Observations of a Robot newbie

[ptv70r]

Hi,

I have recently built my RN and thought I woudl share some of my experiences:

When I turned him on for the first time and started to do the Zero settings, after about 30 seconds turned on one of the pelvis servos started bellowing smoke. I imediatley turned him off and found that the servo was very hot ! After allowing everything to cool down, confirming that thngs were assembled correctly and double checking the articulation I tried again but that servo was now dead. A new one fitted and evrything was go.

I downloaded the overall file with no problems, then added the push-up routine from the hitec site with no problems. I then added the kung fu routine from Matt and this time when I cliked the download button, RN sprang into life taking a dive off the front of my desk which twisted the socket on the controller board breaking off one of the surface mounted components. This resulted in no comms so a new board was fitted - an expensive lesson learnt - I now do all downloading whilst holding RN in the air, just in case.

[Gil]

Sounds like a bad controller. The servo burning was discussed somewhere around here before.


When uploading code you can do what I do: keep him standing inside a cardboard box. I use a big shoe box and if he falls when the code starts or something unexpected happens there's no way he can escape and go off the table.

[robodude666]

Hey,

sorry to hear that After looking at the robosavvy shop, i found this interesting product for the khr
http://robosavvy.com/store/product_info ... b371f21b52
it is a very interesting "hanger" to hang your khr while your working on it or whatever you wish to do with it that needs it to be hung. the way it seems to hang stuff is the two slits on his shoulders. after looking around for close ups of the robonova's shoulders you find that it has the same exact slits.
http://www.robosavvy.com/RoboSavvyPages ... sdone1.jpg

if your willing to spend like $236 on a cool hanger for your robonova, it may be a way to get it off the ground so you can download safly to it or buy a shoe box for a few $. both work

if you have a metal shop or something like that, you can probably make your own. its just a few parts.

best of luck with your robonova

[hivemind]

To help with your uploading/falling over problem, what i did was eventually find the correct pose (zero position and standard_pose) where he wouldnt fall over when motors were placed in 'neutral'. what happens is his legs can be 'locked' where your stock rn1 will displace his weight evenly on the servos which essentially keeps him standing. i am even able to turn off the battery switch without my robot falling over.

[tempusmaster]

if your willing to spend like $236 on a cool hanger for your robonova, it may be a way to get it off the ground so you can download safly to it or buy a shoe box for a few $. both work

A few minutes at the local dollar store (or 100 yen store over here) and it's pretty easy to fabricate a handle. I use a short piece of plastic tubing for the handle and fished a wire through it then secured both ends of the wire to the shoulder brackets on my KHR-1. It's fairly common practice for a lot of the ROBO-ONE robots.

Personally, I would never try to turn on, turn off, upload, download, or execute a new program with my robot without holding it up off the surface by the handle. It can also be very useful when you're trying to debug a new motion sequence since you can support him like a puppet while he goes through the motions.

[ptv70r]

Thanks for the suggestions - some nice ideas here - I particularly like the stand but could probably have one knocked up for less - it would be nice if Hitec were to make an official one in matching gold.

I also think they should put a warning in the manual that when downloading he may spring into life to avoid what happened to mine happening to others.

The manual could be improved upon with regard to the options for programming - I have no previous basic experience so a manual that says it is pretty similar to std basic and then just provide a list of commands does not really help me (It was not until I found and read this forum that I new for sure that only one program can be loaded at a time)
- what about some sort of 'learn robobasic in xxxHrs' tutorial type thing for complete beginners starting with simple moves moving up to more complex ones with more commands.

I think the lack of this will limit the take up by people who have no previous robot / programming experience. Those who do buy will end end just using the basic moves supplied and getting bored fairly quickly - they may as well buy a Robosapien and save lots of cash.

[robodude666]

hitec does have an official hanger for sale but its sold out now. i think it was like 30 euros. heres the link: http://www.robonova.de/store/product.ph ... 257&page=2