CE2 Awaits

I looked at the trolley today.  The rear door was getting bent every time i used it, so it needed addressing.  I added a board the same height as R2 to the trolley to give a flat surface for the frame rings to rest on, then removed the area of the mat that was pressing on the rear door.  It works well, he now rests on the trolley without damage. :)

I then decided that the way i was strapping him to the trolley was also not ideal, it too was putting pressure on the skins and bending them.  So i found that if i strapped round the leg to body hubs i could strap him on really tight without that problem.

So all safe and strapped to the trolley but no protection.  So i got my over sized sleeping bag out and started playing.  By making 4 small holes in the right spots, to pass the strap through, the bag can be used on the trolley and he is still just as secure.  Really happy, hopefully he will make it to Germany in 1 piece now. :)

So with that done, i moved on to repair the back door.  I removed all the bent bits and flattened them out and reattached them with VHB, and added tape to the back as extra support.  Job done. :)

Then a few final little bits.  I fine tuned the utility arms, and tightened a few bits and put the skins back on.  And taped up a few unfinished bits.  He is looking fine. :)  I might swap out one for the front logics tomorrow (it has a dead LED).

While playing i spotted another issue with the 2-3-2, the leg rod fixings on the feet have play in them, not sure if that is due to the grass driving or if it has always been like that, but it will need redoing when i redo the ankle joints.  I am confident that that will help quite a bit, and mean that the drive moves the droid and not the angle of the foot first. :)  2-3-2 is an almost never ending pursuit, fun, but not for the easily scared, we will get there eventually. :)  But for the moment, 2-3-2 and 3 leg driving are fine, its just the 2 leg driving that will benefit. :)

Ian dropped off his droid today.  James is over Monday.  We collect the Van Tuesday, then fit the false floor to maximise the space.  Then Flips for Tuesday night, via a few droids. Then its the 8am Ferry and the trip to Essen.  Cant wait. :D

BHD Control code now Online

James has now had the code uploaded to his droid too, we tested the booleans for the 2-3-2 and dome potentiometer.  All works well.

We did need to adjust the stop points for the dome and feet drives and also the speed and turn profiles for the different modes, but easy fixes.  The code is now reordered and annotated to make those changes easier for others.

I went through all the sketches and added a header, and a few critical annotations.  It can still be improved, but its all in there now, all tested and all working reliably.

Im not 100% happy that the random dome motion prevents the triggering while moving, but it was intended more as a static mode, so its fine for now.  Also the flash of the HPs means that the dome servo scripts can be up to 0.15s slower to trigger, but no biggie.

So all MP3s, all sketches, libraries and Xbee files are now uploaded to my drive.  Please test them thoroughly before using in public.  Mine has a lot of run time now, and i have fixed lots of issues, the code is good, but id hate to see any droid go wild.  This code is used at your own risk, but i haven't had any issues and trust it.  Good luck.

NOW OUT OF DATE

I will write up the wiring of the setup after CE2 and pad 2 are done.

Im so glad i upgraded it to the 193 commands, it gave me the chance to refine a lot of the functions.  Really pleased with the results. :)

The Warborough Festival AKA 3 hours on grass!

Well.  A mixed weekend for R2.  

The 30Ah 5v packs arrived, only about 60% heavier than the 12Ah ones and they also have a power draw sense, so i only need one switch inline to turn the power on and off.  I will need to do some work to fit it in the body, so decided to add one and a switch to the dome as a quick job.  I used a short USB extender, and stripped it to add the switch on the +ve line.  I then rewired the dome to use one USB lead as the power to both Teeces and servo controller.  The switch is easily accessible with the dome facing forward and the back door open.  And much easier than fishing around in the dome. :)

Then my car let me down, so i was forced to cancel another event for Saturday night.  I was really disappointed i couldn't make it. it was for a charity about as close to me as it gets.   Hope they repeat the event and i can go next time.

But that meant i had a fully charged and ready to go R2, so today i went to the village festival, and was soon convinced to bring R2 down.  He ran on the grass fine for about 3 hours (all i could manage), the ground was hard and bumpy but R2 coped well and he was really well received.  So much love. :)

Me and R2 :D

The new code all ran fine, no bugs at all that i spotted, the delay on the triggering while the dome is moving is a bit of a pain, i may have to look at seeing if i can put in a cancel for that to make it more responsive, the grass made no difference to run time, the extra drag didn't seem to make much difference, i just had to drive a little slower so that the door didn't bounce open, all the batteries still show as full after the 3 hours, nearly all with the dome random on.  So it was a useful afternoon, even if i do now have to double check what has come loose. :)  

Will make the final tweaks and upload the new code this week.  But please don't post any spoilers if you go digging in the code. ;)

