I know.. it's been a few weeks and I was supposed to go to the Hack Fatory's Minne Maker Faire and then post about it. School and work have kept me a bit busy lately but I can now post a quick bit about what's going on in the world of Inspiration. So +Cristin and I set up a table at the great Minne Maker Faire and showed off Inspiration for all the makers in the area to come and see. Here's some pics of our set up:
Instead of red dirt like we used for SpaceFest, we just grabbed some gravel out of the near by play ground which worked quite well. Lots of people showed up and really enjoyed seeing it moving around and sampling the wrench I had set out for it to detect. Lot's of great ideas and suggestions from people and I managed to write some of them down to pursue later in this project.
But the Maker Faire was awesome! Lot's of great people demonstrating everything from robotics to trebuchets and star trek props (including a functional console and captain's chair!). There's some more pictures from the event located on the Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/strayrobotics?ref=hl
During the Maker Faire, the room we were in was about 90 degrees so I kept checking the internal temp sensor on Inspiration and found that it got up to 100 degrees inside. I did some quick research on my phone for maximum battery temperature and found a lot of people agreed on 115 degrees before it might burst open. Maybe violently. Sooo.. I set forth on some research for cooling techniques when I got home. One of my favorites was this Peltier Cooler. Actually one smaller but I had no idea this type of technology existed and better yet, in a 1inch square that runs on 5 volts! Problem with that is it also draws around 7 amps which is about 7 amps over budget. So I settled on some fans and found some great 1/2 inch ones to stick in the sides and draw in some cooler outside air. Hopefully it'll work. I'll need to do some tests first before I go cutting holes in the rover but unfortunately I think a lot of this will have to wait until mid July when my math class is over.
Here's a pic of my latest upgrades:
Along with the cooling problem, I also have a ground clearance, turning, and weight problem so I did some more searching for better internal systems. I found some really small Bluetooth transceivers which I hope to replace the XBEE's and their bulky shields. I also think (but not sure yet) that I might be able to send programs to the rover without having to unplug the Arduino from the rover and hook up a USB cable to it. That'll save a lot of time and hassle if that works out. Also for turning, I decided I need the four corner wheels to be steerable so the rover can rotate around easier. I picked up a micro 18 port servo controller so now I should be able to replace the 6 drive motors and camera arm motor with continuous servos and then add 4 servos for steering. This will give me a lot more room inside the rover and create more ground clearance by adding the steering servos to the suspension.
Hopefully I can get to all of this soon. I still need to learn how to program them all, learn to incorporate the ping sensor and gps sensor, draw the new parts, print the new parts, and learn how to put the whole thing to sleep in order to conserve power and charge more rapidly.
Lots to do so stay tuned!
