Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #11161
To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: BUDSCOTT@aol.com
Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 21:20:21 EST
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: Diskette Drives/camera parts
i agree with ya there, i live in northern illinois (rather shoot ya than say
hello) and its all franchise @#$^%& (I have too much fun with that). the
privately owned stores always have better policies (cause they lack policies).
-Spencer
11162 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 21:23:53 EST [alt-beam] Re: Radio shack solar panels beam@sgiblab.sgi.com BUDSCOTT@aol.com so i've heard, that pisses me off. i recall there being decent solar panels
at radio shack back in the day. its so hard to find good parts these days
they're either too friggin' expensive or too friggin' cheap (construction).
oh well, mail orders the way to go then so much for exploring that avenue.
-Spencer
11163 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 20:27:58 -0600 [alt-beam] Re: mini walker beam@sgiblab.sgi.com Richard Piotter I was thinking about using a microcore instead of a master slave bicore.
Either way, can pulses be stopped and resumed from their last position?
I'm wondering if an Nv chain that is initiated by the SE firing would
work. Switch the source to a different coil and polarity on each of 4
steps, and then fall off the end. Allow the SE to charge to full. It'd
store enough power for a complete step cycle. If there were enough
power, I assume the SE could continuously fire the start of the Nv
chain, till light levels drop and it would then rely on firing
intermittently, till it looses it's charge again.
Has anyone made such a circuit before???
Would the Chloroplast be suitable for this purpose, and how can I get a
single pulse out of it, with a second sustained pulse going to the
driver (I suppose 2 chips would be acceptable, if necessary). If the
driver powers the coils, then would it be possible to attach it to the
steady voltage output of the Chloroplast SE and the pulse to the
trigger, and have a very high dropout level, so it shuts down right
away, waiting for the next charge before refiring???
Ben Hitchcock wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> > What
> > would be best? I thought of an SE type system with a timed trigger. Is
> > there a way to create an SE that triggers different pulse outputs in
> > chain? I'll play with circuits. That's what we're here for anyway. New designs!
>
> How about using a shift register? Attach the SE to an enable pin on your
> motor driver (74xx240) and also to the clock pin on the shift register.
> You'll also need to attach the fourth (or is it fifth?) pin of the shift
> register to the data in
> pin, and somehow start a pulse when there aren't any in the stream...
> you'd need four diodes (one from each gate on the shift register) a
> resistor and an inverter to create a pulse if none existed in the chain.
>
> Maybe a shift register isn't such a good idea after all... 2 IC's instead
> of one... Perhaps ye olde microcore could be adapted to do it.
>
> Good luck!
>
> Hmm maybe the bot won't be able to steer using this setup. no matter, it
> will look pretty cool.
>
> Ben
--
Richard Piotter The Richfiles Robotics & TI web page:
richfile@rconnect.com http://richfiles.calc.org
-- Make Money by Simply Surfing the Net or responding to E-Mail!!!
-- Click below!!!
http://www.alladvantage.com/go.asp?refid=ATL147
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11164 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 21:27:59 EST [alt-beam] Re: which 1381 trigger beam@sgiblab.sgi.com BUDSCOTT@aol.com heres an experiment for ya, if you have all the parts, breadboard them and
throw it under some light. get your multimeter and hook it up to the cap,
what you should see is the cap filling up slowly with voltage, and when it
reachs circa 2.7v it should discharge, so yes it doesn't matter on the solar
panel rating. however, should you want to use motors that might want to have
a little more voltage going through them, take it a step up, if you have
really dinky efficient motors, use a smaller rated 1381 mearly a matter of
taste.
-Spencer
11165 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 21:36:24 EST [alt-beam] Re: Radio shack solar panels beam@sgiblab.sgi.com BUDSCOTT@aol.com what do you mean by "break the cell", are they made to be split up into
pieces? i don't have a lot of experience with solar panels, just big ones
(that make a cool photovore, 1 x 1 ft solar panels hmm...).
-Spencer
11166 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 21:34:34 EST [alt-beam] Re: Symets with legs beam@sgiblab.sgi.com BUDSCOTT@aol.com my symet is one that has the typical symet look with 4-fold rotation
symmetry, and a buncha heat shrink as a ball actuator. I sent William
(robot-central) a tutorial that has some pics, which should be up sometime in
the near future. i added four wire extentions to lessen the angle at which it
leans at. I got the idea looking at the beamart web page (your bots bring
tears to my eyes). has anybody done anything similiar, i want to see how to
modify its behavior to be a little more effecient (such a trite word by now,
better get my thesorus). just tinkerin'
-Spencer
11167 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 21:47:39 EST [alt-beam] Unicore beam@sgiblab.sgi.com BUDSCOTT@aol.com are there any unicore schematics on the web, i'm really interested in making
a beamant, just can't find stuff for it! anybody?
