RoboFac.com V 1.0 Eric Lin
Table of Contents The Mechanicals... 2 The Legs... 2 The Servos... 6 The Main Body... 11 The Electronics... 27 Lobot 32 Channel Servo Controller Board... 27 The Software... 29 Lobot Servo Controller.exe... 29 PS2 Joystick Control Code... 33
The Mechanicals The Legs a) Let us first assemble the upper leg joints, or the butt area of Alpha the Hexapod. Pick up two of the large u-shaped servo brackets and attach them together as the picture below shown. Screw them tight with M2*6 screws and nuts. All together we need six pairs of them.
b) We can now move on to the knee area of our hexapod. Pick up two of the small u-shaped servo brackets and attach them together as the picture below shown. Screw them tight with M2*6 screws and nuts. Still, we need six pairs of them.
c) Now we can assemble the lower leg area of our hexapod. Pick up two of the leg panels and a foot stand and attach them together as the picture below shown. Screw them tight with M3*6 round head screws and nuts. Still, we need six pairs of them. d) Pick out twelve pairs of female and male hexagonal pillar brass and attach them together as the picture shown.
e) Pick two pairs and attach them between the leg panels as the picture shown. Screw them tight together using M2*6 screws. Repeat this for the other five legs.
The Servos a) Pick out two servos and one knee joint. Mount the bracket to the servo using M2*5 screws or M2*6 self-tapping screws. b) Repeat this five more times and we have six complete knee joints. We should label A side and B side to each of them for convenience sake. A side connects the leg panels and B side connects the butt area.
c) Side B: Set all the servos to their initial positions using our servo controller and the software (guidance to this part please refer to the electronics). Mount the thick servo horn (4mm) to the north pole of the servo (with metal gear) and mount the thin servo horn (2mm) to the south pole of the servo. Make sure the eight holes on horn positioned as the picture shown. Do not apply the screw yet. *If you are unable to perfect the horn position, you can always fine tune the initial position of the servo which I will introduce in the Fine Tune part of this guide.
d) Attach the knee joints to the butt area. First tight the north pole of the servo using M2*6 self-tapping screw and then tight the south pole of the servo using M2*5 self-tapping screw.
e) Side A: Set servos to initial positions. Mount the servo horns. Make sure the eight holes on horn positioned as the picture shown. f) Attach the lower leg area to side A. The holes on leg panels should match the holes on horns as the picture shown. Screw tight with M3 self-tapping screws. Repeat *5.
The Main Body a) Pick out the upper body panel and lower body panel. b) Loose the screws inside the PS2 signal receiver. c) Attach the signal receiver to the upper body panel using four M2*10 self-tapping screws. (You can find them in the horn accessory package) The picture below shows the front and back of the finished pattern.
d) Pick out the power switch, voltage reducer, battery connecting wire, and the extra line of wire. e) Get rid of the middle pins of the voltage reducer. f) Cut the wire into three parts with individual length being 15cm,15cm,7cm
g) Solder the wires as the picture shown.
h) Connect the wires as the picture shown. i) Mount the power switch into the round hole of upper body panel.
j) Attach six servos on the upper panel and tight with M2*6. The north pole of the servo is facing up as the picture shown.
k) Pick out the support panel and attach them into the upper body panel. l) Attach the lower body panel and screw tight with M2*6.
m) Attach the voltage reducer onto the lower body panel using M3*10 screw and nut as the picture shown.
n) Initialize the positions of the servos mounting on body panels and mount the horns onto the servos. As always, holes on the horns should position as the picture shown.
o) Attach the legs. p) Attach four nylon pillars onto the upper body panel with M3 nuts.
q) Fasten the LiPo battery onto the lower body panel using zipties.
r) Mount the servo controller and wire the servos and battery onto the board. Attach the servo wire extender to the farest servo of each leg.
s) Apply M3*6 screw to the north pole of each servo and M3*6 self-tapping screw to the south pole.
The Electronics Lobot 32 Channel Servo Controller Board a) Various ports explained. b) As you probably know this is the wiring up of power supply. The red dupont connector obviously connects to the battery.
c) Remote control set up. Wiring up the PS2 signal receiver to its port as the pictures describe. d) Switch the control mode to PS2. And turn on the power of PS2 joystick and you can start running the action groups remotely.
The Software Lobot Servo Controller.exe a) Install the Driver b) Open up USB Control.exe. This servo controller can control up to 32 servos simultaneously. c) Select the COM that your board connects to your computer and hit Connect. The default speed is 115200.
d) The upper panel displays the selection status of servos. You can manually select or deselect the servos that connect to your servo board. Click the select bottom right next to the black area will select or deselect ALL the servos. The save bottom allows you to save your servo position.(must save under the same folder of USB Control.exe). And there are multiple language options under the language dropdown menu. e) The middle panel displays all the selected servos. You can drag and drop each servo on the displaying area, which allows you to mimic the real servo position. The slider on each window controls the rotation of individual servo. The P value represents servo position, with 500
being 0 degree and 1500 being 180 degree. The B value represents servo deviation. f) The upper right panel is where to download the action groups to the board. The Action group dropdown menu allows you to select one specific action group. The Start Address is where the specific action group takes place on the board. Think of the address as storage space. An action group that starts from 256 to 258 takes 3 address, this is equivalent of occupying 3 units of storage space of the board. Initialize allows you to start from Action Group No.0 Address 256, which is the starting point of storage space. Download is the most important bottom of this software. Hit this bottom and you will download the action groups you program into the board. Erase allows you to get rid of the downloaded action group. Hit Action Group bottom and the action group will run automatically. Select Only and the action group will play only once.
g) The lower right panel is where to create action groups. I will explain this part by an example. Say you want to create an action group of servo 1 rotating from 90 degree to 180 degree and back to 0 degree. 90 degree is the initial position of the servo and also the starting position of the action group. 1. So the first bottom to hit is the ResetServo bottom. This bottom will initialize the position of all selected servos which in the example, is servo 1. 2. Clicking Add will register the current servo position in the sequence of action groups which will appear on the bottom left panel. The initial position will be sequence 1. 3. Drag the slide to P value of 2500, which is 180 degree and hit Add again. This will register a second servo position which will be sequence 2.
4. Drag the slide to P value of 500, which is 0 degree and hit Add one more time. This will register a third servo position which will be sequence 3. 5. Hit Run. And the servo will run through sequence 1 to sequence 3. Now an action group is created. 6. You can modify the execution time of each action (sequence 1-sequence 2) with 1000 being 1 second. The lowest number is 100, which is 0.1 second. PS2 Joystick Control Code START Action Group 0 UP Action Group 1 DOWN Action Group 2 LEFT Action Group 3 RIGHT Action Group 4 Action Group 5 Action Group 6 Action Group 7 O Action Group 8 O
L1 Action Group 9 R1 Action Group 10 SELECT+ Action Group 11 Select first then SELECT+ Action Group 12 Select first then SELECT+ Action Group 13 Select first then SELECT+O Action Group 14 Select first then O SELECT+L1 Action Group 15 Select first then L1 SELECT+R1 Action Group 16 Select first then R1 L2 Speed Up R2 Speed Down