Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Neck and arms

The neck has some disconnected pull rods to the motors that I thought were going to be hard to replace, but to my surprise they actually snapped back into place with out much fuss and the neck works perfectly.

The arms comes off with a bolt and the inner sholder bracket (pictured above) is set on the sholder motor shaft via two set screws that require a meteric alan wrench to turn them. The right sholder was really lose and need to be completely reset. The manufacture RoboTronics actually marked the motor shaft with a red marker to mark the set point the arm mount should be set to. This was really nice because if the arm is set back to far is make the upper body shourd almost impossible to take off and will interfer with the movement of the arms, as was the case before I fixed it.

RoboTronics really did make a nice robot with Bubby in 1986, the plastic and mechical peices have held up extremly well.

Not pictured are the gutted electronic boxs as most of the electronics were too old to try to keep with the parts that were missing. The electronics boxes and some of the internal supports for Bubby are metal and had some rust and dirt on them. A good way to clean those up a some light sanding and a good scrubbing with rubbing alcohol.

He drew first blood....



If you don't cut yourself working on a robot you are not trying hard enough....I believe that is the old adage from Dennis Clark. After I scratched my arm a few times working on Bubby I took a minute to pose a funny pic of Bubby attacking me with a box cutter. Working on a robot is never complete until the robot draws first blood. :-)




Latex Painting Tips

Tip number One: Don't paint latex in cold weather, it will never dry.
Tip number Two: Never let your paint get cold!
Tip number Three: Never assume the clear coat will not strip your paint off latex and plastic.
Tip number Four: If the paint on the latex or plastic is still tacky and won't dry, you can use the spray paint further away from the painted surface to create a mist on the surface and as the paint has a drying agent in it, the further away it is, the less paint and more of the drying agent seems to land on the surface, thus causing the surface to dry and stop being tacky to touch.

Bubbys face is finally drying right. Can't wait to put his head back together!

Video Capture Issues

If anyone has any problems with their USB video capture device working with Windows 7 like I just did, try this driver before buying a new expensive Win7 approved video capture device: http://www.sabrent.com/drivers/USB-AVCPTSetup_For_Win7.zip-

It sort of seems to work as a universal driver.

Friday, December 3, 2010

12-3-10 Bubby updates

Order new batter from BatterySpec.com...they have a great selection and good prices. Tryed to get a battery for Bubby from a local store called MECI.com but as usually they were clueless on if they had a battery or not and if they did have they did not know where they put them...I mean it was only listed in their catalog for goodness sakes!

Touched up the eyelids with some more paint, neeed another coat of touchups. Replaced the damaged left eye lid servo motor. Eyes are just about finished. The face is still tacky, it seems to be hold a lot of mositure from the cold. If you are painting a latax face like bubbys in winter months be sure to store your paint in a warm place and not a cold place like a garage. Latex is hard to work with sometimes.

Have to send another email to the Robotronics with a question on the hands, bcause while the servos in the arms will pull the hands closed there is nothing to push them open. Normally a hand design like this the servos would push and pull the hand closed and open, but this design does not. Or there would be a spring to pull the hand closed, and there does not appear to be a place for a spring, even if it were missing.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Painting Bubby 11-15-10

Painting Bubbys head has entailed alot of work. The skin on the face had a lot of wear and tear. To prep the fact the first think I did was take out the eyes, which were all one peice. I cleaned the eyes and covered the eyes except the eyelids so they could be painted.

The skin had to be scrubbed with Simple Green and then gthe rough spots were sanded with fine grit 400 sand paper. The face was then cleaned again with Simple Green. To smooth out the tears in the skin I found a greate product from Loctite called Logtite Vinyl, Fabric and Plastic flexable Adhesive. It says it tried in 30 minutes, but it gets tacky in about 30 seconds or less!! So spreading the product over the skin is tricky, but it provide the right kind of coverage for the type of skin Bubby has. I ended up covering almost all the front of the face with the product. The rough spots had several layers applied with each layer being allowed to dry and cure for atleast 24 hours. The nice thing is the product is paintable, which a lot of them say they are not. If anyone is doing this type of repair for their robot the Loctite product is easy to find at most major hardware stores.

After the skin was smothed out, it was painted with a primer spray paint and 3 coats were applied with each coat drying 2-3 days or more. Spray paints will tell you they cure in 24 hours, but with flexable skin type material you want to give it at least 2-3 days before you touch it.

