MachineGrid::Robots at Work

Reversing a Hacker Style Brushless Motor 20-22L.

The Hacker Style Brushless(20-22L) motor finds a very common use in Quadcopters. Unfortunately the only way to mount the motor on a frame is to reverse the shaft so that the mounting holes can be used for what they were meant for..mounting.

dontenorio69 has a very helpful video on how to do this. The same process is detailed below, but with pictures:

• The Hacker Style comes with all mounting hardware as well as some spares including an extra circlip, in case yours goes flying when you try to pop it out.
  
• First remove the circlip from one end of the shaft. Then loosen the grub screw from the other end. After this, the rotor and armature should separate. There is a tiny washer near the circlip end inside the motor. Keep this safe in case you need it later. Yo will not need it again for the reversal.
  
• With a thin ended screwdriver, hammer the shaft out. It will take a few tries to get out.
  
• Once the shaft pops out, reverse it and hammer it back in, so that there is enough shaft left for the circlip to clasp on. The following iluustrations will make this clearer.
  
• Now it’s time to cut the shaft so that the prop adapter fits easily. The shaft will be too long for the adapter to fit. You can cut it with a Dremel using cut-off discs made specifically for cutting metal.
  
• Before cutting the shift, remember to tape off the motor holes to prevent any metal shavings to go inside the motor. The simplest way is to make a mask from scotch tape.
  
• Fully assembled motor with 10×4.7 APC prop.
  

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Taking Apart the Spy Video ATV-360

I finally took apart the Spy Video which I got for a very good deal. I wanted to see if it would serve as a good platform for a robot and if the drive system could be upgraded. The most difficult part was taking apart the wheel hubs. The interesting part in the hubs design is that a better motor can be attached to it. The following sequence shows me taking the vehicle apart. Might come in handy for hardware hackers out there.

1. Various views of the vehicle.

2. Remove all the screws from the bottom of the vehicle, including the tracks.

3.Remove the top shell slowly. Don’t pull on it. You will need to disconnect the camera, antenna and mic headers to get it free.

4. Once the top shell is free, the circuit board and the drive system is visible. There is a bank of FETs for the motors. The board is very well labeled.

5. To take apart the drive system, loosen the screws around the orange box. Then unscrew the black tab keeping the wires from the orange box secure.

6.Taking apart the wheel hub is a chore, but possible with pliers, a small glass jar, some flame and some strength.First, remove the stopper from the shaft. Use pliers and strength:

Remove the large gear and everything between the gear and the stopper. Now again using pliers, remove the torque check gear:

Remove all the stuff after that including the orange cap with the three screws. Once the orange cap is removed, the black cover on the other end of the wheel can be removed:

Now for the interesting part. The wheel hub is dead set into the shaft and we need to remove it. Make sure you have a small jar, like below, ready. Choose one such that it’s mouth is small enough only for the shaft to go in. Ignore the gears on the shaft in the picture. You should be having just a blank shaft with the black hub and orange cap on.

Make sure you have the orange cap on. Now heat the shaft with a flame for around 30 seconds. This is just to soften the hub’s hold on the shaft. Holding it over the flame too long is going to melt the plastic.

Now while the shaft is still hot, place the shaft as shown below and hammer the other end down.

The shaft should come out after a few bangs. The wheel is now disassembled:

7. Why all this? I can now use a hub adapter and attach the ATV’s stock hub to a better motor.
The following hub adapter is from Lynxmotion. I will need to drill new holes to match the adapter.

If you are interested, check out your local Target store or you could try Amazon:

Thanks for looking. Any questions, ask in the comments.

Posted in Hackable Toys, Robots, Tutorials, hacks | 4 Comments »

Just got my Spy Gear Spy Video ATV-360

Just got my spy video ATV-360 from Spy Gear. My local Target had this on sale for $28 and it was too good to resist. So much so that I bough two of them – with one as a standby for parts.

The ATV comes with the following features:

• -A skid steer design for easy maneuverability.
• -A wireless monochrome camera.
• -A wireless controller with a nice 360 degree turn feature.
• -A headset which receives a real time video feed from the vehicle as well as audio.

The build quality of the tracks is very good and looks like they can take a beating before they start wearing out. I haven’t checked range yet since I’m going to rip out the internals anyway.

The toy is a good filler for your electronics parts bin. Of special interest is the ATV’s head unit. It comes with a very hackable circuit board. Jake from JackOfAllTrades posted a detailed writeup on the board.

I’ll post when I’m done tearing it apart :).
If you are interested, check out your local Target store or you could try Amazon:

Posted in Hackable Toys, Robots | 3 Comments »

Programming the SRV-1 Robot Wirelessly

The Surveyor SRV-1 robots( the Philips LPC2378 version) have the ability to be programmed remotely via Maxstream Zigbee radios.
The usual way to program the Surveyor SRV-1 is via the lpc21isp utility by issuing the command:
lpc21isp.exe -hex srv1.hex com1 115200 14746
.
To program the robot wirelessly, follow the steps:
1. Download the flash utility from here.
2. You get the following splash screen after unzipping the files and running the exe.
Keep the robot switched off.

3. Browse to the hex file to be downloaded and make the necessary “com” and “baud” changes as shown:

4. Click “Upload file”.This gives the following screen.

5. Now switch on the robot.The file starts loading into flash.

6. Done!

Posted in Microcontrollers, Robots, Tutorials | No Comments »