Anyone who attempt to build BB-8 should be prized, because it is a never ending story... even if you want to make a small scale project. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. :-)
Thanks. It certainly is paying dividends. I spent around a half hour demoing it to various groups in the makerspace and everyone was delighted to see it and take videos. Big smiles all around.
Next level BB-8 would be one with a micro-controller and a counterweight inside to give a swing when it starts, and stops moving. ( to prevent the wobble at the beginning and end of it moving along a line. )
Not a lot of room in this one given its small size and the inexpensive components I'm using. If I fork out a few hundred dollars then I could go with smaller components and then do some counterweights. Now that I've gotten to this stage I could try acceleration and deceleration at least.
hi I have made a paper-mache sphere using a big beach ball and also painted it with the same design which is on the bb8 body but it won't strong enough as it changes its shape when I put the internal mechanism ,I have some resin left with me but I don't want to put it on the outer part because I have already painted it so please help me please give some ideas to make it more stronger
Thanks Ritchie! The deodorant casters don't actually roll, no bearings inside and a light coating of oil doesn't help. But I think that may be a good thing. Rolling casters might make it fall off too easily. I don't know. I've found some better plastic rollers that I might order. -Steve
Surprisingly, here in North America at least, many people have old globes from before the 1990s that are no longer correct, so they're easy to find on online classifieds like www.freecycle.org/ (search on there for India, there are some locations, and sign up and post a WANTED for a globe). Also on ebay (www.ebay.in/itm/A-Desk-Table-Top-Political-World-Globe-Blue-/272402135621?hash=item3f6c6eba45:g:P-YAAOSw~OVW0ENk) and in second hand stores.
Glad you like it! I was building long before easily available CNC and 3D printing came along so I guess I use those only when it's easier. But the details for the head are 3D printed -- they just haven't been put on yet.
Somehow BB-8 makes people react that way. The video was cut back from around 3 minutes of folks reacting like that. Something about all the round shapes I think, plus it's the size of a pet or small child.
Yeah, making a rolling ball is easy. Making one with a head that stays on is definitely tricky. Glad I could generate some ideas. Thank you for watching.
This is a challenge I almost want to do! Although I don't really have the materials to replicate the project. If you could use a hollow iron/steel ball, a somewhat heavy head, and have all the drive circuitry in the head, it might work better. The idea would be to use a microcontroller and some of those omnidirectional wheels to control the head's position on the steel ball. Magnets would hold the head on. The microcontroller could then be programed to stabilize (setup to always battle the inverse pendulum) but with the offset angle (in the X and Y direction) governed by a RC controller. So normally the head will be balanced at the very top of the sphere, and the center of mass of the whole unit is directly above the point of contact on the ground. In other words, it is well balanced. With an input from a RC, let's say that you want to go forward, so then the head will tilt forward, but a PID control loop will stabilize the head to remain at a fixed angle, always, say, 10 degrees from the top of the sphere. This results in a roughly constant imbalance that would cause the whole bot to roll forward. It is like a robot monkey balancing on a ball! And the best part is that the head would not be bobbing back and forth like that.
Battling the inverse pendulum with that design may be difficult, but I think you can modify a drone microcontroller board to do this. All the PID control loop stuff is already developed and optimized, All that would need to be changed would be the code that normally figures out how much power to apply to the motors, and replace that instead with code that maps the output from the PID to 3 omnidirectional wheels. You might want to start out with those wheels and practice making a robot with them first to gain an understanding of how they work, and how to use them. Then make them ballence on a ball w/ an arduino (multiwii code maybe?) and the MPU6050 sensor!!!!
The problem with the head driving the ball approach is that the head is always on top of the ball. The actual BB-8 can move it's head a fair ways toward the side (or front or back) of the ball both with the ball moving and with it stationary. Though having said that, that's not something I can do deliberately with mine anyway. I have thought of what you suggest for doing away with the head's attachment to the drive system inside though. The problem seems to be the strength and therefore the weights of the magnets. With two magnets in attraction like I and everyone else are doing can use much smaller magnets than magnets that attract to steel (at least that's what I'm told.) Apparently magnets to attract to just a steel ball would have to be very big. I've seen a few BB-8's that do what you're suggesting but without the steel ball or magnets. James Bruton's first BB-8 was that way (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RbesCNvae1M.html).
Thanks. I'm planning on trying acceleration for start and I have an IMU (Intertial Management Unit) board, Adafruit's BNO055, for stop. Though I guess I can try deceleration first.
Nice! Would it somehow be possible to use more magnets instead of the deo roller balls to reduce friction of the head on the sphere? Should make moving the head much smoother.