I liked the primer color but it proved to be a little too dark so a lighter tan color was picked and 2-3 coats were applied to the face and eyelids. Again 2-3 days were needed for the paint to totally cure and setup before the skin was touched or repainted. As long as you used a general primer you should be able to use almost any type of spray paint for your finished color.

The last step is to apply a matt finish clear coat with UV protection. I used a Krylon brand product for this, as the I did for the tan paint. You can find this type of paint at any major hardware store or Walmart. (Walmart proved to have a lower price!)

The next step is to replace the left eyelid servo motor as the gears inside at stripped and the eye does not move correctly. Then the eyes can be reinstalled.

I'm going to try out a new servo motor for the mouth controls.

I also had to patch the skull plate for Bubby as it was cracking in the front. I took an old credit card and cut it strips of it and glued it to the inside to span the length and width of the crack. This will help the crack from continuing to tear and stregthen the front part of the plastic where it tore. With a little touchup paint, it'll look good as new.

Hope to have some new pics of Bubbys head put back together soon.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Bubby updates 11-3-10

Bubbys face being latex and over 20 years old required a great deal of attention. His cheaks, forhead and nose were really scrapped up and the rest of the skin showed a lot of pealing and pitting. I found a wonderfull product commonly avaliable at the hardware store for sealing and mending latex and rubber. I used this as a compond to rub over Bubbys face and the results were great. I could not totally smooth out his cheaks, but it was a big improvement!

After much sanding to this face with fine git sand paper and scubbing with Simple Green cleaner his face was ready for a new cost of paint. Not all paints will stick to rubber and latex, but I found some that work pretty well. We wanted to go with a new skin tone for Bubby, but picking skin tone paints is never easy. I did find a primer color and a dark brown color that I liked and after putting a coat of primer paint on Bubbys face I really like how it turn out.



His eye lids were painted the same color and his eyes are now brown as well, instead of blue.


Bubbys originally hair did not fit his new look so I took his scalp plate and sanded all the old glue and stuck hair and gunk off of it and painted it with primer and a darker brown. I think leaving his head like this with no "hair" is going to look really good and will be a lot easier to maintain.


The rest of Bubby is in part and I still have several more coats of paint to put on Bubbys head and face.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Success!!

Solved part of the mystery with Visual Studio 2010 and Sql Server Express 2008 r2. Turns out VS 2010 comes with sql server express 2008 untilities and as such, relys on that to create database items within the VS2010 IDE. So if you install SQL Server Express 2008 r2 (as of today) you will lose the function to create database items under the VS2010 IDE.

And if you already have a full version SQL Express older than r2 then you need to run the installation as an "upgrade" otherwise you're going to mess up all version of SQL and the VS2010 IDE won't even be able to connect to a database. So running the "upgrade" fix my problems and allows my VS2010 apps to connect to database created under Sql Server Express 2008 r2. The VS2010 IDE also let me create new databases but not from the Add, NEW Item menu. I could only create a new database under the IDE from the Data Connection tool bar. Go figure. There still needs to be some sort of service pack from Microsoft to fix the bugs. But at least it works now! :-)

Friday, October 8, 2010

Never Again!

For any programmers out there that think installing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 r2 expression edition on a Windows 7 machine with Visual Studio 2010 is a good idea, you are very wrong!!

DO NOT INSTALL SQL server 2008 r2 express on a Windows 7 computer running Visual Studio 2010 unless you want to ruin any SQL database functionality and or spend hour troubleshooting and uninstalling r2 via over 2 dozen manual registery entries before you can get rid of it! OH my goodness, never again!! At least not until Microsoft releases service pack.....3 for it! :-)

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Neat Links 10-7-10

Neat Links:

PDF Search Engine: http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/ This site lets you search the web for .pdf files. This is really handy! I use it to find product manuals and research papers on a wide variety of subjects.

Design a robot online: http://www.mos.org/robot/robot.html This is a cute little site that lets you test your skill at building a robot. See if you add the correct parts to build a robot for the task given. A neat site for kids and adults. Check it out.

