I recently bought my Daughter the ‘Programming Control Starter Kit’ plus vexnet joystick, keys, and programming kit and RobotC
This has worked very well so far, allowing her to build the robot, control it straight away, and then program some control changes.
However I ended up spending more then planned, and any further expenses at the moment are probably not a good idea.
The ‘Programming Control Starter Kit’ comes with quite a nice collection of sensors.
We’ve managed to add the 2 Integrated encoder modules to the drive motors.
Added a pot to the Claw arm so that we can tell how high its raised.
And Added the Range Finder.
My daughter really wants to keep the Claw functionality as she seems to have great fun attacking me with it.
so with just the basic kit.
Can anyone think of any way of attaching a pot to the claw itself, to work out how much it is opened by, or maybe using the limiter switches for a similar job.
If we changed it from 4 to 2 wheel drive then we could get some extra Gears and shafts.
Lets see if these links work, I’ve modified my claw by adding metal strips to allow it to open wider, note the nylon spacers on the gripper side. I cut some of the 1 hole strips and used 4 nylon spacers to keep the metal apart in the gripper. also needed 4 longer screws.
Thanks, very informative. is the pot on the same axel as the motor, I was worried how much the motor needed to rotate to open and close the claw as its on a smaller gear?
a potetiometer would work on this, we recently used this claw on a virtual presence robot, and we used a potentiometer, it worked well … if not an OSE, or intergrated motor encoder would work …
or … in theory you could rig up a limit switch so it would equal 1 when it is open … cant think of a way know … but it can be done
Yes same axle, as James points out there is enough rotational motion on a Potentiometer ~270 deg so it provides useful information throughout the open close cycle ~240 deg. Mine could be better positioned, but as I don’t use it all that much it’s been o.k.
