The start of Wombot2

With lessons learnt creating Wombot1 and testing its design, it was a concern how much torque we were putting through those tiny 1:298 ratio motors, I also wanted to create the chassis with an option of driving faster while still maintaining a good ratio between motor and output shaft.

So looking at many options I settled on the diddyborg v2 motors giving around a 100RPM at 12v whilst maintaining good control and power. This upsized the chassis certainly in width, and so it was key to keep within the limits of PiWars allowed sizes, and still be able to attach whats needed for the challenges.

The chassis was designed to allow it to have different wheels added going up to about 95mm in diameter. This was so we could experiment with some different options. The chassis being bigger I found was more flexible and needed some strengthening options to be added to the 3mm perspex I was using.

Next I added some of the electronics ready for testing.

I wanted to create the profile and center of gravity as low as possible, so I build some of the electronics underneath between the digital servo’s. These I extended from the main PI using I2C extender cables.