I have taken the plunge and I’ve gone part time at work, dropping to three days a week, to give me far more time to concentrate on my lifelong passion of robotics with the aim of making it my career! This wasn’t exactly planned if I’m honest but the result of a recent epiphany, building… Read More »
A quick demo of the new wrist mechanism for my #piwars robot #MacFeeglePrime! https://ift.tt/37HvAve
PiWars 2021 has just been announced for the end of March next year with a conference in January, both taking place online! For the competition in March we’ll be given a course to build using household bits and bobs and will need to send in a video showing our best time a few weeks before… Read More »
The plan for the NE-1 is to build a robot that is very versatile that anyone can build for cheap. In theory a clapped out Roomba makes sense but realistically they’ve probably had a hard life already and are broken in a number of incredibly subtle ways… For a beginner this will lead to frustration… Read More »
I’ve been planning on building an electric skateboard for a while, that’s where most of the scavenged cells will be going, and while I’m waiting on parts for NE-1 I thought I’d get started. It’s not robot related so it’ll be mostly covered on my Facebook page, link for those interested.https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3185305014921504&id=288180951300606
The first job for a few of the scavenged batteries is the Roomba, the existing battery finally gave up the ghost and rather than replacing it again and having to use the slow charger it came with I thought I’d upgrade. The original battery pack has a 2Ah (amp-hour) capacity, the three scavenged batteries in… Read More »
I’ll admit I’ve not made as much progress here as I’d like, part time wasn’t working out as well as I’d hoped. So, I’ve taken the very scary step and I’m going full time! Notice handed in today, let’s see how far down this rabbit hole goes! 😀
47 out of 56 turned out to be great! One pack had suffered water damage and had to be disposed of. I’ll be using these across various projects, shortly on the Roomba, and they’ll be incredibly useful. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for more, the packs the grey cells came from especially. A… Read More »
Continuing work on the controller, I’m tidying up the rats nest that is the wiring. The majority of this controller, and MacFeegle Prime for that matter, was designed or put together while massively sleep deprived or in a rush. Now I’ve a bit more time, because with PiWars 2020 postponed a few months I… Read More »