But the point was: a wheeled chassis with steering mechanism already built! That plus any electronics parts I can salvage/repurpose.. another aspect of "hacking".
So, I started with the remote... seeing those two control sticks, I figured at least I would get some potentiometers out of it....
... nope. wow! really? This is how simple the controls were, little micro switches- on/off control sent to the car. I was a little bummed. then I got to thinking: here was a radio remote, with 4 buttons, controlling 2 motors with simple fwd/reverse polarity...!!! This could do anything! keep the remote intact and powered, and the receiver hooked up to any motor, this little thing could do anything from turn the lights on, to opening the garage door. So I kept them all intact. This was actually much better than some RC servo control scheme.. this was simple "this way- that way" radio control... and that could be useful!
So, I carefully took the "brains" out of the car, and kept everything still intact. The two motors had convenient plugs to disconnect them, and left the car nice and "ready" for anything else I may plug into it.
So the motors are still there, with nice connector jacks for future use. Nice. lets have a closer look at the steering of this thing.
Yeah, this was simple. no servo here, just a motor with a "knocker" on its axle, that would spin this war or that.. until it hit the linkage arm post underneath, that would throw the wheels left or right, depending on the spin of the motor. The travel of the tires wasnt very high, and the linkages were sping loaded to return to center... but the important thing is that the front wheel axles and turn linkages are already built. Trust me, those mechanisms are rather difficult to build yourself from the ground up... and to be this small/lightweight. Plus, I could always just put a servo in place of the motor, its arm tied directly to the linkage, to get full and controlled turns, if need be.
Looking the frame of the car over, I noticed some tabs... like sping levered latches molded out of the frame itself.. so I carefully pried them open to see what they were for.
OMG! this thing was modular! The steering section, drive section, and battery box section were clip together subassemblies... THIS was a neat surprise. with this I could bolt the steering and drive to another frame, to other kitbashed toys.. even to each other directly (6 wheeled tank made of 3 of these? Seriously neat!.
But at this point I was noticing the frame/chassis of the car was a bit bulkier than it needed to be- either to look more like a mustang, or just to hold the top on. It was a lot of extra material, and I thought I could do without a lot of it-- mostly on the front section.
After some rather messy work with my dremel cutting tool, I got a lot of that junk off of the fram up front... yet still keeping the steering mechanism OK.
And here we have it; formerly cheap toy, now prebuilt robot rover chassis, with some decent rims and a nice mustang "stance". And that is the basic premise of Toy Hacking. I could put pretty much anything on it, from an Arduino to some BEAM style rover... I dont exaclty know what just yet... but its ready!
Oh, I only cut away parts on the front section of the frame, because I learned the hard way NOT to start cutting into gearbox cases.. especially if you are unsure just whats inside...
... or this might happen. :( This is TankBot. and his gears are all loose, because I didnt know that the gear axels were held in that way when I tried trimming him down to its bare essentials. But THIS is a seriously cool toy to hack! so teeny, so useful, two motor independant tread drive, *sniff*.. I had high hopes for this little guy.
No comments:
Post a Comment