I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics

So, starting to play around with Stryene/ABS to do some of the modeling I will need for the project. It is basically the same stuff as used in modern plumbing. This material is a favorite of modelers and prop builders.

I bought a few small sheets a few weeks back from a hobby store. The stuff is incredibly easy to cut, shape and bond together and of course it is fairly light. This will be the basic material that a lot of the pieces of the outfit will be made of.

I contacted a local plastic supplier to see about buying the material in sheets (4'x8'). By buying it in larger sheets instead of from a hobby store will cut the price by 75%. I'm thinking of buying multiple sheets of different thickness to stock up a bit for different projects.

I hope this weekend to put together a vacuum forming table to help in the creation of the parts. This should really help with the overall construction time of not only this project but future ones as well.

Haven't been idle...

Although I haven't done much with my own personal work, I have been busy sorting some things out. The list includes...

* Attended a meeting of the local microcontroller/robotics group. As expected a bunch of geeks. So I fit right in. Some interesting ideas for future projects but nothing with the Steampunk outfit.

* Visited a store in Tampa called Practical Electronics. A definite step up from Radio Shack and will be a good source for when I need certain parts that I'd prefer not to mail order.

* Thought of a way to cut the number of lines connecting from the back pack to the head piece by quite a bit. Its going to drop from 16 lines down to 7. Basically I am going to use 4 lines to select which servo to talk to. The other 3 will be power, ground and signal.

* Begining to research batteries. I am probably going to go with 14V batteries to supply the hood. I need to measure the amperage the servos require so I can get a better idea of the size of battery I need.

* Purchased a cheap, little robot kit as a little study in some possibilities. It was about $12 and its basically a small insect robot that tracks a local bright light and tries to move to it. I figured the kit would give me some ideas as well as a chance to brush up on my soldering skills.

Programmed first chip

I managed to hook up a chip to the breadboard and program it from my computer. In other words, I have a standalone chip that if provided power will run the servo program. I know that this had been done for years but it is cool when you do it for the first time.

What this means is that I can now take this chip, attach it to a circuit board, provide some power and I have my servo controller. Too damn cool...

Here is a video of it in action. The blinking LED is the heartbeat and the green light indicates normal operation. The other (unlit) red LED is to show test mode.

Program for mouth servos is done

Finished up the coding for the mouth servos. It has all the features I wanted and works pretty slick. The next step is to burn the program down to a permanent chip and then get that mounted on a circuit board. That will have to wait for a few supplies to arrive.

I picked up some plastic to start trying to make some of the actual physic part of the outfit. May play with that for a bit.

Almost done with mouth microcontroller

More progress on programming the microcontroller for the mouth. I completed the test coding. This is the self test I've mentioned before to put the servos through a full range of movement at different speeds.

I only need to finish the anger code (which will be easy because I can use the test code) and then set up a few pins to allow me to hook up a few buttons so that I can trigger the test or anger modes while wearing the outfit. I know the videos may not be exciting but it helps me mentally because it makes me prove my progress... :)

Things to watch for in the video...

At the beginning, the card is reset and you see the servo to both extremes rapidly (the servo is in middle of the shot, very small.) It then moves back and forth very slowly. You can see the signal controlling it on the screen. Also, a little hard to make out, there is one LED that stays on that indicates the test mode. The other blinks for the heartbeat. Halfway through the video when the card drops itself to normal mode, a different LED lights to show this. The LEDs will be not a visible part of the outfit but just used for diagnostics when something fails.