MrDotBoto [Day 17.10.2006] - When you get the power! Then you get the Bots!

OK, it's been a bit quiet on the boto front, but today I checked off yet another item on my list...power!

To power your bot, you're going to need something relatively light, solid voltage (between 7-9 volts) and with a decent capacity (3000-5000 mah). Depending on your power cycle, you may require one for both your controller and brain, or one for each.

I went with the Venom 4600, and at this point, am ambivalent as to whether I use one for the Serializer.NET board and one for the EPIA Mini-ITX brain, or power both from the one. It will come down to lifespan, because if I can get my bot to run off one for an hour, then I'm happy. This is probably a good rule for choosing battery configs; how long will you need to power your bits, and how much power will the bits draw. This can help you work out the capacity and charge of your battery requirement.

So anyway, once I had the battery charged, the next step was to modify the power leads to the Serializer.NET board to support the standard "Tamiya" battery connectors. This was very simple, and only required one of these male plugs, wired correctly (always remember, red is +ve and black is ground), connected to the Serializer.NET board.

Then, connect the battery, and shazam, MrDotBoto is running off battery power, and no more need for the mains power cable!

Next, I'm off to Boss Aluminium tomorrow to pick up MrDotBoto's body!

By the way, if there are any high-schools, Universities or tired souls that are interested in hearing more about this, please drop me a line, I'm looking for eager ears willing to hear my stories (about building a robot that is!).

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• Anonymous
  October 17, 2006
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