Redo Complete BHD v1.0 is fully operational

The 2-3-2 with the feet drives is a lot better,  the wobble of the caster is gone. :)  I still need to adjust the bottom limit switch and also the 2-3-2 drop position, but it works much more reliably with the feet drives in. :)

2 leg still mode isn't right, fine forwards or backwards, but not while turning, i need to do a whole new mixing method for it, the resistance to turn is too much, so needs more power, but i don't want the forward speed to be too much, may have to sketch that one out, should be fun, and might be better on the other modes too and allow faster on the spot turning.  Maybe later, for now its stable enough for parking. :)

But the tweaks to the slow mode are an improvement, a little more top speed and a little more agile.

Loving this dome motion, while static i now have the dome position, MP3s, random HP move with flash and the logics and PSIs, he really seems alive. :)  I might try and add the odd ripple or twitch here and there too, on the dome servos and utility arms, but i want him to be safe while doing it, so will have to make sure nothing opens too far.  Will just help add a little more character.  But he has character already, he made me chuckle a few times while letting him run. :)

So that is it.  I still need to annotate the code a little and pop on a header.  I will do the event next Saturday (Oxford SciFi Moonlight Walk) and post the code once it has had a proper run. :)

Still not done those door servos, its a pain to get to the arms, maybe forget those for now, just do the CBI and big door next to the vents.  There is still time. :)

While testing, i have noticed that the body battery seems to run down quicker than before.  It is now running the Master and Xbee, dome positioner, MP3 uno and shield, 2-3-2 Uno and pots, Body controller, CBI, Vegas Kit and Adafruit.  It is happy running them so cant be more than the 3.1A output, so i decided to upgrade, i have ordered 2 30Ah 5v packs, so i now have 2 12Ah for the dome and the 2 30s for the body. :)  Should last a whole event for the 5v needs. :)

I also ordered some USB mains adapters and a UK to EU converter, so all i need now is the USB leads and a 4 way extension and i can charge while in CE2.  So R2 is nearly there now, just me and the trolley and we should be sweet. :D

Final testing before driving

I got most of it running. :)

But i still had a few things to sort out.

After playing for a few hours, i gave up on the MP3 freezing problem, but after a kip i found the issue, i needed to reset the script numbers on any functions that did not play a track.  Easy fix once found.  That is sound now.

I added a random dome position, in the vid it was in it's early stages, i spent a little more time making it more usable, it now works in the first 120 or so degrees of front range, i used 9 positions and simply random one, wait a random time and repeat.  I did it so that the dome drive can still be used, it will wait for about 2 s of no dome motion before doing the dome motion and then random wait, works really well, but other than feet drives, it wont receive commands while moving the dome, so ok while static but not ideal. :)  I added a slow fast option, tied to the random sounds frequency, so like an overall activity level option.

I also reduced the flash of the HPs on random to 0.15s so that there is less delay running any scripts.

Then i ran into an issue, i thought the 2-3-2 command lines were fine, but turns out that if you use pin 13 as an input on an uno, it floats at 1.7v because of the LED on the board, hence i wasn't getting a reliable 2 leg signal.  So i moved to pin 7 and it started working, sort of.  After a lot of debugging i found out why the 2-3-2 call wouldn't end, i had the wires the wrong way round!

So with the 2-3-2 call ending nicely i knew the while calls were ok, so the pins were all signalling fine and the 2 leg/3leg on the pad was showing correctly.  So i wired up one motor and did some more testing.  I had to fix the direction of the motors during 2-3-2.  Hey presto, controlled feet drive motion during the 2-3-2. :)

I then got the walk working too, and moved onto feet drive testing, i spent a while trying to work out why it wouldnt switch to fast mode, but then i remembered that in 2 leg mode it wont, so did the 2-3-2 and all worked fine.  Muppet!  But both slow and fast modes seem fine, 2 leg driving is much slower and look like it will work well.

So its time to fix the legs on and adjust the speeds to suit the droids. :)  Must do that tonight, after that is done, and 2-3-2 positions are fine tuned for balance, i should be ready, all bar a few small jobs that dont really matter. :)

Pad Mk2 is going well, slowly working on the layout. :)  Maybe in time for CE2, you never know. :)

Will post a vid once i get him driving in 2 legs. :)

Testing almost done

Another boring text update.  But im not quite ready for another video, and its all code based stuff anyway, mostly to get it doing what it before did but better. :)

I have been uploading, testing and fine tuning my code, all week.  Started on the Vegas and CBI code, took ages to get it running, i wasn't powering the 2-3-2 system and so the I2C wouldn't boot and the body Arduino wouldn't start.  But once i figured it out and unplugged the 2-3-2 I2C it ran fine.

