A(nother) headbot

Another project coming out of "Junkbots, Bugbots & Bots on Wheels" was the construction of a headbot based on the 74AC240 'biocore'. Again I would fully recommend this book for it's interesting projects and "make stuff from junk" ethic. The biocore was constructed according to the instructions in the book. I used 22uF capacitors as suggested.

My first attempt at a base was a failure. I used a small 3-6V DC motor with a pulley attached, which was geared down (via a belt drive) to another pulley that was attached to a larger base plate which had the batteries, biocore, etc. In essence trying to simulate the book example of a cassette deck setup. However the balance was totally off and the motor would simply jam under load (or at best spin and the belt would slip). What I needed was either a cassette deck or a gear head motor. Frustrated I put the biocore and other parts back in the big box of components for another day.

A couple of years pass. Kids arrive. My soldering iron gets rusty.

One day at Dick Smith (when they still sold electronics) I purchased an old and heavily discounted line following robot kit fot $20. The design was poor and complicated but at tht price I wanted the parts. Two gear head motors, a relay, seven IR leds, etc. Bargain. Now I have a gear head motor.
The 74AC240 was purchased from Solarbotics. For the base I used the wheel from the above mentioned robot kit as that was keyed to fit the 4.5V gear head motor. The phototransistors were salvaged from an old balled computer mouse. The base plate is a lid from a vitamin container. While this lid was a great size it wasn't the best choice.

My power source was to be two 1.5 volt AA batteries. For balance I mounted these batteries in two separate battery holders on each side of the motor. I used two part epoxy glue to stick the holders to the lid. However once the glue had dried I found that the glue simply peeled off the lid/base plate. Vitamin lids were obviously made to be highly non stick to stop nasty molds, etc from attaching. So instead of glue I used small (2.5mm) self tapping screws to attach the battery holders to the base plate. The screws came from my collection of salvaged cdrom bits.

The power switch was a small SPDT switch I had which I mounted sideways into the rim of the base plate. Then all that was left was to wire the various components together and put in the biocore. I couldn't decide on a good way to attach the biocore to the base plate so I left is 'hanging' but held in place by the wiring. The wiring was made to be just long enough so there was enough tension to hold the biocore in place. Finally the two eye sensors were attached to the rim of the base plate with U-tack. I didn't want to permanently mount the eyes as I wanted to trial the best setup.