Servo - January 2008

REVIVING A SHOWBOT

Web References

Robot Workshop — Author’s website www.robotworkshop.com

Airtronics — Manufacturer of new radio used for ARTI revival project www.airtronics.net

Vantec — Supplier of dual R/C H-bridge drivers www.vantec.com

Abel Electronics www.abelelectronics.com

Tower Hobbies — Supplier of R/C gear (Airtronics radio) www.towerhobbies.com

they showed up at my door. They were supposed to come as matched pairs Model A with Model B or Model D with Model E. It was a pleasant surprise that the pair which arrived just happened to be on the same

frequency as the one in the robot.

According to the manual, these are supposed to have a range of up to 1/4 mile which would work fine for the robot. Just adding a new 9V battery for the one I was going to use did it! I could talk through ARTI and hear what people were saying to the robot. ARTI only projects the operator’s voice as-is. I suspect that they may have customized the transmitter portion of the original unit so that it could sound like a real person or (by flipping a switch sound) more like a robot. That is a project I may tackle down the road after using the robot a bit more.

The Future for ARTI

Reviving ARTI and getting the robot fully functional again was a really rewarding and worthwhile project. It was all done without having to hack up or modify the original robot. There are a few upgrades that could be done to the robot without any major changes.

One is to check out the two unused pins on the larger 3 x 5 connector. I have a feeling they may turn on a device whenever the stick for the throttle is all the way down instead of up for the tape. This could enable the original controller to drive one more device.

Another option may be to use the extra two channels on the new radio gear to control other features. The addition of either a large servo or DC gear motor could allow the head to turn back and forth. There are a lot of options for improvements.

Down the road, I plan to use ARTI to do several interesting things. He is going to make an appearance at the local kindergarten class to talk about robots. ARTI may also help out with the candy duties for different holidays.

In the meantime, he has been a huge hit with the kids just reading some books on tape. In particular, the read-along Star Wars tape and book sets have been entertaining and helps teach kids to read. SV

You know it wants one. Go ahead, spoil your robot. Give it the brain and the brawn to take on other robots.

Give your robot the power to do anything it can imagine.

All modules shown actual size

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