I then got all the dome positioner stuff retested and I moved onto the MP3s, I added a few new sounds, and made a couple of my most used ones more available.  Once all the new commands worked i moved onto the dome.  Plugged it in and the logics and PSIs ran random fine, but nothing on remote, and the HPs and dome servo controller wouldn't boot, so I assumed I2C issues and tried everything I could think of and nothing would work.  So i looked at the whole dome setup again.  Because of the Adafruit, the 5v system in the dome was totally isolated from the body 12v system, so i added a ground wire from the slip ring power feed to the teeces supply and booted it up.  It ran great.  So I tested and tweaked all the lights commands.  Then fitted a ground for the dome servo and HP controller and powered the adafruit from the arduino.  That ran great too.  I adjusted all the servo open and close points and tested all the dome servo and HP commands.  All great so far. :)

I think the lesson is to ground every system together no matter what, that way there is less reliance on other connections to ground it. By grounding each arduino it also allows them to be run with the lead connected from the PC, for much easier uploading and testing,  So might have to redo some of the wiring in the body.

So all the fitted bits were working, but the timings on the combos needed adjusting and a few of the new scripts kept growing. :)  The pad needed a slight fix, i had the 2/3 leg mode the wrong way round.  I found a system for working with all the different sketches.  I would open those i needed for the combo, make all the changes as i went and then upload, when happy with that combo i would save and close that sketch, so i only had those i needed to upload open.  Worked really well, it can get confusing. :)  But my new spreadsheet helps a lot too. :)

While in the dome servo code I took advantage of the slow mode and added a really nice Mexican wave, also redid a few of the other servo scripts.  Then had the thought that the HP servos and lights are on the same controller, obvious I know, but I hadn't seen the potential.  :)  It would be pretty easy to add a flash when it moves the servo in random mode.  It looks wicked.  The random mode sometimes selects the same position so you just get the odd flash with no motion, really cool.  There is a slight compromise, it adds a delay of 0.3s for every flash, so there may be a slight delay starting dome servo scripts if it is flashing at the time, but i can happily live with that.

Really pleased with progress, it has been slow and a little frustrating at times, but it has been great to see him come back to life. :)  193 options now, and the improvements have bean a big success. :)  Assuming the drive code and 2-3-2 stuff works ok, we should be running by next weekend. :)

A couple of odd MP3 not responding issues, but not sure if it was just me, last run it ran for at least 2 hours with no issues.  So fingers crossed.

I then started on the utility arms, i fine tuned the positions in the openings so they swing freely.  Then thinking about the dome servos only using half the available range (will redo the pies soon, but lower doors are a pain) and knowing how much power these servos need as they are currently, i decided to shorten the arms by about 25mm.  It uses nearly double the servo range and will maximize the servo efficiency.  I am a little worried about running these higher power servos through the Adafruit.  Will keep my fingers crossed.  Just need to neaten those up and i can get on with mounting the 2nd 12v-5v converter and adafruit and i can get testing that too. :)

Remaining jobs:
Sort Utility Arms for better range usage and alignment.
Fit adafruit, DC/DC and wiring for body servos.
Connect body door servos and test servo code.

Test 3 and 2 leg driving modes, speeds retune and retune 2-3-2 positions adding feet drive for max stability, plus wobble and walk tweak

Trolley revamp to better protect the skins from damage.

Back door repair and reinforce

Get chargers, extension and plug converter, to be able to charge all 4 batteries at once.  3 USB and the big one.

Cheat sheet redo, may need to be double sided now. 

If Time:

Pad Mk2 or Redo controller strap hanger bar for better hang when in use.

Redo pie dome servos, for better range usage

Centre vent remount.

Magic panel install and code up - unlikely

Dome bump controller install and code up - very unlikely 

Mancave floor arrived today. :)  We marked it out, it is going to be great, my brother has oak panel frames, so that is 5 windows and a double door sorted, just need a frame for the doors and the 7 bits of glass. :)  Each bit of glass will be about 6 foot long and about 15" deep.  Cladding and shingles are sorted and timber arrives Wednesday morning.  Getting really excited now, should look great.  Need to start looking at electrics and internals straight after CE2.  But the sofa is sorted. :)

Recoding EVERYTHING and rewiring the dome

Wow, knackered.  I had a 4 day weekend from Thurs-Sunday, so broke up from work on Wednesday and was looking forward to a productive R2 weekend.

