oday saw the completion of the hardware assembly. The whole frame is together with all servos mounted. Unfortunately they shorted me one size m3 screw, so I had to go to Lowe's to get another, and they only had flat head screws. Now my OCD has me twitching any time I see the top plate. There was also no way included to mount the bottom plate to the top, so I found some 6" aluminum tubes, cut them down to 2 inches each and ran a 3" bolt through them to hold the two plates together. The only thing left that I'm not happy with is the servo mounts for the coxa, they only attach to one of the body plates, that puts more stress on the coxa servo than I'd like, but there is no easy way to add in a bearing on the other side. I may end up trying to printsomething off at the local hackerspace, but I didn't leave much room to work with with the small standoffs.

The other major problem that arose today is the voltage regulator. It doesn't regulate. It puts out the same voltage that you put into it. Also it smells of burnt electronics. Dead on arrival so I'm working with the ebay seller to try and get a replacement. In the meantime I'm going to be using a PC power supply as a power supply for the servos during testing. 

The servo controller is sitting in the PO box waiting for me to pick it up, so tomorrow I can start testing my control software, and calibrating the servos. 

Some testing with the PI shows that it can just manage to power the usb wifi adapter without having to use a powered hub, so I may just use it as a really overpowered wireless serial adapter for the servos. That would simplify the software development for the motions.