hey robot fans welcome back to the build last time we got choppers power
distribution center all set up and today we're going to continue right along by
adding in the first components of that system which is going to be the
periscope okay let's start with some changes that were made since the last
video I got some feedback telling me that powering the neopixels from an
Arduino was not a good idea and I should have a dedicated 5 volt power source so
in keeping with that I installed another voltage regulator right behind my 9 volt
and I have that running to the 5 volt rail now so this comes right off of the
12 volts there's a wire that carries around to this step down here and then
that goes to the 5 volts there I also updated the wiring going from the 12
volt to the 6 volt servo power area so you can see I use thicker wires here
this is silicon wire I kept the modular system in place by creating another wago
port here so it goes from 12 volts to here then here over to the 6 and that
should give me a little more power to those servo outputs the goal for today
is to get the periscope installed into the Droid so I want to make this a fully
functional periscope with audio video up and down movement rotation the whole
nine yards so the first thing was to get a camera that was small enough to fit
inside the periscope and still decent enough that we can get some quality
video out of it I came up with this Fredi camera purchase it records in
1080p 720p 480p a whole bunch of different things it outputs
audio and it's pretty small I think I'm going to have to modify the overall look
of choppers periscope to make it fit but not too much and I think I can keep it
looking close enough as far as functionality I'm going to be using this
linear servo to make it go up and down this is from X wanax and it is a pretty
cool little servo it just it holds a good amount of weight going up and down
it's pretty steady and the motion is very very smooth so the first thing I'm
going to do is build a prototype that has the camera attached to the end of
this linear servo and we'll see what that looks like and maybe get an idea of
how we're going to fit this thing into the head okay I built a prototype here
it shows the update movement of the linear servo which is
pretty cool we have the camera inside that little housing there for rotation
right now I'm just using a small servo at the bottom of the entire thing I
don't think that's actually gonna work in the final model because it's already
getting to that point where it's going to be too tall to fit inside of the head
so I'm probably have to do something that sits next to it like a stepper
motor that turns it with a belt or some other kind of DC motor with some kind of
position control the prototype worked out and that it showed me a couple
problems one is that this wire from the linear servo is going to need to be
attached to another slip ring or I'm gonna have to constrain the motion to
180 degrees so that wire doesn't tangle itself I'm going to add the little cap
here that goes on top and fits into the recess of the dome so hopefully we can
get this to sit nice and flush with the top of the dome and everything will work
out but I think overall this was a pretty good test and now we can dive
into 3d studio max and really figure out how we're gonna install this into our
dome okay after a few design iterations I think I have something that works here
this is kind of an exploded view of the periscope assembly at the top we have
the linear servo here and a temporary housing that fits the camera I'm not too
sure how happy I am with this but we can revisit that later the important part
now is how we're going to install this into the base of the head so there's
quite a few pieces here the first is basically just a better
version of my current periscope Bay which will just screw or glue right to
here and what this is gonna do is hold the slip ring in place I'm gonna have to
drill a hole out of the actual base of the head right here for the base of the
slip ring to fit into that shouldn't be too much of a problem now I've also
added in this little Ridge here to accept the wires from the slip ring then
the slip ring is going to fit into that new periscope Bay base on top of that is
going to come this cap the purpose of this cap is to accept the bearing so the
outer diameter of this cap matches the inner diameter of this large bearing
that I'm going to use I know this bearing is humongous but the good thing
about it is all of the slip ring stuff can fit inside the inner diameter of it
which is kind of what we want so the bearing for
the rotation is gonna sit on top of that cap and then on top of all of that is
going to come the final piece of the base which is the cap for the bearing
that also holds a track this track is going to be driven by a timing belt and
a stepper motor which is going to live right here this is going to be a stepper
motor stepper motor driver and all the wiring on this little plate here I'll
show you that in a minute and then what we're gonna be left with is this base
with a hole you're gonna have some wires coming out of here which is going to be
the wires for this linear servo and the slip ring which is going to give us our
connection to the Arduino and I think this should work this will give me my
up-and-down motion from this linear servo and then this whole stepper motor
assembly will give me my rotation okay I drilled out the hole in the bottom of
that periscope bay and I installed the first piece here which holds the slip
ring if we do just a quick installation you'll see that the slip ring goes into
here and it gives me access to the wires through that little Ridge this stays
stationary while the top part here can spin this is going to give us the
rotation of our linear servo if we look at this from the bottom you can see that
everything is still flush at the bottom which is what we want next on top of
that we are going to put this little cap which screws into the base of the slip
ring and this will hug the inner diameter of the large bearing the
