So very recently, I met a robotics enthusiast online, and they very generiously gave me $50 for me to order parts on Amazon to build a basic robot with Arduino. So I got a whole bunch of stuff.
I figured I'd document my progress here. This is something I've wanted to so pretty much all my life, being a huge Robot Wars fanatic back in the day. I could literally name every robot up to series 4 and tell you how they performed. I watched it religiously.
Enough about that, though. I'm going to put this thing together!
So I finally got the parts.
Time to put it together. This was the easy part. The instructions were absolutely useless, but it was pretty intuitive and easy to figure out.
I had everything eventually wired, working on connecting things without soldering it... and it didn't work.
I had everything eventually wired, and this was where the guy helping me helped out, and eventually got it working!
Then I got it all coded and made it move with the keyboard!
Next step is to get the bluetooth reciever to work.
So I took out the battery compartment, as it wasn't producing enough power to power up the machine. I've got a 9V battery adapter on the way, but until I get that, I'll rely on USB power.
So Bluetooth was surprisingly straightforward. Though it took me a while to realise the RX and TX cables were meant to do in each-other's ports on the Arduino itself. Which I guess makes sense
Nothing to really show here, the robot looked the same at this point than in the previous video, so just imagine a wee dongle hanging from the bot and take out keyboard sounds, and you're up to speed.
Then I moved on to making the axe work. I grabbed one of the servos, and connected the wires up accordingly. That was it. It works.
The only issue is that I don't have an actual axe to put on there, so I started off just making something out of cardboard.
Then I grabbed some barbeque sticks we had lying around and improvised an axe with that.
Still useless, and the axe kept falling off. So I applied glue to it.
Glue dried over night, and it worked great at first.
But then that to fell off. I applied more, and added cellotape for good measure, and that did the trick! The axe no longer falls off, and even lifts the bot up if it hits something before being fully stretched out!
That's all I have for now. Just been fiddling about with things here and there, generally waiting for the battery adapter to arrive so I can operate this thing fully portably.