Close
0%
0%

Hexy the Hackaday Hexapod

Hackaday Space ARG contest prize build.

Similar projects worth following
2014/06/09 11:48 Item out for delivery

  • Powering Hexy - It's Alive, but needs work.

    Emerica06/20/2014 at 16:28 0 comments

    Powering Hexy has proved to be a slight challenge, at least un-wired.

    I've got to collect all my batteries or spend some bucks. For now I've found a  6V power supply for the servo side of the board, using usb for the logic side. Hexy is Alive. I messed up connecting a few servos to the board, and a couple of Hexy's legs didn't work as expected, a quick swap of positions and all seemed well, Until I ran the first few sets of moves in the  PoMoCo python application provided with Hexy.

    The gui give buttons for all of Hexy's moves, controls for each servo, and a "Kill all Servos" button. When you send Hexy though a move, PoMoCo doesn't kill power to the servos used after it's moved, leaving you with a hexy with a bunch of servo's making a bunch of noise. Your only option is to push the kill all button.

    Now I don't understand servos too much yet, but this would indicate to me that the servos are having to work, fighting each other pretty hard when you have already completed a move. Maybe this is part of the high servo failure rate users have experienced?
    Taking a look into the code a little, it became very apparent that the software was written to get the product out and has not really been updated to included the functionality they had once planned. There are a number of TODO's left waiting for someone to implement.
    One of which appears to be return feedback from Hexy, so  you can't tell if a servo has made it to it's target (possible??), which didn't really leave them many options that I can see to terminate power to the servo. Hence the Kill All Servos button.

    # retreive waiting responses
    #  don't need reading yet, holding off on fully implementing it till needed

    This doesn't work for me. I want Hexy to make it's intended moves and then go silent, not having servos fighting each other until you click a button telling them to stop. So I've made a few changes and will continue to make the software a little kinder to Hexy before I run the servos much more. I've tried making some changes to the move() function. Though the way the moves are designed to "cascade" (for lack of a better word)  changes there won't quite work as expected.
    For now I have been adding servo kill commands to the moves that I am using.

    At the end of a moves .py file I add something like


    for i in servos:
        servos[i].kill()

View project log

Enjoy this project?

Share

Discussions

2ibrahi wrote 09/26/2021 at 09:12 point

This is impressive and I think we need to learn from this post. I am working on Propane Delivery service and this might help me in that case.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Tom Mix wrote 06/25/2014 at 17:58 point
Jealous :)

  Are you sure? yes | no

Ben Delarre wrote 06/25/2014 at 17:39 point
That's great, love this little guy, I might have to get one. Glad you are enjoying your prize!

  Are you sure? yes | no

mikeneiderhauser wrote 06/09/2014 at 20:26 point
Yay!

  Are you sure? yes | no

Similar Projects

Does this project spark your interest?

Become a member to follow this project and never miss any updates