I know some of you have been following my progress on the Printrbot Tank retrofit (thanks again @Brook_Drumm1 ). As you know I could not get the provided tread to print on any printer I have because nothing I have is bigger than 200mmx200mm. So that meant I had to ditch the wheels and wheel covers. I found this sprocket and tread set on Thingiverse and scaled everything up to 161%. That gave me an M6 sized hole in the treads. Amazon provided M6x70mm nylon screws and nuts. Perfect! I love the color effect. The treads are printed 8 at a time standing vertically so that the sprockets don’t rip them apart under load. I had previously estimated 30 links per side, Md it appears I will need 28. Talk about a Mark I Eyeball! The fit is terrific. I did minimal cleanup because that’s what wear and tear will do and ridges will just add to traction. This baby is getting my nerf 12 shot gatling turret. It’s a beast!
Powered by smoothie? With a Chilipeppr widget for controlling it?
Hahaha…if I could, I would
@jlauer and I were serious about that. If it’s got motors and a serial connection, it needs a Chilipeppr workspace. Words to live by.
Ok, then let’s see…2 motors for wheels, 2 fpr turret, 1 for the gun triggerr. How would we run it iver bluetooth or autonomously?
ESP8266 has enough IO. Connects to your wifi network. We’ve got the basis of an MQTT broker being worked on so that we can exchange messages back and forth. Make some nice graphical controls in a Chilipeppr widget. When pressed they send their respective commands in a string formatted like
movement/forward/seconds/10
turret/rotate/degrees/90
and the tank can reply back “done”.
Autonomous is more interesting, and would probably be better off as sending it pre-written commands on an ongoing basis, getting back input from any sensors, and adjusting the next commands to send accordingly.
I agree. This is perfect for a ChiliPeppr workspace to build a control environment to drive it.
Plus, could always use a mobile beer bot.
I’ll try to post our esp software- just off the shelf esp dev board and a phone.
You going to put the changes up somewhere for others without a bed big enough for the stock treads?
Would be nice to see the the modified files on GitHub so it can be further forked/adapted. Especially if we can build a little community around add on hardware (turrets, sensor mounts, etc, etc).
So long as I can control 5 motors. Then a PING sensor and maybe a few more things too! @Brook_Drumm are you coming to the DC Science and Tech thing in April?
Tom, check out my post with the Attacknid. That’s the turret. When done I will post the files. Wheel and track came from Thingiverse, Turret came from a robot arm base, motors and gearbox from Tamiya (I wanted to add speed control). I will park it all up there when done or… as I go along if others prefer.
Oh and I have a 2 mini rocket (A size engine) battery. Should I add that?
Or…hehehehehe, an airsoft gun?
Hey
Hey back @Skeet_Swanson
@raykholo , ok, a Smoothie. I guess I will need 12-24V and a decent battery. However my one board is going to the OpenCNC V2.0. What inexpensive board to use…or just plain ESP?
@Samer_Najia ok, I wasn’t serious about the smoothie bit here, that was just from context and made a good joke. Yeah, ESP8266. Grab a nodemcu board from China for $4 and you’ll need to write a program for it in arduino ide, which has the mqtt library a plenty. Also some mosfets for the motors, etc.
Or use my 8 relay motorair board from tiny sine and use the software they already provide