If you are like me, you often forget what the color codes of resistors are. This is a great graphic to help you remember what the color strips means:

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

The new remote


The new remote from China just arrived yesterday. The brain building can begin! =)

Friday, September 10, 2010

Bubby is in for repair


My wife and I picked up Bubby the robot from Teresa Wednesday 9-8-10. Bubby made it to Monroe for his refit safely in the back of our pickup truck.
The only hickup was in the evening when I went back into the garage Bubby scared me as I forgot we was there.
I've got a box full of parts for his refit. Next step is to order the new remote, take him apart and start rewiring his systems.


Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Bubbys retro fit design

Other Functions:

Safety and Ease of Use: The robot will be controlled by a child and will need to make the controls as simple as possible. Saftey is also a number one concern as any control method needs to be safe so the robot does not run out of control.

Wagon Pulling: Teresa would like the robot to be able to pull a wagon that her son could rid in. This means the robot needs to hold a wagon. The current hand design is made of a lighter thickness ABS plastic and is controlled by a standard hobby server. The hand likely could not hold onto a wagon handle without some assistance. A slight modification to the arm will need to be made.

Battery Monitor: I’d like to give the robot a way to monitor the batteries so it is easier to know when it needs a recharge.

Security System: I’d like to give the robot some sort of theft detection so the robot could sound an alarm if someone again tried to steal it.

Collision Avoidance: I’d like to give the robot some simple sensors it could use to help keep it from crashing into objects when under remote control.

People Monitor: I’d like to give the robot some sensors to monitor when there is motion or people near by so the robot could react in some way.

Automated Voice Responses: I’d like to give the robot a voice system so it could speak pre-programmed voice responses with out the need for a wireless voice “walkie-talkie” style system.

CD Player/Stereo: I think it would be neat to give the robot a sound system.

Fancy Lights: Every robot needs some fancy lights. Perhaps some ground FX lights under the feet/base.

Flash Light: It might be possible to give Bubby a flash light system to come on when it’s dark.


Goals:

Obviously the goal is to restore the functionality to the robot. There are many ways to go about this. One is to simply purchase the wireless controls and new batteries and voila, the task is done. However, since the robot was built in 1986 the technology used back then could use some updated. Plus all the controls have been removed and are in an "unknown” functional state. Directly replacing the multi-channel wireless RC system is a costly task and interfacing it to the custom CPU controller board to redirect the RC signals to control the 25 robot functions could be tricky to say the least.

I think a better approach is to find ways get those 25 functions back without a lot of cost while using the parts I can donate to the project, all while trying to reuse some of the control parts when possible.

Goal #1 is to get the robot drivable. This means getting at least one new battery and slowing down the motors and finding an acceptable control method to make the robot drivable by Tareece.

Goal #2 is to re-wire the robot functions into a new control patch panel to make interfacing controls and maintenance much easier.

Goal #3 is to repair any of the robot control motor and hardware system so they are in “interface” ready condition.

Goal #4 is to paint and restore the head and face with a skin tone to match Tareece's

Goal #5 is to restore or replace the hair if possible

Goal #6 is to restore or replace the gloves if possible

Bubby update 8-25-10

Function List from Original Safety Sam:

Two drive motor steering: Left, Right, Forward and Reverse all under controllable speed
Right Arm: Up and Down
Right Hand: Closes and Opens
Left Arm: Up and Down
Left Hand: Closes and Opens
Head: Turns Right and Left, Looks Up and Down
Mouth: Opens and Closes to speech
Eyes: Look Left and Right
Eye Lids: Close (both close), Open (both open), Blink (both open and closer), Wink Right Eye (Opens and Closes Right Eye Lid), Wink Left Eye (Opens and Closes Left Eye Lid)

Total Functions: 25

Controls: Wireless via a Robbe Futaba f-14 radio
Voice: Wireless voice transmission via a wireless radio to a sound system in the robot linked to the mouth controls so when there was sound the mouth moved up and down.

Bubby is missing the robbe Futaba f-14 radio and voice transmitter. The good news there is a good radio reciever in Bubby but the bad news is it's not a standard design anymore and it has a multiplexer on it. Replaceing the remote would cost about $785 from Robotronics.


