Baby Joe by scott preston

Much like the other two robots Baby Joe is a technology 
demonstrator. My 1st experience with Basic Stamps was very good!
These are the coolest little chips. If you have a working 
COM port, snap this chip in, write a program, and your off.

Baby Joe, is very similar to Tether Bot except he has a 
Basic Stamp II for a brain and 4 D cells as a power supply. The
plexiglass and aluminum chassis that I bought at Lowes, 
was real nice to work with and cheap (less than $5.00). I used a
cabinet knob as a rest for the back of the bot. Since the 
bot is slightly back heavy it rest there nicely and does not
cause too much friction on a carpet.

 Baby Joe is another technology demonstrator built a lot 
like Tetherbot. The only difference is his size, the addition of
a Basic Stamp II and a Battery pack. Other than that he does 
the same things.

 Rear View
Again I used the no 3rd wheel system. This did not present 
any problems and kept the bot's profile low. I added
calibration port hole for the IR tuning potentiometer. I 
think this was the best feature of the new bot. Now I could
calibrate the eyes with a debug program and then set the 
bot off to avoid things at different distances. 

Front View
Because I reused an old project box I could not fit the IR 
receiver inside the box, but no worries, it's only impact was
on aesthetics.

Now you see what makes Baby Joe go. The 4 D cells provide 
the power and on a PCB to the left mounted underneath you have
the IR Oscillators and voltage regulator.

Subsystems Description
Chassis - consist of aluminum framing and plexiglass.

Power - Basic Stamp II = 4 x "D" cell providing 6VDC regulated 
by a 5VDC Regulator from Radio Shack. There will also be a
switch to function as a global on/off power switch.

Locomotion - x2 "Hacked" Futaba 3003 DC Servo Motors. The 
hack I used was to replace the potentiometer with a voltage
divider consisting of two 1/4 watt 2.2k resistors.

Sensors - 2 Hi-Output IR LED's from Radio Shack and 1 Sharp 
40 kHz IR Receiver Modules. A similar schematic of the
circuit can be found here.

Control - Basic Stamp II.

Basic Stamp I/O

More info at http://www.scottpreston.com
Click on Robots



Email: scott@scottpreston.com