Before SMMB could function in the Mech Warfare event it needed to be able to start and stop unattended.  That meant standing up and sitting down on its own.  Being that hack that this was, I went for a two pronged approach.

The direct direct servos I have for the upper and lower legs are somewhat underpowered for this size of robot.  Especially so when the machine is fully squatting down.  Also, the servos aren’t really encapsulated at all, and there are plenty of leg configurations that can self-intersect resulting in robot harm.

With the turret functioning in isolation, now I needed to mount it on the robot and get things communicating.

Mounting was easy, I 3d printed a bracket that fits the turret on one side, and mounts to the 4 hard mounts on the top of the gearbox chassis.

• github: mjbots/moteus turret_adapter.stl

More time consuming was updating the control software to communicate with it.  The old turret used the HerkuleX protocol, and when I integrated the moteus RS485 based servos, I took a few shortcuts that I knew would need to be resolved later.  And the future is now!

With the new gearbox based mech chassis for Super Mega Microbot 2, the old gimbal controller would need some updates.  It has these new features/capabilities:

• Higher input voltage: The old system ran at 2S, so 7.2V nominal.  Now we’re running at 5S, so 18.5V nominal.
• RS485 data: The HerkuleX based robot used TTL level data communications.  moteus uses RS485.
• Daisy chained power: With the new raspberry pi based computer in the turret, I now need to have an additional power and data port up on the mobile part of the turret.
• No camera passthrough: Similarly, since the camera is directly attached to the raspberry pi 3, I don’t need to mess with having a connector to pass it through anymore.

As an intermediate forcing function, I’ve been preparing Super Mega Microbot to enter the Mech Warfare event at Maker Faire Bay Area May 17-19 in San Mateo, CA!  The Mech Warfare event is a competition where scale size “mechs” or robots compete with airsoft cannons in a scaled down cityscape.  Teleoperation is allowed, but the human operators are only allowed to see “what the mech sees”, which means driving from a video screen.