Free robotics character with gears and some electronics. Used a long time ago in some commercial or something like that. It has been abandoned by the maker and I am holding it. Looking to give it a good home. It is heavy so there is a base with lots of steel/gears in it.
It is located very close to Hackspace. It is on Parker street near George street.
I will take it and try to set it up as a greeter/mascot/etc at the Space…
Yessss!!!
because the creepy dog needs a creepy friend?
Yessss!!!
So Eddie (not married to the name) is now safely in my garage
He (she) is quite heavy and has a mix of DC geared motors and a few servos…
All the DC motors seem to have quadrature encoders…
All the motors and sensor leads come out via an umbilical cord…
There is no controller…
So time to build one…
I’m leaning towards either using DMX or RC inputs for the controller so I can use existing animatronic control software that I have…
Here is a picture of Eddie with the fiberglass body panels removed
So looks like Eddie is a morph of home made actuators and a commercial robotic arm…
The arm (which has two motors for the shoulder and elbow joints) is a robotic arm with the brand name EXCALIBUR which appears to be of late 80`s vintage and possibly made locally.
The rotating base, rotating wrist and tilt wrist actuators are home made using various misc DC geared motors…
The horns and tongue are actuated with RC servos…
There is little labeling on the motors and the few part numbers/names don`t bring up anything in various searches
I traced out the various cables and figured out which ones went to each of the motors.
Then got brave and tried some quick pulses from a 12V battery…
Success!!
All motors seem to work with 12V and this means I can use simple H bridge modules to control them.
The more complicated part will be position control…
There are HEDS-5500 quadrature sensors on all motor driven axis…
But these seem to be only good for relative position…
Possibly not good for limiting position control…
And probably more complicated than I need…
Anyways quite happy I got this far and that all motors seem to work…
Next step is to look at remaking the base to lighten things up a bit…
Then re-wire the motors and add limit switch the each axis…
Then make up a controller board…
Then…
Fantastic! Thanks for sharing so we can follow along. I scoured the web for a bit looking for the commercial Eddie was in originally but can’t find it. I tried google image search. If anyone else can find it please post a link.
Holy crap, I played with one of those robotic arms in grade 7 in the mid 90s! My ears perked at the mention of dxm control, and would love to assist in programming and getting control going of that’s the route you’re taking!
