Working with my Robonova
Working with my Robonova
by bauermech
Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:38 pm
It was tough, but I found a site in the US with the robonova in stock. Ordered it w/o delay. I assembled it, and just finished it up this morning.
The instructions have a couple of misprints, and they say to refer to the pictures a lot. That's helpful in some respects, but the chronological order is a bit screwy. Before you start throwin' one together, make sure you read through each section beforehand. A section will start off making you assume you should begin mounting a servo onto a specific bracket as pictured, but what they're actually stating is to gather the components as pictured, turn the page, and assemble them this way.
Also, make sure you have a good, name-brand #1 screwdriver (like MAC or Snap-On). I plowed through four screwdrivers before driving back to work to get my good ones.
I fired it up, and everything works great! I had to calibrate the servos a bit, but no more than 4 increments past 0 (100). He's now doing cartwheels, summersaults, martial arts attacks, and all that stuff you've all seen in the videos. I'll be spending the rest of the day programming it to test his full potential.
The instructions have a couple of misprints, and they say to refer to the pictures a lot. That's helpful in some respects, but the chronological order is a bit screwy. Before you start throwin' one together, make sure you read through each section beforehand. A section will start off making you assume you should begin mounting a servo onto a specific bracket as pictured, but what they're actually stating is to gather the components as pictured, turn the page, and assemble them this way.
Also, make sure you have a good, name-brand #1 screwdriver (like MAC or Snap-On). I plowed through four screwdrivers before driving back to work to get my good ones.
I fired it up, and everything works great! I had to calibrate the servos a bit, but no more than 4 increments past 0 (100). He's now doing cartwheels, summersaults, martial arts attacks, and all that stuff you've all seen in the videos. I'll be spending the rest of the day programming it to test his full potential.
by limor
Mon Feb 06, 2006 12:33 am
Hello bauermech and welcome to the forum!
i've started building mine today. In fact, I'm assisting my 11 year-old brother in building the RoboNova and taking pictures and documenting the process as we go in order to upload the whole thing onto this site eventually. (he can handle most of the screwing/unscrewing when i show him what and how but the instruction booklet is a too complex for him)
Compared with building the KHR-1, Robonova seems a bit easier to build... maybe the translation from Korean was done by a native English speaker. Or maybe i'm more confident after having gone through building the KHR-1. In any case i dont think we've made any time-consuming mistakes so far.
The instruction manual is pretty good and has important things to say beyond the pictures though they do use some cryptic numeric names for the various parts.
Have you done some programming?
please feel free to upload any programs ( you can upload files/pictures/videos by selecting the Manage File Uploads link on the left User Info block and link to them in your posts in this forum)
i've started building mine today. In fact, I'm assisting my 11 year-old brother in building the RoboNova and taking pictures and documenting the process as we go in order to upload the whole thing onto this site eventually. (he can handle most of the screwing/unscrewing when i show him what and how but the instruction booklet is a too complex for him)
Compared with building the KHR-1, Robonova seems a bit easier to build... maybe the translation from Korean was done by a native English speaker. Or maybe i'm more confident after having gone through building the KHR-1. In any case i dont think we've made any time-consuming mistakes so far.
The instruction manual is pretty good and has important things to say beyond the pictures though they do use some cryptic numeric names for the various parts.
Have you done some programming?
please feel free to upload any programs ( you can upload files/pictures/videos by selecting the Manage File Uploads link on the left User Info block and link to them in your posts in this forum)
by bauermech
Tue Feb 07, 2006 9:06 pm
Thanks for the welcome limor. Yeah, I program in VB6, so RoboBASIC comes somewhat natural to me. I only wish it was possible to interrupt a movement sequence remotely once one has been started. I tried setting a variable to say... 0, and set up one of the bettons on the remote to change that variable to 1. That way, when I commanded the robonova to walk, it would do so until I pressed the button that initiated the variable change and force it to finish the loop then return to the standard pose. However, this doesn't work because, like I said before, the walk sequence cannot be interrupted, or a new command sent to the controller until it has ended.
One other approach I took was to set up a counter (count = count + 1), and assigned it to a button. One would press the button to indicate to the program how many times the robot should cycle through the walk loop
...start walking code
FOR A10 = 1 TO count
...walking code
NEXT A10
...stop walking and return to standard pose code
count = 1.
I pressed the "Count" button on the remote ten times, then pressed the "Walk Forward" button. What do you know, it worked! BUT, it only went through the walk loop about four times instead of ten. The problem? When using the IR remote, the controller only accepts incoming signals momentarily. If you time it right, you can get it to work the way it should.
I'm starting the hunt for .ocx and .dll files so I can do the "program my own software in VB6" thing. We'll see how that goes...
I'll post my modified .bas file to share once it's complete. I have a lot of sequences to enter yet, but it’ll utilize the IF/THENs, FOR/NEXTs, etc.
Oh yeah, lemor! I took your advice and visited sparkfun. After perusing through several RF specification docs, I went ahead and ordered one of their BlueSMiRFs. With a little mod, it should work. I'll let you know sometime next week if it was successful.
One other approach I took was to set up a counter (count = count + 1), and assigned it to a button. One would press the button to indicate to the program how many times the robot should cycle through the walk loop
...start walking code
FOR A10 = 1 TO count
...walking code
NEXT A10
...stop walking and return to standard pose code
count = 1.
