BeamWalkers

I have taken a modular design approach with these walkers. i want to be able to plug different brains into the same body to compare the perfomance. Motors have drivers built in (74als245 inside the servo case) - bi and uCore outputs and power are male; batteries and motor inputs are female. this makes it easier to tweak the electronics and mechanics as the brain easily unplugs from the body.


Four years in the making - i finally finished my first walker. back in the day i just couldn't get this thing to work no matter what i tried. sometimes is best to put a problem down, walk away, and try again 4 years later. turned out that i had the uCore outputs going to ground or some silly thing like that. This walker lived for about 2 hours before i had tweaked it so much that it no longer walked that well. Now i know more about the walking dynamics.


This is the second - i spent considerable less time making this walker. i moved the 74als245 motor drivers off the circuit board and into the servo case (tight fit). i freeformed the master-slave bicores from the "Almost Complete Walker" Schematic from Beam-online. this walker more hops than walks. i'm still playing with it...


Here's the servo driver. it's super simple to build and you can find the schematic lots of places. the power lines for the 245 and the directional inputs for the motor fit thru the hole in the servo case and plug into the battery and bicore outputs respectively.