I know that this may not be the best place to ask a question about Hexbug, but I wonder if anyone has any experience with the Balancer from the Hexbug Build Blitz. I just finished the assembly, powered it up, connected it to Vex Pilot, and was able to make it move and raise and lower its arms.
The problem I have is that it makes no attempt whatsoever to balance itself like I was expecting. As my wife says, it doesn’t fall over, but the reason is that it is dragging its butt on the ground.
The motors seem to be working, but it doesn’t make any attempt to balance itself. Is it working as designed or not? The CPU has a 3 axis gyro symbol on it, so I was expecting it to use the gyro to make it balance.
Does anyone else have any experience with the Hexbug Balancer?
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Make sure that when you connect to the robot and start it the robot is laying flat on the table (like is shown at the end of the instructions). After your phone/tablet has connected to the robot, slowly stand it up on its two wheels (like shown on the box). The gyro calibrates when flat on the table.
Laying the robot flat on the table, then slowly standing it up is also how you normally reset the robot after a fight.
You are correct that the robot should balance itself using the gyro, kind of like a Segway.
Feel free to respond here with any more questions.
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Thanks for the quick response. It is now working, but it is because my wife solved the problem. She asked me if there was a switch somewhere that needed to be turned on. I went back to the application, and sure enough, there is a switch on the screen. When the switch is operated, the bot attempts to balance itself. If I start it up when it is resting on its arms, then it succeeds in balancing itself.
I would say Hexbug could do a lot to improve their documentation. As it is, most of their toys are not much more than just radio controlled toys.
slightly off topic, but Laurens Valk built a pretty cool VexIQ segway balancing robot a few years back.
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