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A project log for µBob biped robot

Two legs, four servos, ATtiny85 for brains

dehipudeʃhipu 04/16/2015 at 23:587 Comments

So I was presenting my robots on this year's PyCon.us, and this little guy didn't survive the flight over the Big Pond. It looks like the ESP8266 board is fried. When I get home, I will rebuild it properly, on a printed circuit board and with some nice distance sensors, and, most importantly, a voltage regulator.

Discussions

deʃhipu wrote 05/30/2015 at 21:29 point

Found out what was wrong. Turns out it's not power problems or magic blue smoke or anything like that. It's simply that I soldered the power switch directly to one of the traces on the module, and that got stripped at some point when some force was applied to the switch... Still seems like a dedicated PCB is a good idea, especially since I can then use those SMD time-of-flight distance sensors...

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davedarko wrote 05/19/2015 at 23:13 point

Sad to hear! I really like your small robot! Will you use the ESP-12 boards this time? They come with the ADC broken out :) 

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deʃhipu wrote 05/20/2015 at 08:37 point

I will probably use ESP-12, but not for the ADC -- I discovered node.readvdd33() function (https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-firmware/wiki/nodemcu_api_en#nodereadvdd33) which reads the power voltage, so that is perfect for monitoring the battery. I also want to use those time-of-flight distance sensors, so I will definitely need a PCB for it, which means that it will take several weeks anyways. 

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davedarko wrote 05/20/2015 at 09:28 point

so no regulator then? 

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deʃhipu wrote 05/20/2015 at 09:42 point

Well, if I'm making a PCB anyways, I may as well add a small linear regulator in there. I suppose the lack of a regulator is what killed the current robot.

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davedarko wrote 05/20/2015 at 09:49 point

but the regulator will always give 3.3V so readvdd would give you a steady 3.3V too? Or am I missing something?

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deʃhipu wrote 05/20/2015 at 09:56 point

That's true, oops :) So I will need the ADC after all. Thanks for pointing this out.

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