-Spencer
11168 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 21:57:03 EST [alt-beam] Re: which 1381 trigger beam@sgiblab.sgi.com JVernonM@aol.com In a message dated 2/29/00 8:33:07 PM Eastern Standard Time, walkau@eagle.ca
writes:
> i was looking at getting the 1381J (2.7v). does it really matter that
> the solar cell has a higher rating? is it just that the 1381 will
> trigger when it reaches the 2.7v mark?
Yep, it'll just get there faster. It'll give better low light performance as
well. I'd go with an "N" myself.
See ya,
Jim
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Exhibit/8281/beamart.html
ICQ# 55657870
11169 Wed, 01 Mar 2000 03:00:12 GMT [alt-beam] beambotix is up beam@sgiblab.sgi.com "Mike Kulesza" Everyone goto: www.geocities.com/beambotix
its only one page sofar.... but its shows my fleet....
______________________________________________________
11170 Wed, 01 Mar 2000 03:01:37 GMT [alt-beam] Re: Radio shack solar panels beam@sgiblab.sgi.com "Mike Kulesza"
>what do you mean by "break the cell", are they made to be split up into
>pieces? i don't have a lot of experience with solar panels, just big ones
Somehow make a smooth, straight split... could be hard. Try gripping both
sides with straight edges, and bending....
______________________________________________________
11171 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 22:11:19 EST [alt-beam] Re: BEAMAnt circuit beam@sgiblab.sgi.com JVernonM@aol.com In a message dated 2/29/00 4:45:59 PM Eastern Standard Time, JVernonM@aol.com
writes:
> > he beamant circuit turns both motors when one of the
> > touch sensors is tripped. then its' both on, both off,
> > both on, both off.
I just read this again and I don't think it's right. The only time both
wheels turn (and it's in opposite directions) is when a feeler is bumped. All
other times it is a left right, left right waggle. The pulses seem to
converge into continuous movement on both sides in bright enough light. This
gives the illusion of both motors turning at the same time and in the same
direction. Just had to get it straight for my own sake :).
See ya,
Jim
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Exhibit/8281/beamart.html
ICQ# 55657870
11172 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 19:34:02 PST [alt-beam] Hay I rezent that remark!!! beam@sgiblab.sgi.com "Timothy Flytch" >From: Rob Rix
Hay now... I use an iMac...
...LOL...
and i love my round mouse... after I put a drop of glue on the friont...
Timothy...
> > No! It looks like (gasp) an I MAC!
>No, it's one of the Blue and White G3 Macs, the Yosemite towers, replaced
>recently by the blazing G4s.
>My comment had to do with one side of his mouse being a different colour
>than the other.
>
>Peace!
>
>-- Rob
>
>Don't take a walk, climb a tree ? an ancient truism, invented last week.
>
______________________________________________________
11173 Wed, 1 Mar 2000 14:37:36 +1100 (EST) [alt-beam] Re: mini walker beam@sgiblab.sgi.com Ben Hitchcock Here's an idea:
You don't need a SE!
Just attach the 1381 to power and ground, andconnect the output of the
1381 to the input of the microcore via a normal microcore cap. The 1381
gets to its switch-on voltage, introduces a process, and bang off it goes.
No need to enable or disable the 240. And have the process fall of f the
end of the core - four neurons in a chain. This means that you get to
gang two gates together per coil lead - two gates ganged up would give you
enough juice to drive the walker, methinks. And the nice thing about this
is that you only need one chip, one 1381, four caps and resistors, plus
your coils and solar panel and storage cap and that's it!
Too easy.
Ben
> I was thinking about using a microcore instead of a master slave bicore.
> Either way, can pulses be stopped and resumed from their last position?
> I'm wondering if an Nv chain that is initiated by the SE firing would
> work. Switch the source to a different coil and polarity on each of 4
> steps, and then fall off the end. Allow the SE to charge to full. It'd
> store enough power for a complete step cycle. If there were enough
> power, I assume the SE could continuously fire the start of the Nv
> chain, till light levels drop and it would then rely on firing
> intermittently, till it looses it's charge again.
>
> Has anyone made such a circuit before???
>
> Would the Chloroplast be suitable for this purpose, and how can I get a
> single pulse out of it, with a second sustained pulse going to the
> driver (I suppose 2 chips would be acceptable, if necessary). If the
> driver powers the coils, then would it be possible to attach it to the
> steady voltage output of the Chloroplast SE and the pulse to the
> trigger, and have a very high dropout level, so it shuts down right
> away, waiting for the next charge before refiring???
