I fixed the problem with the motor wiring harness on Spot X by physically reordering the pins in the cable. Did I get it right. Well, no of course not. I flipped Spot X onto its back, pulled off the connectors, battled with the pins for 5 minutes, plugged them […]
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Minor Updates
I’ve done a bit more work on Spot X 1.0. I pulled it to pieces and drilled some holes in the decks to allow me to fit the new electronics I also drilled some access holes in the side of the motor assemblies so that I can run sensor wires […]
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Promising Signs
I haven’t had a chance to test the software modifications in Spot X yet, because both of the robots are in pieces, but testing on the bench seems to show that the higher motor speeds are in fact better for the controller. I took the chance to add in acceleration […]
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A Glimmer of Hope?
While I wait for my lunch to defrost I’ll type this. For the last couple of days I’ve been getting close to my wits’ end with these motor driver boards. No matter what I tried I couldn’t get them to run without overheating. I was certain that this wasn’t a […]
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Problem Solved?
A while ago I wrote about how I’ve managed to get PIC programming working under Linux. I mentioned that I was seeing a lot of errors from the programmer, a Silicon Chip K 9505 kit that I bought 20 years ago. Well, the write errors were getting worse and worse, […]
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LCD Stuff2
The second line display problem actually wasn’t that simple to fix, when all is said and done. I thought it was a matter of updating the letter count in the PIC when cursoring down to the second line. I modified the PIC code by adding the fragment: I thought this […]
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LCD Stuff
I achieved something today.For a while there I wasn’t sure I would but it eventually came together. Last night I soldered together one of my new LCD driver boards. I’ve had a few different driver boards, with designs going back to 2006, maybe earlier, but I recently sat down to […]
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I Did It
You know how I was wondering about how to display images on the OLED display using MicroPython? No? Hmm. Well, anyway, I was. And I figured it out. Not thanks to all the online articles. Actually I did find a GitHub repository that included a conversion script that turns .png […]
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More Smoke
This damn robot is starting to wear me down. I etched another batch of PCBs and constructed the ones I needed urgently. The modified sensor breakout board went together pretty well and testing has confirmed that the bump sensors now work as expected. I also constructed a new sonar deck […]
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Steps Forward, Steps Back
Okay, things are sort of going ahead with the robot. I soldered up the old motor controller this morning, stripping components from a spare board. I could have hunted around for the FETs I needed but I’m pretty sure I don’t have enough and I didn’t want to risk using […]