#basic stamp 2

[commodorez]

My internet cut out while I was watching BattleBots.  My plans to entertain myself in the meantime?  You could say that things have gotten out of hand...

[commodorez]

Arsonbot has awoken from his slumber. 

But wow, this design needs some work.  The drivetrain is awful, the wiring is crap, I don’t understand anything about the servo or H-bridge control routines...  Maybe it’s time I upgraded this little guy to an arduino platform.

Nah.

[commodorez]

Arsonbot can move again.  So that’s progress. 

Also, his drive code was a clusterfuck.  I don’t know who wrote that, but it’s been fixed now.  I already miss functions, because PBASIC only gives me...  GOSUB.  Fuck. 

[commodorez]

I attempted to get Arsonbot’s fireball cannon to work tonight. 

The critical part of the fireball cannon is a glow plug designed for small RC vehicle engines.  My last approach involved a separate AA battery, and a relay controlled by the BASIC Stamp, which did not work.  The relay drew too much power for the microcontroller to successfully actuate it.

This time, I tried a voltage divider made out of resistors to turn 5V into 1.5V to power the glow plug directly.  Once again, no dice.  I think I need to go back to the relay approach, but this time with a much less current intensive relay.

[commodorez]

Meet Arsonbot. 

He just returned home after spending two years buried in boxes in my storage unit.  I figured it was time to bring him home and commence repair work.

Arsonbot is a scratch-built robot I made during college, but never did finish.  His chassis is based on a Tamiya tank tread kit.  The computing power is provided by a BASIC Stamp 2: HomeWork microcontroller, connected to a Pololu H-bridge module for driving the motors.  There is a Parallax PING sensor for measuring distance, attached to a small servo to allow for looking left and right.  The only other sensor in board is a simple bumper to detect collisions.  The rest of the chassis is composed of assorted Erector Set/Meccano parts and some plywood, plus an antenna for decoration.  Oh and on top sits a small fireball cannon.

The part I never finished in the hardware was hooking the fireball cannon to the microcontroller.  It’s based on something I saw in Make: Magazine years ago, designed to launch flash paper/flash cotton by way of a glo-plug (one from a Nitromethane powered radio control car).  The idea is that the fireballs it launches leave no smoke or ash, and disintegrate within a second of leaving the barrel.  Relatively safe, considering its name.

Now that he’s out of storage, I can redesign the electrical system so I don’t have to rely on three separate battery packs.  In general, operational time has been rather limited due to the power consumption of the motors.  Plus, he can’t drive in a straight line; there’s a bit of listing from the tracks being slightly mismatched and the spokes add a significant amount of friction to the entire drive-train.

He’s programmed in PBASIC over a real RS232 serial connection.  Can’t say I ever wrote a good AI for him, just a few test programs for the critical functions as I added each new component.

Work on completing Arsonbot will begin soon.