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Solar life |
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Designed by Brian Fields. |
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Welcome to the Predators of the Beam word. These Robots flip or move by using arms (Flagella). These little guys are incredibly strong, and I have to careful where I put them because they will get one of their arms stuck in another bot and start to rip out its guts (or worse shatter a solar cell)! Luckily I have been around to prevent any successful kills that they may try to make. |
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Turbots |
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Turbot 3.5 is based of Mark Tilden's wonderful Turbot 3. I have seen his turbots in action and there are very cool. So— I built one myself. Although its not the same as his it did come out nicely. I have no idea what solar engine Mark used so I just used a Miller SE(I have totally forgot what 1381 I used) . I also didn’t have any long small solar cells so I used photodiodes from Solarbotics. The motor is a GM13 so it has more than enough power for movement. The cap is a 4700uf. Another changed that Turbot three and a half has, is that there are no magnets on each point. I just wanted to have the movement of the robot. I have to give my hands up to Mark Tilden he is truly a genius. Watching this bad boy go it really interesting. It has some truly amazing climbing abilities. |
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Turbot 2.5 is another try at duplicating one of Mark Tilden’s robots. I could have used some 5.5 solar cells but I like the way the photodiodes look. It used a total of 40 mini solar cells that produces a good strong 4 volts. The two motors are GM13s from Solarbotics. A rather big change from Mark bot from my bot is that mine has a different circuit. From what I can tell Turbot 2 uses some sort of Photo popper circuit (do not quote me on that). What I have used is the BEP turbot circuit from Solarbotics. This is probably my favorite robot that I have in my RJP at the moment. It does live up to its name though as a turbot, for it has put many of my other bots in head locks. |
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The robot on the right is the actual turbot 2 that Mark Tilden built. As you can see Marks skill with robots surpasses my own ability but his skill is what I aspire to. |
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This is mini. As you can tell it’s very small. It would have been what I would have entered to my contest if I could. To a long time to make as I need a ton a patience to cram everything into a small space. The circuit is the BEP turbot circuit that is one Solabotics site. If your wondering about the solar cell it’s a 3733 from Solarbotics cut in half. The motors are GM12’s which have about 19 oz/in torque. A 2 volt miller engine powers the whole thing ( C ). The only thing that I was having trouble was that I need a small cap to fit inside it. A 1000uf cap just doesn’t really cut it so I managed to land my hands on a surface mount 1500uf cap. It has just enough to give its little arms some good movement. If your wondering what that diode is for on the solar cells, there for bypassing the current. The cells are hooked in series (+ to - ), it allows better efficiency for the robots performance. |