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Thread: Team Kaizen - The Honey Badger

  1. #1
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Hi everyone!

    Following the dramatic events at Robots Live! in Grantham 2017, I'd thought it best to start a build (or should that be rebuild?) diary of The Honey Badger, a featherweight flail spinner robot. Being relatively new (my background is computer programming), the original incarnation of the Badger was beset with reliability problems, being drastically underpowered and inherent build issues. This led to the robot being made into roadkill. I'll see about posting some before and after pictures later on tonight.

    With Insomina coming up, I've decided to challenge myself in rebuilding The Honey Badger in time for the event. My plan is to stick with the original sort of look of the Badger. So rather than use *ahem* wood for the chassis, I've gone for 10mm thick HDPE board and use some carbon steel as the armour this time rather than Aluminium.

    The weapon motor from the original Honey Badger is a Gimson 13.7:1 motor so rather than reuse the original drive motors, I'll aim to get another Gimson motor and use the pair as drive motors (I'll see about reusing the original drive motors in a Beetleweight I am considering). The original batteries were SLAs... I might (haven't decided yet) keep them.

    During Grantham 2017, I blew two speed controllers so I am looking for a replacement. I found a dual controller that looks like it might do the trick, a Hobbywing QuicRun WP 860 Dual Brushed 60A ESC (https://hobbyking.com/en_us/catalog/...rushed-60a-esc). I suspect this will be OK but has anyone got any experience of this controller?

    As for a weapon... I've not really decided yet on wherever to keep the spinner (with it remade) or go for something else.
    Last edited by Ocracoke; 3rd July 2017 at 14:13.

  2. #2
    yeaaah i kinda saw it get reshaped, the girl (iirc) on the hammer really really got into it. anyway good luck in getting it rebuilt, also i would suggest looking at the botbitz ESC as loads of people us them making it easier to borrow/buy parts of people at events

  3. #3
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Thanks. Yeah, Botbitz was recommended to me at the show. I know of Ranglebox who sell them, are there are other sources of these ESCs in the UK?

  4. #4
    Al_'s Avatar
    Member

    Aye, the kid operating that hammer really showed no mercy. I mean I was fully prepared (though hoping not) for Pressure Point to come back home in pieces, its part of the risk. But I was stood watching that right in front of me (I was already OOTA by that point) and really felt sorry for you and bot.

    Anyway, to second what Mark said in recommending the botbitz controllers. I have bought them in brushless form and flashed the brushed firmware onto them like some people do, its a piece of cake once you have a programmer and the instructions are on here. They took all the punishment I had the over the event and there were lost of other feathers using them too.

    ETA, I got mine form Hobby King, they usually have them in their UK warehouse but these have to be flashed yourself to brushed operation.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Ocracoke View Post
    Thanks. Yeah, Botbitz was recommended to me at the show. I know of Ranglebox who sell them, are there are other sources of these ESCs in the UK?
    As Al said you can flash your own which is fair bit cheaper but if you wan plugin and go you can get them straight from botbitz Australia. the cost isn't that bad either even with shipping.




    Quote Originally Posted by Al_ View Post
    Aye, the kid operating that hammer really showed no mercy. I mean I was fully prepared (though hoping not) for Pressure Point to come back home in pieces, its part of the risk. But I was stood watching that right in front of me (I was already OOTA by that point) and really felt sorry for you and bot.

    are those microwaves quaking in there boots yet?

  6. #6

  7. #7
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Many thanks! I've got pretty much all the bits needed to rebuild the robot now.

    Going with the Turnigy speed controllers as suggested and 2 of the Gimson 13.7:1 motors to get it running. The shell is now 10mm HDPE all around rather than use Steel in this one though there'll be enough bracketry to see some metal being used. Ultimately, the robot is going to end up looking a little like Knightmare from RW Series 4 in terms of a general profile I reckon.

    The things I need to decide on is:

    - Batteries. For the moment, the SLAs I have will do for testing but I think something different may be warranted here. I was looking at LiFePO4 batteries... haven't made my mind up on that front yet.

    - Weaponry. I can either go for the spinning bar again or challenge myself for something more involved.

    No pictures yet, the body plastics only arrived this morning and I've not really had a chance to do anything substantial with it.
    Last edited by Ocracoke; 12th July 2017 at 17:25.

  8. #8
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Well a bit of a bummer today. Managed to brick one of the speed controllers in my attempt to convert it to brushed. I presume that when I flashed the new .hex file to the chipset, something went wrong so now it doesn't beep or respond to any controller input.

    I am not really sure what I did wrong... I downloaded the .hex file for the controller (http://launchpad.net/brushed) and then used the following command to flash it to the speed controller, making sure the pins were matched up:

    avrdude.exe -p atmega8 -P usb -c usbasp -U flash:w:tz85a_r40.hex

    This seemed to work fine. Any ideas?

  9. #9
    I didn't have much luck with the tz85a_r40.hex file, despite it matching the ESC I was using on that list. Seem to remember that when I tried to test it, it went up in smoke. Tried the bs.hex file instead and that worked fine.

  10. #10
    Ocracoke's Avatar
    Team Kaizen

    Ah, OK. Will give that a go to see if it comes back to life.

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