Cable management

[jbenfield]

You've done an outstanding job with these models and I've printed and built a complete unit

However, cable management is a real issue.

It would be relatively easy to build in some guide, clips or channels, but it's difficult to do with just the STL files to work with. Would you be willing to post the source models?

[Aiki-bot51]

What board do you use?

[jbenfield]

The board in the picture is an Arcbotics Servotor32. I had one lying around from another project and it let me control 32 servos from one board. http://arcbotics.com/products/servotor32/

I've since replaced that with a pair of PCA9685 PWM servo driver boards. Each controls 16 servos and they're a lot easier to use. I bought them over a year ago from Adafruit.

https://www.adafruit.com/product/815

But they're available from a lot of Chinese suppliers for under $5.

https://usa.banggood.com/PCA9685-16-Channel-12-bit-PWM-Servo-Motor-Driver-I2C-Module-For-Arduino-Robot-p-1170343.html

[Aiki-bot51]

Hmm, don’t have one in Indonesia. How can I use an arduino nano and what software did you use?

[Aiki-bot51]

I do have the 16 channel 12c servo motor driver

[jbenfield]

If your motor driver board uses I2C, you can connect it to the nano using the A4 and A5 pins (SDA -> A4, SDC -> A5). Makes sure to include the wire.h library in your projects.

When I was using the Servotor, I used PoMoCo. I did replace the photo and the servo layout (not required, but it makes it easier to visualize what you're controlling)

https://github.com/ArcBotics/PoMoCo-2

The servotor32 is Arduino based, but you'd need to modify the code to work with your specific servo board and wiring. It assumes a particular layout of servos and it's got the Hexy pictures and motions built in. I never bothered rewriting the motions, but it shouldn't be too hard to do. Instead, I just used it to record motions and generate Arduino code for playback.

http://arcbotics.com/lessons/generating-arduino-code-pomoco/

I later removed the Servotor and installed a pair of PCA9685s onto the Plenza frame. I chained them together and ran the I2C lines out along with the power.

I built a second Plenza frame with potentiometers instead of servos
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2416859

The potentiometers connected to a Mega 2560 (I needed the extra IO pins to read all those pots) and the Mega connected to the robot through the I2C connection.

I was then able to just write a basic program that would read through the potentiometers on the control frame and adjust the matching servo on the robot.

It worked quite well, but I never got around to writing the full recording and playback software that I wanted to.

If I was doing it now, I would probably add an ADC on the controller frame so that I only had the I2C wires coming out. The large ribbon cables that I needed to connect to the Mega were too bulky, but there wasn't a good ADC at the time.

https://www.amazon.com/Channel-ADC-I2C-Arduino-Raspberry/dp/B07D3GX47C

This would also let you use a smaller Arduino since you wouldn't need all the builtin data pins.

Good Luck!

[Aiki-bot51]

Thx

[Aiki-bot51]

Can you show me which to connect where( the arduino nano and 16 channel servo controller, like which pin to connect where and how do I connect the other 16 channel servo controller)?

[Aiki-bot51]

Can you show me pictures of the plenza using pca9685? And where did you get the code? Can I use the original plen2 code?

Thx if you reply

[jbenfield]

I've never seen the original Plen2 code, so I can't really comment on whether you can use it or not. There isn't any off-the-shelf code that I'm aware of, so you'll have to create something fit-for-purpose. I was just writing little routines to mirror the position of my controller. Fun to play with, but I'd suggest looking at some gyros or accelerometers if you're going to do anything serious with it. I did try a few things with a Movidius to try to use a camera for feedback and skeletal recognition. Again, it was just playing around and not any serious research.

[Aiki-bot51]

Hmm..... Have you seen the code for miniplan (a derrivative from china)? https://github.com/GeorgeChiou/MiniPlan-V6

Maybe it will work? I dunno, could you tell me where did you learn to program arduino