Our friend at NeuroRobotic Technologies has been developing an Arduino Due Shield that plays nice with everything in the InterbotiX and RobotGeek product lines (and subsequently, his PhantomX Hexapod is playing nicely with the kids)! This is a comprehensive shield that lets you connect AX, MX, and XL Dynamixel Servos! The DynamixShield is an electronics board that fits onto an Arduino Due microcontroller to give you the ability to control Dynamixel smart servos and regular servos, while also providing numerous Grove and RobotGeek connectors. Grove and RobotGeek are hardware frameworks for modular sensors and actuators. There are tons of off-the-shelf modules for these two frameworks that can be plugged into the shield with a single cable. This includes everything from GPS sensors, RFID scanners, and LCD displays that are plug-and-play ready for use with the shield. This makes it very easy to build your robots by combining modules and servos. Check out his Kickstarter, and if you want to see it happen, you can make it happen!
Kyle shows off the RobotGeek RFID Lock Box Kit in this informative video! The RobotGeek RFID Lock Box kit combines Arduino, RFID and a Project Box to make your very own personal safe! The lock box kit allows you to to program your arduino to lock and unlock the box with the swipe an RFID tag or card, it even stays locked if unplugged. Mildly secure your semi-valuables in this decorative conversation piece!
The HR-OS1 is alive and kicking. Well, more likely punching right now. We might have accidentally exposed him to Smash Brothers, and he might idolize Little Mac a bit. Using Robot Motion Editor to teach the HR-OS1 new moves is easy and fun! This is all early movement editing, without the use of sensors to correct for balance. It does take a little bit of time to get used to balancing the little fella, but as you can see from the video, the HR-OS1 is very capable of holding his own through a wide variety of movement. We get a kick out of watching him dance!
You may have heard about the LIDAR-Lite , a small, low cost, high performance distance sensing module. With a range of up to 40m and an accuracy of 2.5cm, we absolutely love the LIDAR lite. The LIDAR Lite is very easy to work with – you can connect to it via I2C or PWM to read distance data. We’re including several goodies with the LIDAR Lite, like cable ends and heat shrink tube so you can solder onto the LIDAR Lite’s cable that will let you plug it directly into the RobotGeek Sensor Shield or the ArbotiX-M Robocontroller. You’ll also get mounting hardware to help you mount the LIDAR-Lite to any of our robots with the centimeter grid pattern.
We’ve created two demos with the LIDAR Lite using Interbotix Robots. First we put a LIDAR Lite on our PhantomX Hexapod and programmed the Hexapod to move back and forth depending on where an object is. Move the object closer to the Hexapod and it will back up, move it farther, and the hexapod will run after it. After we did that project, we built a small scanner application that will take data from the LIDAR lite connected to a Robot Turret and display the perimeter of the room on your screen – see the video below to see it in action.
Not a huge deal, so no need to get hyper or anything. But we posted some new short videos on the Robot Geek Arduino-Compatible Sensors.
Some things that are cool about the Robot Geek Sensors are:
Simple normal 3 pin connectors! No fancy special cables needed to plug them in.
Standard hole patterns. Most of our sensors are on a 2 X 3cm pattern and anything that isn’t is still on a 1cm x 1cm grid. Logical right?
We go further! Need an LED board? You get a board with two connectors (horz & vert) and FIVE colors of LEDs. Not one soldered to the board. FIVE. We don’t know how you want to mount this thing or what color you may want. What if you change your mind too? Here, take five colors. Just don’t hurt us. Or yourself.
Cross compatible with all the other systems out there, Phidgets, Seeed Grove, Seeed Brick…
The Interbtotix line of Robotic Arms now all have 3d files in Inventor and STEP formats! These 3D models are great tools if you want to preview our arms or integrate them into your own 3D models. Having the exact dimensions of each arm can save time when your planning a project and help your project get up an running even quicker!
Theses files can be used with Autodesk Inventor or any program that can use .stp files. Stay tuned for more 3D models and more resources from the Interbotix Line!
Robotis wowed the robotics community with the MX-28T, and recently they’ve expanded the MX line to include the TTL MX-64T and the MX-106T, as well as the RS-485 variants, the MX-28R, the MX-64R and the MX-106R.
These new servos have a contactless magnetic encoder, which offers 4x the resolution of the RX series. This makes them more accurate and even smoother than the old servos. Also upgraded, is the processor in each of these servos – a 32bit 72mhz Cortex M3! This beefy processor handles the newly implemented PID control algorithm. It can be used to maintain shaft position and can be adjusted individually for each servo, allowing you to control the speed and strength of the motor’s response. The new setup also offerers a 3Mbps bus. The ‘T’ variants use TTL communication and are compatible with other TTL servos like the AX-12 and the AX-18. Meanwhile the ‘R’ variants use RS-485, just like the RX series.
You might remember Don and Jason’s new robotic arm, which uses the new MX servos. But the real question is, what will you do with them?