>
>
> Ben Hitchcock wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > > What
> > > would be best? I thought of an SE type system with a timed trigger. Is
> > > there a way to create an SE that triggers different pulse outputs in
> > > chain? I'll play with circuits. That's what we're here for anyway. New designs!
> >
> > How about using a shift register? Attach the SE to an enable pin on your
> > motor driver (74xx240) and also to the clock pin on the shift register.
> > You'll also need to attach the fourth (or is it fifth?) pin of the shift
> > register to the data in
> > pin, and somehow start a pulse when there aren't any in the stream...
> > you'd need four diodes (one from each gate on the shift register) a
> > resistor and an inverter to create a pulse if none existed in the chain.
> >
> > Maybe a shift register isn't such a good idea after all... 2 IC's instead
> > of one... Perhaps ye olde microcore could be adapted to do it.
> >
> > Good luck!
> >
> > Hmm maybe the bot won't be able to steer using this setup. no matter, it
> > will look pretty cool.
> >
> > Ben
>
> --
>
>
> Richard Piotter The Richfiles Robotics & TI web page:
> richfile@rconnect.com http://richfiles.calc.org
>
> -- Make Money by Simply Surfing the Net or responding to E-Mail!!!
> -- Click below!!!
>
> http://www.alladvantage.com/go.asp?refid=ATL147
> http://www.spedia.net/cgi-bin/dir/tz.cgi?run=show_svc&fl=8&vid=329630
>
--
Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
11174 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 20:37:46 -0600 [alt-beam] Re: Radio shack solar panels alt-beam@egroups.com Ben A Micklin Hey,
How much were the panels? If we are supposed to experiment, shouldn't is
be sensibly and without dishing out massive amounts of cash?
~ben~
On Tue, 29 Feb 2000 18:14:19 EST BUDSCOTT@aol.com writes:
> I was looking around, out of curiosity, (it didn't kill my #$%& cat,
> wait a
> minute i don't have a cat!?) at the radio shack web site, i found
> some low
> voltage high current panels there, well okay one panel, that puts
> out .45 VDC
> (dinky) with 1000 mA (pretty cool) you'd need to boost the voltage
> with a
> second panel of some sort (cheat calculator cell) but that would
> provide some
> awesome ambient light operation. I'll have to check it out for more
> info!
>
> -Spencer
>
>
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________________________________________________________________
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11175 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 23:03:04 -0500 [alt-beam] BEAM overview alt-beam@egroups.com David Barn Hello everyone. I'm pretty new to this entire BEAM stuff. I found out
about it only a few weeks ago through a Smithsonian article. The idea of
forsaking digital "intelligence" for analog seemed to me to be a step in
the right direction for more accurate AI. Unfortunately, though, my
opinion matters little, because I know very little about AI. Anyway, my
first impression was that the requirements for BEAM robots are fairly
strict. They had to be built using certain principles to be a true BEAM.
Sort of like radios for example, where you can have different TYPES of
radios, but they must all basically turn the radio wave into sound waves
in the end. Anyway, the more I read about this BEAM stuff on the
internet, the more I got the impression that BEAM was really just
anti-digital. Not to say that in a negative way, only to say that
whatever wasn't a digital robot fell under the BEAM robot category.
So now I'm confused. Could anyone set me straight once and for all about
what exactly something has to have to be a BEAM robot?
Thanks!
David Barnhart
________________________________________________________________
YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET!
Juno now offers FREE Internet Access!
Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj.
11176 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 20:14:34 -0800 (PST) [alt-beam] Re: Symets with legs beam@sgiblab.sgi.com "Travis D." I did one w/ motor, 1381, large Solarbotics Sunceram,
and then you can add an extra cap to two IC socket
pins...I hooked up a 1F cap to it (it's wired in
parallel so it adds on w/ the 4700 uf capacitance) and
when that thing fires, IT FIRES (knocks off the 1F cap
sometimes)
--- Mike Kulesza wrote:
>
> I made a SHOCKbot - basically a motor+SE+3733 cell,
> on 4 wire legs. The
> motor turns an offset weight, causing the bot to
> shake. The weight of the
> bot is so distributed that with each shake, it
> shifts forwad about 1-2 cm.
> I'll have pics up soon.
>
______________________________________________________
>
11177 Tue, 29 Feb 2000 20:23:39 -0800 [alt-beam] VCR dissection alt-beam@eGroups.com "Dave G. Amundson" I've just rediscovered BEAM, and am starting to take apart an old VCR
with intent to build my first robot. I know I'm not going to find
everything I need in it, but I'm just wondering what sort of stuff I
should be looking for. I'm obviously going to pull the motor, and I
plan to pop as many resistors off the circuit boards as I can. Is
there anything else I should look for? Any general advice for taking
apart electronics? I'm completely new at this. Thanks for any help.
--
Yours etc.,
Dave G. Amundson
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