Lots of new things!

So I've finally started at Anoka Tech and am now able to use class time to work on rover things. My second day in, I managed to get some of the suspension parts on the 3D printer. Unfortunately, there was a conversion issue and the parts came out 3 times bigger than they were supposed to. We had to stop the machine in the middle of it's 31 hour run and got this:

Kind of a cool cut-away model I guess. My instructor was really excited to see it anyway. He says it'll make for a good show and tell for the 3D printer and for my presentation at the end of spring semester. 

 After this little over sized issue, we went back and found the problem and got the parts back on a few days later.

Being printed

Finished parts next to large parts

All the parts (minus 2 motor mounts) put together next to the rover

The parts compared to my drawing

 It was really cool to see these parts go from a (technically) 2D drawing to a fully functional 3D object. I had an idea of how small these parts were going to be, but once I got them in my hand, I realized just how small they actually were. I did find out though that the resolution on the prints wasn't very good so today I set the resolution higher and beefed up the thin spots. I'm ready for the next print and should hopefully be able to attach these to the rover by the end of next week. 

 I'm also working with an instructor on making Inspiration GPS guided. I ordered the parts and should have them next week also. Which reminds me, I've decided to upgrade from the Arduino Uno to the Arduino Mega. After conferring with instructors and other students, it was deemed to be a good idea since I still need to add the GPS, temperature sensor, battery monitor, and metal detector which all need inputs and outputs from the board.  

 And in more social news, during the snowball effect of this project, it was decided to start a website and somewhat of a company. The company name is now Stray Robotics (a deviation from Stray Rockets and Robots). You can find the (at this moment, unfinished) website at www.strayrobotics.com 

 Also, the Stray Robotics YouTube channel and the Google+ page. That's about it for now. Hopefully things will start really picking up once I get the suspension parts made. Stay tuned!

Finished suspension drawing

 I have the whole week off from work and school! Know what that means? Yup, plenty of time to work on Inspiration! So I've spent the past couple of days drawing all the suspension parts and making them work together so that I can hopefully print them soon. 

 After a lot of thought and drawing, I decided to go with a design modeled after Don Bickler's rocker-bogie system that was used on Sojourner. This way, I use less bearings, only need 1 hole per side for wires to  run through, and if attached in the correct spots, the body of the rover will self level by hanging from the "shoulder" joints. Here's a picture of what I drew on Inventor:  

 All the suspension parts are interchangeable with the other side's parts so I can simply print 2 of every part and I won't need to worry about which side of the rover it goes on. The grey shafts are going to be 7/16 styrene tubing that can be cut to whatever length I need them, for better customization if I feel I need it and also to run the motor wires inside of for better "housekeeping". The "shoulder" joints are designed to fit a coil spring inside so during launch, the body can be as low as possible and after landing, it will be able to spring to its designed ride height. 

 The sampling arm is my next step in this drawing. It's still roughed out so I can see if it might hit the wheels and also to give everyone an idea of what's going on the front. Hopefully I'll get this drawn up real nice this week.

 Then there's this really quick video to show how the camera arm is going to work. It's way too fast but it's kind of a proof of concept model anyways. 

 I plan to slow this down a whole lot by using one of my extra wheel motors or simply using another coil spring to rotate the arm up. I like the motor idea but it's extra weight that I don't need and I think I'm running out of control outputs on the arduino as well. I'll definitely spend some time on this part soon though.

A Video!

I seem to be having difficulty with Blogger uploading my videos. So I figured out the YouTube way of embedding videos.
Now you get to see more videos like this 'rover's view' video.

 My 8 year old nephew, Will, inspired this video. Just before Thanksgiving, I was showing him how far along the rover is, then he dumped out some Jenga blocks and told me to drive over them. I had never stress tested the motors and wheels before so I totally agreed and found out this thing really has some power! I continued to drive over the blocks for about 10 minutes without any sign of the battery losing power. This quick video I uploaded was a little recreation of that test. Hopefully soon, I'll have suspension on and it'll work even better. Also, you can see the camera displayed on my laptop's screen. In the next few months, I plan on incorporating this into a nice graphical user interface.

Found a name!

 Over the Thanksgiving break, +Cristin Finnigan and I had some time in the car to figure out a name for the rover. We came up with, Inspiration. It seems a fitting name since it is inspired by Sojourner and also, hopefully it will be an inspiration to anybody who wants to make something but has no idea how to do it. Because that's what this entire project is about. Going into this project, the only thing I knew about was gluing the acrylic box together. I started taking classes in electronics, did a whole bunch of internet research, met some people, and now this project is really starting to take shape. I still have more electronics to learn and just about everything yet to learn about rocketry and robotics. Hopefully this project will inspire lots of people to just get out there and do whatever they've been wanting to do, no matter how little they know about it. The internet is free and full of generations of knowledge! Dive in there and find your project!

  On another note. Cristin was REALLY awesome and spent a whole bunch of time coming up with this data sheet that contains a lot of bullet points on the project. Click on the pic to view a larger PDF.

It will be added to as the project progresses. Maybe the back side will have an entire "mission  layout" showing what the launching, landing, and driving sequence will look like. Lots more to come. Probably some videos soon too!

