My theory turned out to be correct. Used a bigger wheel and removed the two-gear drive. The higher torque on the big wheel gives the robot a serious speed boost! When I activated the motors from my laptop, it flew across the room before I could even turn around. I saw someone's article on building a something like a transmission gear system, but it would be too heavy and large for my purposes (need to save some room for the wireless camera).
The new robot chassis supports the brick at a slightly off vertical angle for maximum IR reception.
Bigger wheels also led to the problem of a wider axis. Lack of steering mechanisms prevented my robot from relying on the motor direction alone to change directions. I found the solution in a description of a caster wheel mechanism, which you'll find in most shopping carts and rollers.
-Sam
Posted by samuel at May 16, 2002 06:12 PMI just wanted to say that I am totally addicted to keeping updated about your project :) I think it's totally awesome to use flash as the user interface for communicating to the Lego Mindstorm.
Your site has been quite an inspiration to me (since I first came across it 2 weeks ago). Since then I have downloaded Movable Type and installed it on my site - http://www.hollowcube.com/talk/ . Now I just have to find the time to put together an interface that serves my purposes a little better than the default does.
So, are you going to be speaking at Flash Forward 2002 in NYC? I hope to be there. I went to my first FF conference down in San Fran, and it was an awesome experience.
I'll be back!
thanks
-michael
Hey Michael, thanks for the support! I hope you're enjoying MT, it's so easy to use. Yeah, I'll be speaking at FFNY in July. This conference will definitely rock harder than previous conferences, with all the new technology, capabilities, etc.
It's like the Flash industry has grown up and so have all our favorite tools :)
There are a few stylesheets you can download from Movable Type's website if you want to modify your site's appearance:
http://www.movabletype.org/default-styles.html
I'm using one of their stylesheets right now, with a few modifications.
Posted by: Sam at May 17, 2002 07:05 PMoh, cool. i'll take a look at those stylesheets. i'm thinking of making templates for each section on my site (links, portfolio, contact, etc.) and putting it together with MT. we'll see how it works...
Posted by: michael e. gunn at May 17, 2002 09:29 PMHi, I just wanted so say thank you guys ! i really like your site and i hope you'll continue to improving it.
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