bearing is actually installed into the cap already and the cap has the gear and
it has the linear servo coming out at the top and at the bottom here you can
see the wires which are going to plug into the top of the slip ring so I'm
going to get this all installed and then we are going to attach the other half of
the mechanism which is this this is my stepper motor module
it has a NEMA stepper motor here which is a NEMA pancake it has a head on the
top for the timing belt and it has the built-in assembly for the stepper motor
driver all the wires come here to jst connector so this is again a completely
modular unit which will fit right here and then the belt which I actually for
the first time ever 3d printed my own timing belt of the perfect-sized will go
from here to here connect and then I'll be able to rotate
the periscope using that stepper motor so let's get all of this screwed in and
wired up and we will start testing the periscope okay I got everything wired up
here I currently have everything attached to my even cooler version of my
supercool remote control I added a breadboard to it which has a little push
button and that push button is going to control the up/down of the periscope you
push it and the periscope goes up push it and it comes back down again you can
rotate the periscope as well right now it's up and I can move it clockwise or
counterclockwise and the stepper motor driver defaults to 8th step rotations
which is what I have this at now I think the speed is good I might speed it up a
little bit but ultimately it's probably better if it's slower if it's going to
be recording video so this nice slow rotation is exactly what we want the
next step is going to be adding in a little neck to the periscope here if we
look back to my prototype I had a little neck on it to keep it straight up and
down and I think that's going to have to be done here as well the tension from
this belt is kind of pulling it inward and since it has to go straight up and
down to fit through the hole on the top I'm gonna probably install something
along the base here that'll hold it nice and tight so that it stays straight in
addition to that I'm also going to start doing everything via I squared C right
now I'm controlling this locally through the uno but ultimately this is all going
to be I squared C so might as well get that going as well ok so I printed out
this little neck assembly for the linear servo it's basically a collar piece that
goes on top and then a bearing fits on top of that and then over top of all of
that comes down this main neck piece which anchors to the base of the head
and should keep everything nice and straight and on the programming side of
things I made a pretty good step forward the uno here is what is controlling the
periscope linear servo and the stepper motor that's turning it in the last step
I had all of this input data going straight into the uno but now I have all
the input going into the mega and the mega is transferring all of that input
data to the uno over I squared C so we now have I squared C connection
controlling the periscope up and down with the
and controlling the rotation with the joystick so the code for the you know is
all set up now this code that's transmitting all the input data will
eventually be on the Arduino mega that's in the body but now I can rest easy with
all this I squared C coding done for at least the periscope okay next up is the
actual structure of the periscope itself the main housing here is based off of a
screenshot that I took from watching the cartoon I'm a little hesitant to put
that screenshot in my video but I will link it in the description it's
basically this top section here this is a bad color to be using but this top
section here and then I add add on this bottom block here for the speaker
there's a hole in there for the speaker and there's a hole in the top part for
the video portion of the camera I also have two recesses in the three recesses
in the main body here one is for this screw this is an m8 by eight screw with
a hex top you can see I have a recess here that this fits into nicely which
leaves us with about six millimeters of m8 threading coming out of the bottom
and that is exactly what is at the top of the linear servo it accepts an m8
thread for about six millimeters so that should screw nicely right into the top
of the linear servo the big recess here is for the camera obviously the camera
will slip in there and then on top of all that comes the cap and the cap has
this little dongle here that'll fit into this recess to hold it nice and secure
and the top of this cap also fills in the rest of that circle to give us our
nice cutout for the video portion of the camera so the camera sits here cap goes
on the cap is also removable so that we can access the cameras SD card and
charge the camera as needed but is sturdy enough with a push fit that it
won't come off while it's being used and then it just screws into the top of that
linear servo and we're set to go okay as advertised I printed out those two
pieces the eight millimeter screw fits nicely into its little recess giving me
this little threaded portion at the bottom the camera slides right into the
main housing and cap goes on top to give us a nice secure
fit then this whole assembly will screw on to the top of the linear servo and we
are ready to roll okay with everything installed here we could test out the
camera so we do a periscope up and we can rotate it around maybe we could even
add a little chopper vision deco to it where it's like identifying creator
extend head arms for a warm handshake type deal I think this is good I'd like
the fisheye look of the camera I have it on super low quality right now but I can
always turn that up but yeah I think this is gonna work out pretty well all
right I think that's going to do it for this video next time we're going to
start building out the back of the head so that we can install the doors for the
arms so stay tuned for that in the meantime check out some of my other
projects and I'll see you next time
you