I got my Adafruit I2C servo controllers back, made up a test sketch and mucked about with the new library that Graham Short (James’ dad) wrote for me.  He has done a superb job, it does exactly what I want.  Any Adafruit can be setup and addressed, from any Arduino on the I2C bus.  I have tested 2 arduinos on 2 adafruits, both running looped scripts, and as long as the Adafruit recieves commands from only one arduino at at time its fine.  Superb library, really brilliant and saves a lot of messing about.  I will post that once I get the go ahead, and have it running in the droid and fully tested to death. :)

So with the basic testing done, I mounted the Adafruit (0x41 address) in the dome and neatened all the servo wires, it looks so much better, but I did have to remake all my servo extensions, a bit of a painful job, but done now.   

Then while rewiring the Teeces I went to reconnect the USB (how it got power), and found there was no USB adapter on the board.  It was stuck to the end of the USB lead.  So one dead Pro Micro. :(  The new promicros have less space thanks to a different compiler, so I had no way to update my Teeces code.  So a decision had to be made.

After a bit of thought, I removed all the HP code from the Teeces BHD code, and that gave me loads of spare room, I added back in all the stuff I had recently changed due to lack of space and used one of the new promicros to run it.  So logics and PSIs back on. :)  But that left me with no HP LEDs, so I added all the HP LED control to the dome servo controller Arduino, but this time I added them as PWM, so I have a nice flicker and a strobe (more of a scroll from low to full brightness and back on a loop), really pleased with the change.  I just have a few combo scripts to rebuild now, but the base code works.  I have just used single LEDs for the HPs, I haven’t added the holo boards, think I will save them for R3, the single LEDs are fine.  Why anyone needs enough power to blind people is beyond me, seeing it’s on is all I need, I rarely run him in the dark, so lighting the room from the HPs isn’t needed. :P

So having sorted the HPs on the bench, I then had to rewire them in the dome.  I simply removed them from the PSIs and wired them back to the Servo controller Arduino (currently just a Mega I had spare), I intend to put all that code on either the dome bump controller or magic panel eventually.  The wiring was getting better and then worse again in stages.  So I looked at it objectively, and came to the conclusion that mounting the slip ring board to the baseplate was making it difficult.  So I removed it from the baseplate and mounted it to the dome, so all the wires are now fixed and don’t need disconnecting to get the base off, it also acts as an I2C bus.  With that mounted I managed to get the internals of the dome looking better than ever before. :D

The wiring stands clear of the servo arms for a short section.

Adafruit All wired up.

Mega (was spare, uno would do same job), with 3 PWM HPs and I2C connected.

Then I was looking at the cheat sheet and the commands spread sheet and decided I haven’t got enough command space, especially with more gadgets planned.  So I decided to add the 4 sets of 3 triggers pressed. E.g. L1+L2+R1 (Not R2) and a button.  And moved a lot of the functionality about to better use the sets that are easily accessed (single triggers).  So I finished off my spreadsheet of all the newly configured layout and new options, and set about redoing the code.  I started with the Pad, then the Master, then Teeces, Dome Servos, Body, MP3 and 2-3-2 controllers and now I have 193 commands (up from 145).  Basically I rewrote the lot, I edited the way things work to be simpler, added logic to turn elements on and off (2-3-2 controller and Dome position pot), and I annotated all the code better and also made a lot of changes for the better to help standardize the code.

I have a few bits to finish off and polish, i need to mount the body Adafruit and DC converter and connect the servos, then I need to load up and retest all the options and make sure it is reliable and safe to use.  Should be ok, most issues will be human error, I am pretty sure the concepts and methods are fine.  But it is at least a few nights testing.  I am a lot closer to a write up thanks to those changes. :)

So to sum up, ALL the code has been re-written for all Arduino to increase the number of options.  The HPs are now PWM controlled.  The dome has been completely rewired and neatened and now uses the Adafruit for the servos.  I have a day or 2 more coding to add a slow Mexican wave and a few new sound files etc and add the HP LED timings to the combo scripts (was easier when running on the teeces), and a couple of lights demos that will be a good way to show off quickly.  Also added the secret script.  Hope that CE2 will like that new one.

The dome redo has highlighted the slip ring again.  I think I will eventually move the Dome Pot to be on the dome and the wiper on the droid (flip the current setup) and mount the slip ring to the dome not the droid.  It will mean I need one for each dome, but the benefits outweigh the pain of buying one for each dome and of passing it up into the dome to connect it.

Once the testing is done I will upload the code to my drive.

Oh and I got the new pad battery and a few other little bits, so just need the new screen now and I can start Pad Mk2 :)

Then i get in tonight and my brother arrives with a cutting list for the Mancave!  5.5mx3.5m internal space, double glazing, insulated, well excited.  Hope to start on the frame in the next week or 2. :)  Im gonna be dangerous once i get a workbench and some space. :)

It has been a top R2 week.