Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #12822



To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Ben Hitchcock beh01@uow.edu.au
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 16:15:34 +1000 (EST)
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: FRED tutorial


Hi,

> Yes!!! Demand and you shall receive;)
>
> Very nice tutorial, I think I've almost got Kyle convinced to try
> freeforming his next FRED Pvore.

One thing - I made another FRED last night and it's performance isn't as
good as the one photographed in the tutorial. I made the distance between
the motors greater, and used a larger (but only 4-cell) solar panel. The
two of them fight over the best position beneath the desk lamp and
although they rub capacitors all the time, they always manage to free
themselves given enough time. I'm starting to think that the difference in
ability is more to do with the internal resistance of the cap than
anything else.

> How's the vibration bot doing so far? Any chance of a schematic on that
> on?

Well, it sits on my desk. When I turn my desk lamp on, it sits there for
about 5 minutes, charging up while I'm doing other stuff. Occasionally it
will turn on a motor for about half a second while it tries to fight its
way through the junk on the desk.

But when I turn the light off to go to bed, you should hear it! It's
almost like the poor little thing is complaining that the light level is
too low! It sits there and spins its motors wildly, trying to get out of
the monstrous shadow that has just descended on it!

Schematics... Well I could do that but I'd rather iron all the bugs out of
it first. When I released the first FRED schematic I used different
values of resistor to now (10 k as opposed to 33k) and there are still
copies of my old schematic floating around. I'd rather get it all working
before handing it over to the public domain. I think the pulse length is
too long - I might try 0.2 seconds next. The main problem at the moment
is time: I have 5 assignments due in next week and not much chance of
doing any BEAM stuff while they are imminent... Wait a couple of weeks?

Ben



12823 Thu, 30 Mar 2000 01:20:45 EST [alt-beam] Re: glider beam@sgiblab.sgi.com SkavenArmy@cs.com the most i can scrounge for new p & p is about 5$



12824 Wed, 29 Mar 2000 21:38:47 -0700 [alt-beam] website for bots "Verne & Catherine Rambaud" hey i have found a cool site that i have only glanced over, but it has some
kits that could easily be used for beam. the site is
http://www.edmundscientific.com/Products/Search.cfm?query=robotics use
netscape. the items are cheap. robot arm $72.95, six legged robot $70.00
something. sorry.


Jeremy

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