Any ideas on what my next steps
should be?
Robert Gomez
McAllen, TX
A. HUGE PROJECT, wow! I’ll barely scratch the surface here. The Stingray (Figure 7) is a
beautiful and capable chassis; it’s a
pity that Parallax stopped selling it.
The only problem IMO is that the
gear motors are too fast in general,
and WAY too fast for a telepresence
robot. Any Wi-Fi video link will have
nearly a second of lag, and you need
to drive very slowly to avoid crashing.
I found some much slower 70
RPM motors for my Stingray on eBay
for $10, which should be your first
step. See my video at https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=cAbjISH5W
S4 and search eBay for item
332053386842 or “DC Gear Motor
12V 70 RPM 37 mm High Torque 8
kg.cm.”
You have so many choices for
control and the video link. You can
use a traditional RC control system
with a wireless camera link. If you can
live without sound, there are any
number of $20 Wi-Fi drone cameras
available to send video via Wi-Fi to a
smartphone/tablet. (See my article on
Wi-Fi cameras in the SERVO February
2016 issue.)
Full two-way comms is a lot more
work and a subject of a book, not a
magazine article.
I will close by mentioning
Wowwee’s Rovio circa 2008 (Figure
8). Rovio was a full telepresence bot:
Wi-Fi; two-way comms; Internet
access; Northstar navigation;
Mecanum omni-directional wheels;
auto recharging dock; you name it. It
was WAY ahead of its time and
under-appreciated. It set the bar very
high.
You would do well to get one of
those to study; they can be commonly
found in mint condition on eBay for
$100. Quite frankly, it will probably do
everything you need.
The main limitation is that
software and firmware development
stopped somewhere around 2010-12.
There’s 32-bit Windows 7 software
available at www.wowweezone
.com/kb/ faq.php?id=75 and
https://sourceforge. net/projects/
rovio/files. It’s certainly worth your
while to track one down, even if you
have to dig up a 32-bit computer to
run it on.
That’s a wrap for this month.
Thanks for all your great questions.
Keep ‘em coming to roboto@
servomagazine.com and let’s see what
we can do. SV
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SERVO 05.2017 11