Strong work!

 Yesterday I managed to spend about 12 hours on the rover and made a huge stride in this project! First order of business was permanently attaching the wheels to the motors.

 After weeks of searching local hobby stores for 5/32 tube styrene, I broke down and ordered some from Amazon. I cut these into bushings of sorts, since the inside diameter of the wheels are much bigger than the motor shafts, and I press fit and glued them onto the shafts. Then I glued on the wheels. And yes, I am using the book, Sojourner by Andrew Mishkin, as a quick stand to put the tires on. From what I've read of this book so far, it is definitely inspirational for me and I can't wait to read more! I was recommended this book by friend and author, Jay Gallentine who wrote Ambassadors from Earth. Another book I highly recommend for space history nerds like myself. I also want to extend a huge thanks to Jay for giving me a good push and some fantastic ideas for the future of this project. Hopefully I'll be able to share more on this in the coming months. 

 Next we have wiring. I needed to add some on/off switches, a voltage regulator, and a diode to the total power output. 

 I added a power rail too for better organization. The toggle switches are for the battery and the solar panels. The solar panels are for charging the battery and possibly powering the whole thing but I won't find that out now until the sun comes back up in the summer. I decided it would be nice to isolate the 2 power sources for testing purposes. The voltage regulator was also a tricky one to track down. You'd think a 9v 7809 regulator would be easy to find at radio shack or even in my electronics lab. But no, I had to order that as well. Amazon has been my rover's best friend. The voltage regulator takes the 11.5 volts coming from the solar/battery circuit and holds it at 9 volts to safely power the Arduino and servos. I will still add a small battery sampling circuit so the rover can relay battery life back to me though. That will be coming kind of soon. 

 Once I got everything soldered together, it was time for a quick drive.... outside! My rover's first drive outside!

 Very exciting to see it driving along on pavement instead of carpet. However, it was short lived. When I decided to turn, my temporarily attached motors popped off the temporary place holders. No problem though. Just had to glue them back on and finish cleaning up the wiring. I did manage a quick drive in the kitchen again to test it out more.

Unfortunately I can't seem to upload the video so here's a quick video in the living room.

 Next I focused on a mock up of the camera mount. Here I took 7/16 styrene tubing, cut it at a 45 and attached it to the servo.

 Then added a rotational platform.

 Then I did basically the same thing for the other half, added a rubber band to hold it together and to provide some spring to the rotation, and got these pics:

And this little animation that I whipped up on Inventor..

 I plan to replace the mock-up with a better 3D printed version later. Which reminds me.. I'll have my very own 3D printer from Zeepro coming in April some time thanks to their Kickstarter campaign. Very excited for that one!

 But that's all for now. Next I'll mount the camera and get some video from it! 

Slight delay

 Ok, school and work have been slowing me down a lot lately but I've managed to assemble more things. I got the camera system in the mail last week and briefly tried it out. Here's the links for the camera and transmitter. Hopefully I'll get to test the half mile range sometime this week. But it looks good so far and hopefully I'll have some video for ya.
 I found and joined a website called GrabCad that has saved me a bunch of time of drawing the Arduino boards. So all I had to do was quickly draw the servos and camera for this latest drawing:

 I'm still working on the camera arm as well as the front arm. I'm leaning towards a metal detector system instead of an electromagnet for the rock sampling part of the front arm. I really have no intentions of collecting the rocks so I guess I really don't need to try and pick them up. Just sending a signal back saying how metallic the rock is, would be just fine. And actually now that I think of it, that would be a bit more informative than simply trying to pick up the rock.

 Let's see, what else have I done so far.... Oh a video!

 Since the suspension is taking a lot longer than I thought, I just glued the motors and wheels on so I could at least test code and stuff while I'm waiting for a laser cutter and/or a 3D printer like this one that I'm currently a backer for. If all goes well, I'll have my very own desktop 3D printer by April. *Fingers crossed*

So that's about all I've got so far. I'm still working on the solar panels and monitoring the voltage. Hopefully I can do that soon since the sun is now starting to go away for the winter. I'm off school for 3 days this week so hopefully I'll make some serious progress during this time. Stay tuned!

A brief update:

 So I haven't been able to do much these past couple of weeks. My work schedule changed and I'm back in school now too until June so progress has slowed a lot. I did manage to put a donation button up just in case any of you highly interested folk would like to see more action, you can feel free to donate and possibly even relieve me of the burden of working. (fingers crossed)
 All I've been able to do so far is draw on Inventor some more.

 Kind of trying to figure out what would work best for the suspension parts and eventual springs or torsion bars. This is all I have so far. I'm thinking .080 thick polystyrene to make the suspension arms out of. That way they can be strong yet hallow so I can run the motor wires through. I'm also thinking of using the bearings I got for my, now shelved, drive system and put those in all the hinge points for better stability.
 The Hack Factory should be getting a new laser cutter this month so hopefully I can pop in there and use it to cut this polystyrene. Otherwise I'll need to spend a lot of time with a dremel or jig saw cutting out all the pieces.
 It's so hard knowing that all I need are these last parts made to start test driving but I don't have the time to do it. Very frustrating. It'll happen though. The good side of this is that the more I wait, the better my ideas get.