controller off to be used on the Sumo Bot, I was able to get all the parts working... I still have a bit of work before I will be able to get that thing balancing. During initial wiring, I managed to smoke the H-Bridge and fry the PIC Microchip on my PICKit2 Evaluation board. Too bad really, I used that thing all the time (no, really.) These motors have a 6 Amp stall current, so I need to buy something a little beefier.
After that fiasco, I spent some time using my USB to Serial breakout board from Sparkfun (
DEV-09716). After a bit of playing around, I managed to send the accelerometer data from one axis to my PC using Hyperterminal, which I think is a standard program installed on every machine... if not, I'm sure you can find it, or an equivalent for free. The accelerometer is from Pololu (
MMA7361L).
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| Front Isometric View |
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| Side View |
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| Rear Isometric View |
From the looks of it this project went very well. Have you considered a balancing sumo bot? Perhaps a robot circus might be more the way to go :)
ReplyDeleteWith my bots handling the acrobatics, your one could take care of the freak show. ;-p
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