JR RB1000 with a Robonova brain???

[citrik offline]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum and new to RoboOne in general, but I've been staying in Tokyo and I happened across the robot store in Akihabara and I've got the bug bad. I've been doing a ton of research and the RB1000 seems to have the best servos and frame layout, but it looks impossible to work with due to the language barrier. The Robosavvy Forum is great! It's exciting to see everyone working on hacking the controller for the Robonova. It got me to thinking I wonder if I could combine the two. I remember from my old rc days terhe were certian issues with some brands of servos and receivers not being compatible. I'm wondering if the same holds true with these. It seems most of the robot servos are at least PWM (ignoring serial) but I'm not sure if they are actually interoperable. I was looking at the KHR controller too but with the new version they are in a different voltage range.

So does anyone have a guess if the MR-C3024 would drive the JR RBS581 servos?

Also one of the killer features of the Robonova seems to me to be the Catch and Play. Any thoughts as to if that is just in the controller or if the servo needs something special? I'm thinking any servo should work, but I might be missing something.

Thanks in Advance!

[limor]

Kondo invented a trick to capture the servo position using PWM signals. (search "position feedback" on this foum). Hitec coppied this trick. So at least in theory hitec and kondo servos and controllers can be intermixed.

The RB1000 hasn't quite made it yet outside Japan and I doubt it will do too well because of the high price. I haven't seen many technical details about the RB1000 even on Japanese sites.

Can you please give more details about why you are so enthusiastic about RB1000?

[citrik offline]

Thanks for the reply Limor!

I'm curious about the similarities in the Kondo and the Hitec. I'm wondering if the controller design was developed by a single supplier and then branded and packaged by Kondo and Hitec.

I'm excited about the RB1000 for a number of reasons.

The servo spec - 9.2kg/cm .11seconds/60deg rotation
- compare this to 7.4kg/cm .20s/60deg for Hitec
- and 10kg/cm .14s/60deg on the new Kondo KHR-2HV

Leg Rotation - It has 2 more degrees of freedom with leg rotation right out of the box. I've been watching a lot of videos and it seems like most of the good competition bots have a joint there. I know a lot of people have been talking about ways to do it with the other bots but it seems easier to start with it done out of the box.

The frame design - it was designed by Takeshi Maeda at Vstone. He has been one of the top RoboOne competitors since it started. You can see the similarity in how the motors are mounted in pairs on OmniZero (1 and 2) and RB1000. It's a pretty clever design trick as it lets you get more travel by moving the servo horn as far out as possible. Compare the lower leg length of the RB1000 to the Robonova-1 to see what I mean.

Price wise it's the same as the others here in Japan, the RB1000 is 102,900 yen or about 1000 us. The Robonova is going for 98,000 and KHR-2HV seems to be going for 104,571 (there's a couple models and I'm not sure what the differences are, wish I could read Japanese)

The KHR-2HV is using higher voltage motors so I think it's controller would not be compatible, but I imagine that the KHR-1 controller could be compatible with the Robonova-1 as you mentioned.

Really the only reason I haven't picked up a RB1000 yet is the lack of an english support community for it. It seems one might form in time given the right space. <hint, hint> As it stands now, I think it might be hard going for the first few months...

[Ray offline]

RB-1000 has many good feature available in KHR1,
the controller even has 2 build-in acceleration sensor,

the communicaiton manual has given then communication protocols,
hence, the servo are digital servo,
the attachment manual also state how to read the A/D and Digital Input .... etc


you can download some files from the web site :
http://www.vstone.co.jp/

you can use the japanese translation web site to translate the web and even your japanese manual ! :
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/

I had studied RB-1000 using this translation, and I decided to order the RB-1000. I directly contact the vstone.co.jp and they give me resonable price. now, I am waiting the shipment


if you get more information I would like to share

[citrik offline]

Hi Ray, yea, I've been burning out the excite translation tool, thanks for mentioning it! Where did you find files for download at vstone?

It looks like the RoboNova controller can control most other servos and the specs seem to match up ok. It looks like the servo position reading won't work so I guess we'll have to program the hard way.

garlopf posted this in the Lynx motion forum..

I just connected two analog servos to my mr c3024 board, and they just worked. They were "servo micro" Hitec HS-55 Feather analog servos. I guess that means that all servos supporting the same protocol will work!

http://www.lynxmotion.net/viewtopic.php?p=3450#3450
---

I think at this stage I'm going to go ahead and get the RB1000 and then get the Robonova controller down the road if I get frustrated using the translation tools...

I don't want to kruft up the Robonova forum with too much more on the RB1000, I think I might start a thread in General. I have a few more links you might find useful Ray...

[citrik offline]

here's the new thread with the links I mentioned....

http://robosavvy.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=1989#1989

[limor]

Really the only reason I haven't picked up a RB1000 yet is the lack of an english support community for it. It seems one might form in time given the right space. <hint, hint>

one has formed..

[citrik offline]

Limor you rock! Thanks a ton!

[citrik offline]

So I'm back from Tokyo, I've just installed the JR software on my system and it looks pretty much unusable. I guess I'm missing the Japanese fonts for XP so the text on most of the buttons come up as question marks.

I was at the RoboGames in SF on Sunday and met Matt Bauer and a few other fellow RoboOne ppl, It was great to meet everyone. I was chatting with Tony from Hitec and he thinks the Robonova board can control the servos (minus the pose and recall feature), so that's the route I'm heading in...

[bauermech offline]

Hi citric,

It looks like the servo position reading won't work so I guess we'll have to program the hard way.

Ouch! That's a tedious process. Hitec's HSR-9559TG's have to be programmed manually as well... even using the RN-1's MR-C3024 board, I can't power them down to manipulate their positioning - So it's enter a numerical value in RoboBASIC, press F5 to check, and redo as needed.... over, and over again.

I didn't fully respect how beneficial the Catch-n-Play feature was until I couldn't use it.

So let me get this straight, the RB's don't support catch and play w/ their servos?