Shane Colton is building a holonomic robot inspired by other bot designs – this is the first in hopefully a series of blog documentation about the process of building this bot.
A combination of FRC season and BattleBots Season 2 got me thinking about how Saturday morning robot blitz building was a staple of my life back in the day, so I’m getting back into robots for a bit. I actually had a major “Battle-ready” redesign of Twitch, Jr. in the works a while ago, but couldn’t really fit it into any sort of combat robotics framework and decided it wouldn’t really be competitive without making major design sacrifices. That, and I got distracted by many other EE and software projects. Now, though, I’ve decided to try to remember how to MechE and go ahead and build it exactly the way I want.
There are actually at least three linkage drive robots named Twitch already. The OG version, which was my inspiration, was a 2008 FRC robot by Team 1561. There’s also this one that I recently found. I can’t find the documentation for it but it looks like it could be a mechanical relative of Twitch, Jr., with more modern electronics. And then there’s this clever one (not named Twitch) that uses linkages and gears to achieve a similar wheel trajectory. Other than that I haven’t seen any linkage drive robots; it remains a rare and uniquely entertaining drivetrain configuration. I’ve decided the world needs one more, so I present…
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: Events, Projects, and much more! #Python #Adafruit #CircuitPython @micropython @ThePSF
Adafruit IoT Monthly — No-Code IoT with WipperSnapper, Beaming Internet across the Congo, and more!
Worth pointing out, which isn’t massively obvious, that part of the inspiration is his own previous Twitch Jr, with more documentation : http://scolton.blogspot.com.au/p/robots.html
Worth pointing out, which isn’t massively obvious, that part of the inspiration is his own previous Twitch Jr, with more documentation : http://scolton.blogspot.com.au/p/robots.html