Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #01229
To: beam@corp.sgi.com, Evan Dudzik evandude@yahoo.com
From: Justin jaf60@student.canterbury.ac.nz
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 1999 10:33:19 +1300
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: advanced circuits
> why is there such a shortage of advanced circuits such as advanced
> photopoppers and more advanced walkers?
My opinions:
What I think you’ll find is that while "advanced photopopper design"
might sound appealing, each particular "advanced photopopper design"
will be of interest to only a small number of people.
Steven Bolt might upload a design that cleverly includes a step-motor
driver so that it will run on watch motors. I wouldn’t want to build it
because I’ve got a stack of DC motors about the same size.
Someone might upload a design that alternates between light-seeking and
light-avoiding behaviour depending on the time of day (or local
brightness), most BEAMers have their own ideas of what constitutes
interesting behaviour.
Above all, a lot (perhaps most) BEAMers would like to design their own
advanced photopopper, and thus have it do exactly what they think a
photopopper should do (which, as noted, is not often the same as most
other BEAMers).
Secondly, depending on what you mean by "advanced", there _are_ advanced
designs out there.
Of those that come to mind, Dennison and I have both recently posted
separate photovore designs that include easy implementation of reverse
sensors, which in turn allows for clever sensor design, thus allowing
all sorts of useful behaviour. The Alf circuit comes to mind as a
circuit with photopopper-like operation, but with high energy
efficiency, no 1381’s, able to drive non-inductive loads, and able to
change direction during the cap discharge if the sensors desire it.
Thirdly, the approach of uploading advanced circuit is limited - if you
upload an advanced photopopper design, with night-store, reversing, and
high efficiency, all you get is one design on the web. If, instead, you
upload the reversing circuit, the night-store circuit, the
high-efficiency SE, etc., then BEAMer’s can take these, and other such
circuits, and mix and match to build a bot with all the functions they
want, using only the parts they can get, etc. etc., and the result is
hundreds of possible designs, instead of just one.
Lastly, someone competent enough to desire more advanced bots is
competent enough to innovate, to take an existing design and modify it
to their ends, perhaps to even come up with something new and exciting.
That’s what all the circuit modules are for, such as the bicore, or the
reverser, or the H-bridge; useful things with which to build cool
robots. Useful ideas to give you other ideas. Useful guides for
solutions that work.
Some links:
My photovore: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/1121/beam/bivore.gif
Dennison’s photovore:
http://www.buffnet.net/~dennlill/Alternative%20BEAM.htm
Ben Hitchcock’s Alf: http://rabble.uow.edu.au/~marmion/schematic.html
(This is not actually Ben’s proper site - I’ve lost the address, sorry)
Ian Bernstein’s BEAM Online site: http://www.beam-online.com/
(As well as many "circuit modules" like those I mentioned, he has
recently added a circuit for a walker and reverse on a single chip.)
Hmmm, that turned into a fairly big post. Ah well…
Seeya
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