We’re officially launching this much anticipated new Robocontroller today! Thanks to all of those who pre-ordered, your board should be on it’s way! Our initial stock of these is limited, so get em while they’re hot!
The arbotiX Robocontroller, an advanced 3rd party Bioloid controller, is now in stock and ready to be sold! It incorporates a powerful AVR microcontroller, XBEE wireless radio, dual motor drivers, and 3-pin servo-style headers for IO.
The arbotiX robocontroller is specifically designed to control robots built using the Bioloid System and AX-12+ servos, although it is also a very high-end solution for powerful rovers. It is not intended to be a drop-in replacement for a CM-5, rather it is intended as a high level development tool for building more sophisticated robots.
Our video crew has been hard at work showcasing our various robotic products, and recently highlighted the Bioloid and Hexbug robots.
Is your house tidy? Are you lacking pesky insects in your kitchen? HEXBUGs are your solution!
Why deal with real insects when you can fill that void with these cute little robobugs! Hexbugs are tiny, cute, and make the perfect gift or desktoy for a geek near you! You can pick these up at our online store, as well as at our booth at Robogames 2009 in San Fransisco!
The Bioloid Comprehensive Kit is a tried and true humanoid kit, literally one of the most popular robot kits on the market. We put together a quick video highlighting some custom motions that can be easily programmed into the robot, as well as the new Zig-100 wireless controller. Stay tuned to our blog for an upcoming tutorial on how to make your Bioloid humanoid robot completely remote controlled and competition ready!
This round is going to be a Tutorial Contest , and is quite a bit different from our previous contests. Think of it as an ‘Instructables meets How Stuff Works’ style contest: We want you to submit entries in the form of a detailed step by step ‘How-To’ or Informative Tutorials.
We’re going to be asking a lot more of our participants this round, so we have raised the stakes and are giving away our biggest prizes yet! Without further ado here are the prizes being offered for this round!
You’re probably asking: “Well what’s the catch?” We won’t lie, we’re going to make you work for it and put your knowledge to the test!
Here are some examples of what types of tutorials we’re looking for:
What is a gyroscope/accelerometer/analog or digital signal?
How do servos/DC Motors/Batteries work? (explain inner workings, control, show example code, etc)
Choosing the right (Microcontroller/DC Motor/Sensor) for the job.
How to setup an Arduino/Xbee Communication/Basic Stamp. (basic projects with example code, videos, etc)
How to control a robot wirelessly. (many different methods of going about this, pick one and elaborate!)
Theory of Inverse Kinematics, Dead Reckoning, Spacial Mapping, etc.
We’re looking for well written, detailed entries that a beginner could read through and learn from. The emphasis on this is creating valuable tutorials and FAQs that the community as a whole can benefit from. Diagrams, pictures, source code, practical applications, text references and examples are welcomed and strongly encouraged. Plagiarism will not be tolerated, please cite any reference materials used. We are not looking for build articles during this round.
Entries will also be judged in a different manner than before: Contestants are encouraged to post as many tutorials as they like; in fact, the more tutorials submitted, the more points they receive towards their final score. Now that said, quality is greatly valued over quantity. One detailed, well written tutorial will hold more weight than five mediocre ones, but if you post numerous well written tutorials you’re going to be in very good shape.
Please visit our Project Contest Page to learn more about the contest, how to enter and for the official rules and guidelines. Somebody is going to be a proud new owner of a Bioloid Comprehensive Kit, Bioloid Beginner Kit, or Ollo Bug Kit, will it be you?
Our good friend Jon Hylands (who is an amazing Roboticist, definitely check out his work on the Bioloid system) is working on a few new projects and shot a quick video which is pretty impressive to anyone who has ever built a robotics arm. What you see in the video below is an RX-64 Robotis servo lifting a full coke can at a 30 cm arm length. While that seems trivial to we humans, packing that much torque into such a tiny servo is a great demonstration of how much servo technology has advanced in the last few years. The servo isn’t even being strained during these tests. You might note a bit of jerky movement, that is because the servo is being manually fed positional instructions via a slider bar. Most advanced robots use some form of interpolation which smooths movements considerably.
We’ll also be revealing our big internal project which uses 14 of the RX-64 servos in the near future… =)
Okay, technically it isn’t ‘paint’. Dye would be more appropriate.
I decided that my plain old white Bioloid was boring, so I started looking around for the best way to change his color scheme. The Bioloid brackets are pretty sturdy, and thus resistant to paint and markers. I found mixed results searching through on various experimenters success in dying their brackets, but I figured I would give it a shot. After playing around with individual brackets I figured out the correct dye-water mixture, length of time, and heat, and it turned out even better than expected!
Here is a step by step tutorial detailing what it takes to get your Bioloid dyed a different color. I used black, but since the brackets are white I would assume that just about any color would work.
Note: Dye your brackets at your own risk! While I’m quite detailed in my instructions, I nor Trossen Robotics hold any responsibility if your brackets end up pink, or otherwise destroyed.
Matt and Stuart from the Robosavvy Forums have released a libavr/libbioloid C library for the CM5 controller, allowing you to program your CM-5 Bioloid Controller directly in C. It’s a work in progress still, but it’s always great to see grassroots projects like this come to life. Programming the CM-5 in C has been possible for some time, but it is somewhat of a convoluted process. The project creators are setting out to demystify the process as well as provide a working library of commands to make custom programming of the Bioloid that much easier. Great work guys! Can’t wait to see this project continue to mature!
The Bioloid continues to be a favorite among roboticists and universities alike, with it’s support community growing daily proving it to be an incredibly versatile research platform. Check out our Bioloid product page for more information!
This one sort of slipped under our ‘Blogdar’ and while this has been available for a bit we feel it’s worth mentioning here for those that missed it. The infamous Crabfu wrote up and shot a fantastic video review of the Bioloid Comprehensive Kit. What we feel is great about this review is that its from the perspective of someone who doesn’t consider himself to be highly technical, in fact more of an artist than anything. Definitely worth taking a look at if you’re interested in the Bioloid system as it sheds some light on how the entire kit comes together from a user’s point of view.
Bioloid users have been drooling over these controllers since they were first announced at Robogames 2008! Well, the time is nigh to get your robot a fix, the Bioloid Boomerang Zigbee Controllers are due on our next shipment! These controllers finally put wireless Bioloid control into user’s hands, enabling easier participation in humanoid kung-fu, soccer, and stairclimbing.
We are now accepting Pre-Orders, with an expected arrival date of November 15th, 2008. They come in two flavors, one with a set of Zig-100s, and one without (if you already had purchased a pair previously). Get em while they’re hot!
