Omnibot

Omnibot ® 5402/TR5000Resurrection of this blog… or call it just a new project. Time has become a rare good and so I did not write much lately. Around xmas I finished my big Hellomat cab. Now it is powered with an old xbox, a special vertical version of Coin-Ops (thanks BB) and it is running perfectly. It took me two controllers till I finally managed the soldering, but no one is perfect and this is another story that I will pick up when adding a spinner to it.

Since I was a kid I wanted an Omnibot. When it first came out around 1980, I wanted it so badly that it was the only entry on my xmas wishlist and I remember taking part in a contest held by German cartoon mag “Fix & Foxi” – main price was a Tomy Omnibot in all its glory. Guess, that week I did not catch much sleep, thinking about me winning this robot. Off course I didn’t win, but thanks to ebay I found one, some 25 years later and I tell you what: I am still as exited as I was back than.

This emotion has got a slight setback, when I opened the package from ebay. On the auction picture the little bot was looking good and the text said it need some slight fixes and it would be a real collectible. The reality was something else: cracks, wrong screws, moved bodyparts, black color on the bottom, missing rubber band… the list goes on; in short a complete wreck that looked as if it was kicked down the staircase to the basement. I was about to send it back but Nadine saw it and told me that I could not throw out a little, helpless creature like that. Guess she was right. The lady who sold it got a negative feedback for robot abuse (and not seeing anything wrong about her description) and I started to take it apart in order to fix things.

poor omnibot. who can resist this look?  cleaning the bodyparts  

First off all some paint would be good to get rid of the yellowing parts. So this morning I took apart the arms and sprayed them with whit auto body paint. Now those look good and the complete body will be next up.

spray paint the whole body, arms and head new cloth for old robots - paintshop done!

The transparent dome on Omnibots head got scratches all over and fat crack in the center. Probably I will take it to caos place tonight as he has a lot of experience with scratched plastics. He already suggested to grind it with fine sandpaper and use some special paste that will softly abrogate the plastic and polish it with at the same time. If everything works fine all scratches should be gone. Considering the crack… well, I think I can’t make this disappear but was thinking about putting a band-aid over it, in order to show what he has been put through.

There are a ton more things that need to be done.. did I mention that he (from now on he is male) is constantly screaming when turned on? I am no electronics guy but maybe it has something to do with the shielding of my used powerplug (battery was missing – off course) or an old capacitor is defect. Well,  I guess I will swap the old internas with something new, like an Arduino board or roboduino. Pinter75 has done it already and the outcome looks really good. The hardest part to replace will be the missing rubber band on Omnibots foot. Maybe I can use t-molding or something similar. If you got an idea feel free to post a comment or contact me directly.

I am new to the Arduino stuff and will first up concentrate on getting him optically sane.

One link that no Omnibot owner should miss is The Old Robots.com – tons of information, manuals, schematics and and and.

So happy Robanukka…

4 comments on “Omnibot”

  1. 黑帽SEO says:

    Hello everyone thanks for

    good information.

  2. Thanks for this useful article.

  3. obserodrybriT says:

    Just want to say what a great blog you got here!
    I’ve been around for quite a lot of time, but finally decided to show my appreciation of your work!

    Thumbs up, and keep it going!

    Cheers
    Christian, Satellite Direct Tv

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