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Eyes are Working (Mostly)

A project log for Halloween Hex

A large hexapod using a frame from ebay, HXT12K servos from HobbyKing and a Parallax Propeller as the controller.

duane-degnDuane Degn 02/01/2015 at 05:421 Comment

My robot finally has eyes!

There were several additions to the code I needed to make to get the eyes to work the way I wanted. One challenge was coding the four servos. The servos pretty much point the eyes in the direction the robot is walking. The eyes initially start looking up but as they move to the side they also move down a bit.

This video is also used in the "DETAILS" section.

Besides controlling four more servos, I also needed to write code to display the eyes on the LED arrays. The LED arrays are from ICStation. The LED arrays use a MAX7219 controller.

The time between blinks is a random about between set maximum and minimum times. The speed of the blink is also random. There's a 10% chance a blink will be a double blink.

I'd really like to get the eyes to respond to the environment. Ideally, I'd like a sensor which could detect the location of humans and have the robot respond to the humans' presence. I have a couple ideas on how to do this.

As I mention in the video, I need to get the switch and battery tucked away into better locations.

I think the eyes give the robot a lot more personality and I like how they look so far. I got the idea of using the LED arrays as eyes from a fellow member of Let's Make Robots, Dickel.

Discussions

Eric Hertz wrote 03/08/2015 at 04:39 point

eery!

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