Electronic hobbies are becoming extinct

[poppo]

 

It's getting harder and harder to do any old fashioned electronics work. Short of using Jameco or Mouser, discreet components (and other stuff) have just about gone the way of the dodo. Several years ago I started working on a variety of projects. One was a semi-autonomous robot rover shown below. Then for a couple of years, I didn't really do too much in this area.

In my recent pinball thread I used a voice synthesizer module (leftover from this robot project), but I wanted to find something a little better. I knew there were a lot of voice modules out there because I had a hard time deciding which one to get (back then). But after doing a ton of Googling, it looks like nobody is making them any more. Everything has been discontinued.    

So I give it a few more years and trying to find any parts will be like trying to find a vacuum tube.  

[FORDSBS]

You impress me with your knowledge.
Ford
 

[poppo]

You impress me with your knowledge.

It's called too much free time.  

I was pretty happy with the way the robot thing worked out. What was funny was it got to the point where I had so much crap on it, I forgot how most of it worked. It was like a Borg - assimilating everything in my parts bins.  

The first picture is another shot of in it's docking station (and charger). It used a laser line and a rear mounted camera to enable navigation to back up into it. This picture also shows the gripper arm in the down position. It had it's own 360 degree pan and tilt camera on it that was used not just for watching the gripper, but as a side clearance camera when the arm was raised.

The second picture was the last version before I retired it. I had added a retractable car antenna on the left side that also could be raised and lowered like the gripper arm. The idea was to mount some sensors on the end of it. I never got around to that. I had also replaced a couple of the cameras, but you can see the one on the gripper arm being used for side clearance. And yes, that black wire tie sticking out is a 'curb feeler'.   

As for the original topic, try finding a web cam these days. Nobody uses them anymore either.

[poppo]

One more picture. View from the right side.

Besides for the laser guidance for docking, I had black tape on that docking station. The gripper arm camera could be rotated to look down at the rear wheel while backing up,  and one could line things up that way by driving the wheel on the tape. That could be used when remote controlling it (hence the wireless router). There were two micro switches mounted on the rear of each side (seen behind the rear wheel). When both were engaged the unit knew it was docked. if one made contact first, the unit would auto-adjust (stop that wheel),  so that the other one would also make contact.

The rear of the dock station also pivoted and slid side to side. You can see the curve cut into the wood guide. This allowed the dock to also self adjust for those less than stellar docking maneuvers.

Maybe this should be moved to the 'other hobbies' section.

[stayouttadabunker]

That's really a fantastic piece of robotics poppo! wow!
I can only imagine all the stuff that's involved to make that work the way you want it to!
Thank you for sharing that with us...
I'm guessing you'll have no problem making a Jackpot confetti/streamer cannon! 

[poppo]

I can only imagine all the stuff that's involved to make that work the way you want it to!

Lots of  and and

 

[TZtech]

Cool Robot

Have to disagree on electronic as a hobby becoming extinct. Just look at the success of the Arduino and the popularity of things like maker faires. Yes most thing are going surface mount but you can get modules that are pre built. Have a look at the variety of shields avaialbe for the Arduino for example.

Spakfun has some really nice stuff but a bit pricey - Heres a link to what they have for speech synthisis - http://www.sparkfun.com/search/results?term=speech&what=products.

If you into robotics also check out - http://www.servomagazine.com/

Ian

[StatFreak]

Not sure why I didn't post sooner, but that is very impressive Poppo!   

We have local fairs where high school and college students build robots, sometimes for robot competitions, and sometimes for other reasons. JPL is nearby, as well as Lockheed, and they always have strong presences at our local functions.


Stat