The good news is I talked with Paul George at Robotronics and explained some of the control wires. Every DC motor has a H-bridge PWM control board and an optional POT feedback and the control wires to each unit are black and yellow. With black being the ground and yellow being the PWM signal. It's a nice design and should be reusable.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Bubby the Robot

Restoration Project
Robot Model: Safety Sam (with rubber face)
Robot Manufacture: Robotronics (www.robotronics.com)

News Story: http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/crime/bubby-the-robot-stolen-from-a-yard-in-kettering-is-returned-167564.html

After reading the new story I wrote Teresa a letter to see if she could use some help in repairing her robot which she bought for her son Tareece. Because I work in Dayton, OH which is only a few minutes away from Kettering, OH where Teresa lives, I figured it would be much easier to help her with her robot since she is local.

I meet her and her son earlier this month and saw their robot named "bubby". The robot was missing the original Robbe Futaba f-14 remote control and voice transmitter. The electronic controls had ben gutted, but the robot looked in vry good shape for a 1986 model. I'm hoping to be able to use some of the R/C parts from my Probotics America Star robot restortation to help bring this robot to live. I'm hoping some of the original control electronics are usable as well.

Reese 2.0?



I'm still not sure what to name this robot. I'm was thinking Sunny, but now I'm thinking about naming him Reese. Reese was the name of my prototype robot co-developed with help from Doug Dooley from Pixar. Reese was designed to interact with child who have autism. But since the I never got anyone from the autism community interested in the AI software or robot, I decided to dissect Reese for parts.

This robot had a pan/til server controlled head. The head is constructed from two inexpensive flash light shells. A USB web camera sits in one flash light for an eye. The flash light shell holds a compound eye with a PING sonar module and a CdS photo cell.

The body is made up of "Dollar Tree" parts including plastic storage cubes and child sized robot toy costume parts including a chest peice on the front and two arm covers attached to the sides.

On the right side the robot has a Budget Robotics designed servo gripper, which was taken from the original Reese robot. The left side has a servo to tilt up and down a set of laser pointers that will be used for vision assistance and game play.

The base is constructed from black styrofoam board and two continuous rotation servos from Parallax, Inc. The servers are mounted with server mounts from Budget Robotics and the wheels came from Budget Robots. The "X" wheels look a little nicer and are bigger than standard plastic servo wheels. There are also two caster wheels in the back for balance.

The back of the robot is designed to accept a mountable controller module to make it easier for me to make modifications to the robot.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

New Robot

I'm working on a new robot. I'm thinking of naming it Sonny after the NS-5 from the movie I,Robot. Pictures of the new robot coming soon.

Descartes Codifies Scientific Method

I found this interesting and wanted to share:

....In the Discourse, Descartes described four rules he established to make sure he always came to true conclusions.

Doubt everything. “The first was never to accept anything as true if I did not know clearly that it was so … and to include nothing in my judgments apart from whatever appeared so clearly and distinctly to my mind that I had no opportunity to cast doubt on it.”

Break every problem down into smaller parts.

Solve the simplest problems first, and build from there.

Be thorough. “The final rule was: In all cases, to make such comprehensive enumerations and such general reviews that I was certain not to omit anything.”

By following these simple guidelines, he said, “There cannot be anything so remote that it cannot eventually be reached nor anything so hidden that it cannot be uncovered.”

The first precept of doubting everything, including the evidence of his senses and the thoughts in his head, led Descartes to the one fundamental truth on which he could base everything else: He existed. The senses sometimes lie, Descartes reasoned, and thoughts that occur in dreams feel just as real as thoughts that come while awake. But the fact that Descartes wondered about the truth of his thoughts and sensations meant that something must be doing the wondering.
“While I thus wished to think that everything was false, it was necessarily the case that I, who was thinking this, was something,” he wrote. “From the very fact that I was thinking of doubting the truth of other things, it followed very evidently and very certainly that I existed.” He expressed this thought concisely and memorably as cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am.Read More http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/06/0608descartes-publishes-scientific-method/#ixzz0qTN1Hz7H

Friday, June 4, 2010

Cool Quote

I came accross this quote today at work and wanted to share it.

"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing — that's why we recommend it daily."— Zig Ziglar: Author and motivational speaker

I think you'll agree that is a profound statement on many levels! :-) I like this quote because I often lack the motivation I need to continue to work on my robot project. Perhaps I could build robots while bathing? Huumzzzah......

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Just Started

I just started my blog to keep an online diary of some of my robotics project while they are in progress. I'll be sharing some of the things I learn as I prototype and test new projects.

Happy Roboting,
-Justin Ratliff

President of The Robotics Club of Yahoo www.trcy.org
and Owner of J2R Scientific www.j2rscientific.com