I pressed the "Count" button on the remote ten times, then pressed the "Walk Forward" button. What do you know, it worked! BUT, it only went through the walk loop about four times instead of ten. The problem? When using the IR remote, the controller only accepts incoming signals momentarily. If you time it right, you can get it to work the way it should.
I'm starting the hunt for .ocx and .dll files so I can do the "program my own software in VB6" thing. We'll see how that goes...
I'll post my modified .bas file to share once it's complete. I have a lot of sequences to enter yet, but it’ll utilize the IF/THENs, FOR/NEXTs, etc.
Oh yeah, lemor! I took your advice and visited sparkfun. After perusing through several RF specification docs, I went ahead and ordered one of their BlueSMiRFs. With a little mod, it should work. I'll let you know sometime next week if it was successful.
by bauermech
Wed Feb 08, 2006 5:42 am
Ha ha, funny thing... I just now put two and two together. The blue LED on this thing is always blinking which indicates a low battery voltage... That can't be right! I've got a full charge(acording to the charger indicator)! I went into the code and re-equated to a 5.6v, and then to a 5.0v setting. Both times, the sucker wouldn't stop blinking. I disabled the low voltage code all together, and presto... no blinking, and the remote works much better... I don't have to press it ten times in order to execute a sequence, and my "walk/step counter" works seamlessly. The range is about 6 to 8 ft (about 2 - 2.5m). Wether the equation is wrong or my battery's screwed up, I don't know. My multi-tester's at work, so I'll have to wait and see what's up with that.
Pls a clip of robonova
by Leonardgan
Sat Feb 11, 2006 3:53 pm
Hi
I am interested in buying robonova, but I would like to see the smoothness of robonova walk a distance before purchasing it .
Anyone care to take a video clip of their robonova walking a short distance pls ?
my mai is leonardgan@hotmail.com
I am interested in buying robonova, but I would like to see the smoothness of robonova walk a distance before purchasing it .
Anyone care to take a video clip of their robonova walking a short distance pls ?
my mai is leonardgan@hotmail.com
by spin_cycle
Mon Feb 13, 2006 12:35 am
Hey everybody! i just joined as a member to the forum and i should be recieving my robonova tommorrow, ive been using this site as great starting ground to understand the procedures of construction and programming of these kit models. plus this place is great to go to to get a quick glance at all the latest robot news thanks to the links 
anyways i hope to learn alot more about the robonova and its potential from here and i hope to contribute myself.
as my first task (after playing around with it for a while) i think after looking at its design,shape and build, and being that im better with design then programming at the moment, i could possibly mod the robonova to look (and hopefully operate) like my favorite bot of all time Optimus Prime...that would rock...
anyways i hope to learn alot more about the robonova and its potential from here and i hope to contribute myself.
as my first task (after playing around with it for a while) i think after looking at its design,shape and build, and being that im better with design then programming at the moment, i could possibly mod the robonova to look (and hopefully operate) like my favorite bot of all time Optimus Prime...that would rock...
by bauermech
Mon Feb 13, 2006 1:27 am
Welcome abord. Ha! That's great! A buddy of mine and I are making casts of heads for the Robonova and KHR-1's. Right now I've got a Preditor head I'm gonna' be mounting after I'm done painting it. It just so happens 'ol Prime was on the list of characters! Also on that list is RoboCop, Bender, C3-PO, and Pinhead. I might send you one to see how you like it... It may be a little while before we sculpt and pour a good cast, but I'll be sure to keep you posted.
by spin_cycle
Mon Feb 13, 2006 10:15 am
i think prime would be the perfect candidate simply due to the fact that the robonova already has aspects perfect for prime. just check out these two images and flick back and forth, its like the designed the chest with prime in mind...eerie
http://image.www.rakuten.co.jp/tsukumo/ ... 10596.jpeg
http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2005/05/11 ... /prime.jpg
http://image.www.rakuten.co.jp/tsukumo/ ... 10596.jpeg
http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2005/05/11 ... /prime.jpg
by Pev
Sun Feb 26, 2006 9:26 pm
bauermech wrote:Ha ha, funny thing... I just now put two and two together. The blue LED on this thing is always blinking which indicates a low battery voltage... That can't be right! I've got a full charge(acording to the charger indicator)! I went into the code and re-equated to a 5.6v, and then to a 5.0v setting. Both times, the sucker wouldn't stop blinking. I disabled the low voltage code all together, and presto... no blinking, and the remote works much better... I don't have to press it ten times in order to execute a sequence, and my "walk/step counter" works seamlessly. The range is about 6 to 8 ft (about 2 - 2.5m). Wether the equation is wrong or my battery's screwed up, I don't know. My multi-tester's at work, so I'll have to wait and see what's up with that.
Hi, New here and just finished the build of my Robonova - had the same battery low blinking led issue. Had to crank mine down to 85 in code!!!! which equates (according to the equation in the manual) to 3.3volts - me thinks not ha ha!!!! checked it on the old multimeter and and it's definately fully charged.
Anyway was so pleased it wasn't just me I thought I'd mention it
Cheers
Pev
