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It has to be said (since I had one previous run-in with the legal department of the LEGO company, but that's neither here nor there), that this page is in no way affiliated with the LEGO Company (Canada or otherwise) and is not endorsed by the aforementioned company.
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When I was started into electronics in early high school, I took a radio controlled tank purchased at a garage sale for 25 cents (it was missing the treads), ripped it apart, and put the control center inside a LEGO brick box. Then I built a tank around it. It worked well at the time. I have no idea if it still works though, it's been over a decade since it was plugged in. I still have it in my LEGO box. Why? For this homepage for starters.
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Someone asked for a little more detail.
Here it is:
I put the basic units together with the wiring I still had to show you. You may notice that not all the wire have plugs on the end. Oh well, you get the idea. |
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Front Inputs from left to right:
9 Volt - for radio control unit (comes from one 9 volt battery box)
4.5 Volt - for motors (comes from 2 4.5 volt 'C' cell holders)
Switch - to turn the entire thing off and on
Antenna - To communicate with hand-held remote controller
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Back Outputs:
Left - for the left motor
Right - for the right motor
Miscellany: I had 2 'C' cell battery holders (the tubes in one of the above pictures) that held 3 batteries apiece. Connected them in a serial configuration, thus giving me 9 volts for the motors. As well, you may have noticed the black paint. I did that so I wouldn't plug anything in backwards, causing a short. Worked well but you must make sure they're painted correctly. Don't cross your wires!
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| So the LEGO company come up with their own control box. I had to get it. But theirs was a little more advanced. LEGO Mindstorms offers computer controlled LEGO bricks. What Systems Administrator type guy could ask for more? So I took my original tank idea and threw in the LEGO Mindstorms conrtrol unit (called the RCX). Then comes the programming part. Computer programming and LEGO bricks. Life is good.
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The first tank was great, but big; I wanted something a little smaller. Thus Mini-Tank was developed. It's not the smallest I could have developed, but it's strong! |
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I made a proximity detector by using old style lights mounted with the light sensor. The lights flash 5 times a second and the light detector is polled. If the difference between one poll and another is greater than 100 due to the light reflecting off a surface, the tank will stop, back up, and turn randomly. The NQC program for Mini-Tank is here. I did the proximity detector this way because I wanted to leave the IR port on the RCX free to communicate with the IR tower for future projects. |
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| Whilst cruising the 'net, I came across Gavin's page on how to build a walking robot. First I made one very similar to his model, then I modified it a bit so the leg supports were stronger. I eventually gave up on the walkers and went back to the tracked beasts. |
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The competition was to design a robot that would detect pop cans, pick them up and bring them back to a certain location. This is my valiant effort to do that. I modified my tank platform, added a grabber arm (which worked surprisingly well) and a light detector that was suppose to detect a pop can against a white background. Well, the idea was there... See the error ridden program here |
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