I, Robot
Robotics are all the rage, and those old high-tech toys you might have lying around are ideal candidates for the Frankenstein/Arduino treatment.
Bring old toys back to life with Arduino: Part II
Lead Image © Anton Brand, 123RF.com
In the previous issue, I showed how to upgrade a Robosapien toy with an Arduino brain [1]. Just to quickly recap, I chose a Robosapien robot because it is a great toy to hack an Arduino into: It was wildly popular about 10 years ago and sold millions of units, so, even if you don't have one yourself, there are a lot of second-hand ones around, and you can find one in perfect working order on the cheap on eBay. The toy is easily pulled apart without damaging its components, and the information printed on its control board makes it easy to figure out which wire controls which part of the Robosapien. Best of all: It has a lots of potential for cool hacks.
Movement is a big part of Robosapien, so in the last installment you learned how to implement an H-bridge that lets you easily control both speed and direction of a DC motor (the Robosapien uses DC motors, like those on electric cars, not servos) and you got hold of some L293Ds – chips that give you two H-bridges, one per side.
However, I left off in issue 9 with the realization that, despite the Arduino's many good points, it falls short when you need to control a large number of motors, such as those that move Robosapien's [2] limbs. The Robosapien has seven motors and each must be spun forward and backward to walk, move his arms, and open and close his claws. That means each motor needs the input from two PWM pins. That's 14 pins.
[...]
Use Express-Checkout link below to read the full article (PDF).
Buy this article as PDF
Express-Checkout as PDF
Pages: 8
Price $2.95
(incl. VAT)
(incl. VAT)
Buy Raspberry Pi Geek
TABLET & SMARTPHONE APPS
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Related content
-
Bring old toys back to life with Arduino
In this article, we hack a popular toy from the 2000s, the Robosapien v1, and show you how to upgrade it with a new Arduino brain.
-
Create a remote control motorized robot arm
Use an Arduino Mega to manage a 4-motor robot arm and a 2-motor car chassis. The MIT App Inventor package was used to create an Android app that controlled-the robot.
-
Digital – Analog – Mechanical
As innovative companies consistently push the envelope of progress, antiquated hardware nearly two years old falls by the wayside. We take an old iPad, an Arduino Mega, and various other materials to create an in-dash climate control app.
-
Reading and writing from an analog multiplexer
It's easy to run out of analog pins on your Arduino far too soon when you are working on a project. Add a multiplexer or two, though, and you're back in business.
-
Automated plant watering with Arduino
House plants are fairly self-sufficient, but they do need certain care from people to survive. With a few Arduino sensors and a little programming, you can take the guesswork out of watering your plants.
