Team Health & Safety - First Time Builder

[Zenith]

It surely looks like progress has allowed us a look up her skirt for once!

The past few weeks saw me satisfying both my inner and outer 6-year-old with some hardcore CAD design. Not the 3D-wizardry kind ofcourse, but the Cardboard-Aided kind. You know you've crossed a certain threshold when you're using the cardboard boxes your bot stuff came in to make your robot mock-ups.

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Anyways, it finally brings some light at the end of the tunnel for the two sheets of HDPE that are anxiously awaiting their brutal murder trial.

But this is not all, oh no - with having studied the inner workings of the Viper and drawing up a schematic, I finally had grown sufficient testicular awesomeness to have a go at putting together a working circuit. All the parts were there, now it was time to line them up in the correct 'no-the-square-peg-can't-go-in-the-round-hole' way (this was naturally preceded with me making a removable link first, because HEALTH AND SAFETY PEOPLE).

This didn't go without a good share of screwing up ofcourse. You might notice that this very much has a 'learn-as-I-go-along' vibe to it, so naturally, there are also embarrassing screw ups. This particular one went like this:

Step 1: Order BEC plugs.

Step 2: "Hey, the connectors come separate from the plugs! I have to assemble the plugs myself then"

Step 3: Proceed to put all the connectors inside the plugs

Step 4: Wonder why it is so hard to get a wire to stay in there.

Step 5: Proceed to pry all the connectors out

Step 6: Look at the connectors, look at the wire, and hear a penny drop.

Yes, I know. Despite all of this though, I eventually got the following setup ready:

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Eventually, with Lamb of God blasting a fitting AWAAAAAKENNNNNNNNNNN through the living room, the wheel moved. Here is a reconstruction:



I immediately felt like I'd popped a roboteering cherry, and felt the need for a cigarette, a shower and a cuddle. However, what I got was some post-orgasmic drama, as the plugs on the ESC would not fit on the receiver of my Spektrum DXe (a Spektrum AR610). This is all because the AR610 has those offset cavities which can't take square plugs.

Ofcourse, I could just use the HK one from the Viper (which I did for testing), but for the eventual bot I really want to leave the Viper in one piece (the AR610 also seems incompatible with the parts in the Viper by the way).

I reckon that if I want to learn how to do stuff properly (like making BEC plugs, AMIRITE?), I have to build TINAD from the ground up - using Viper parts in the eventual bot is cheating. And as Taylor Swift will tell you, cheating is bad.

Next step will be to learn soldering, and tools for that are already on the way. For a driving platform I will need to combine two wires into a single one (like a Y, not like 1+1=1), so it will be interesting to see how that will work out.

Tips are welcome and will be met with a thunderous applause from behind my computer.