For your eyes only…

Searching through ebay I found most of the parts I would need to get my Omnibot running again.

First off all I choose a roboduino board – found one on ebay, origin:China, so keep your fingers crossed that this will hit my doorstep.

Further I got a big 6v motorcycle battery that has the same size as the original from Tomy. Luckily it was already charged and ready to run, as I don’t have a charger right now.

LEDs, Multicolor-LEDs for the eyes – ebay was my friend again.

And a tiny LCD for the front to select programms and as debug screen.

During the last week the majority of the stuff arrived. I don’t know wether the LCD or the Roboduino got lost in our post office. I found the notice that the postman tried to deliver something and I was not at home. In the post office the guy searched for 30 minutes without luck. Now I am waiting for a call… and waiting… and waiting….

Meanwhile I spent some time on the new front panel that would sit in robots balley where the old tape deck and clock was placed. Björn provided me some old forex board (some kind of thin plasic board) that I cut and shaped till it now fits perfectly. I tried to stay close to the original look of the old panel – very 80s and so it fits the overall look.

Considering the eyes I wired up the LEDS . I choose to hook them up parallel and the non-electronic guy that I am, I just burned the first one because of a forgotten resistor. But as the saying goes “Learning by burning” I got it working now. Both eyes are lit up equally and look really great.

I tested the drivetrain and first I was shocked as nothing moved. At work we have a big power supply and in the end it showed up that every motor (Omnibot got two) sucks a full Ampere. No chance for my tiny power supply to comply those needs. The battery, I got now does have 4Ah and this works just fine.

Hopefully the missing parts pop up soon and I can go on.

Back to ebay searching for sensors.