My rollers don't actually roll, but that may be helping the head stay on. I fear better rollers might slip off too easily. I'm ordering some to try it anyway. As for magnet balls instead of roller balls, it's been found that it's best to have rollers that are separate from the rollers.
Nice job RimstarOrg. This may sound silly, but do you reckon you can make a robot which has a Van De Graaff Generator on the end or a Tesla coil to zap other robots or targets? that would be cool.
Now that is really nice, it's getting along nicelly. Bit unrelated, but as I'm building a RC plane, and if you plan on building more remote control stuff, you can use cheap arduino clones and nRF24L01 2.4GHz tranceivers. for like 10 bucks you will be able to get a pair which will communicate over hundreds of meters, plus, get some telemetry if you really want to.
Thanks for the tips. I'm new to RC and haven't looked into many options yet. Hundreds of meters sounds awesome. With what I have in this BB-8 I have to be within around 10 feet/3 meters of it. As a I move further way it starts cutting out and then a little further yet it doesn't work at all.
there is a channel, called Iforce2D. That channels is mostly about DIY RC stuff. in one of his vid, he took a directional Yagi antenna for wifi, connected it to the transmitter (thei're both 2.4GHz), and he used a drone to fly 2.3 km away, and still got 480 packets per second of 500 packets sent. Well, that would be an overkill, but in my opinion you could use an upgrade, 3 meters doesn't sound fun.
/watch?v=WfskHptAK14 here is the vid. It is just a question how far can it go, the signal fell just a tiny bit. However, i'm not sure whether you need that heck of a range. unless you also do FPV and go around scaring people from your basement.
Congrats on getting 100K (soon) and success with the droid. Will you be possibly making a larger one at some point, so you can add all the features that people are suggesting in the comments?
Thanks. No plans for a larger one. I like the portability of this one -- I can carry it all long distance easily and with all the effort I put into it, I definitely want to take it a lot of places. Plus, with an axle drive system instead, which I may do later, all those things can be done. I also wonder if maybe this smaller size elicits more response than a larger one does.
Cool. I have always thought that an axle drive system would be the way to go with these things, but the hamster wheel type is the one that I see most of the time. Keeping it smaller means the motors are a lot less stressed in that arrangement too. Looking forward to that design.
pls make a r2d2 (fully functional )robot in your next video because i haven't got any good video still. if u have got some good video about this pls give the link
I don't have any plan to make an r2d2. I suggest having a look at this playlist by James Bruton ru-vid.com/group/PLpwJoq86vov9_0JeWSmoJSQCyFh-1q5LS where he makes and r6 droid but the mechanism is the same as an r2d2.
I've gotten globes from local online classifieds (www.kijiji.ca/ in my case) and from looking in second hand stores/thrift stores. You could also try local free stuff websites (such as my.freecycle.org/). And I guess there's ebay.com. You may have to wait a few weeks or a month or two but in big cities they turn up pretty often.
Thanks! Yup, adding the details to the head and painting it all is underway. But I'm may do a few other things like adding my IMU to reducing wobbling. The motors are a 9.6V drill motor and a 12V drill motor. The 9.6V one drains its battery much faster than the 12V one (I guess it has to work harder) so I've found another 12V one and am replacing the 9.6V one.
If you mean the nuts and bolts that I adjust at 3:50, those are nylon nuts and bolts (i.e. made of nylon). Those are 1/4 inch diameter and 20 threads per inch but they come in various sizes. I get them from the miscellaneous hardware drawers at Home Depot in the hardware aisle. They are expensive since they're not the normal metal ones. But they're lightweight and non-electrically conductive, two reasons I often use them.
I used what I had because in version 1 I started with a toy remote control truck, and so I adapted the electronics for that for version 2. I still get a surprising amount of control since with the two wheels of the hamster drive system I can do forward, backward, turn on the spot and also turn with a 4 foot/1 meter radius. With just that I can do a surprising amount of puppetry. But yeah, for controlling audio I'm going to have to come up with something else. Also, if I ever make the head able to move away from being just on top then I'd need something for that too.
It's almost impossible to make a living off of RU-vid videos. Very few make it work. I combine a number of income sources, including RimstarOrg and my website, all while making sure they're things that I enjoy. Starting out though, I'd recommend a more secure approach. I've been a computer programmer, then a teacher, then a solar contractor. But certainly if you like the making aspect of it then there are the engineering professions, or the visual effects field, and doubtless others.
Yeah, not a lot of room in this small BB-8, especially not with these components. I could move some of the parts inside lower down though, which might help.
