Oh. Well. I’ll just have to admire you because you’re funny and smart, then. Disregard the off-topic part of my post. Apologies to all.
Very cool, Mangetout. Any way you could make it say, “Danger Will Robinson.”?
I can still dig what you’re saying.
The “christmas” part of my post was true. The part about having two robots wasn’t.
I really did get excited to get a robot for Xmas even though I had no desire for one until I started thinking about it.
I talked about the robot so much that I’m worried she’s going to get one for my birthday. But now I don’t even want one. I just wanted one for Christmas.
Well, where do you get the servos from, if they’re causing weight issues? There’s some really quality stuff that’s much smaller than it used to be, thanks to the recent popularity of 1/16th scale RC cars. If you want, I can try to dig up some manufacturers.
In looking at the 2nd photo I was struck with the thought that…
…It’s coming right at us!!!
:eek:
Trunk wrote
The story really cracked me up, actually.
Back on topic, the turtle looks super cool too.
E-Sabbath, I bought the servos on eBay, they are Acoms AS12 and they were dirt cheap - I don’t know good servos from bad, but I’m expecting that the ones I’ve bought are fairly near the bottom end of the scale. They do develop a fair deal of torque, just clearly not quite enough. Trouble is, I can’t really justify spending out on twelve decent servos at this time; since the cheap ones don’t appear to be adequate, I expect this just means I’m not ready to complete this project at present.
I think for now I’ll continue with the turtle and maybe start another, larger wheeled robot at some point, using some big stepper motors I’ve had for ages.
I appreciate your offer of help though.
I’ve always wanted to build a six legged robot, cover the thing with photosensors, and program it to chase the dot made by a laser pointer. 
It’d also be a nice touch to incorporate a speech synthesizer so it can cuss when it stubs a rubber foot on the door jamb.
sigh
Resurrecting the thread to link pictures of the new robot:
Picture and underside
As you can see, it’s built entirely inside a CDR ‘cake box’ - the nice thing about this is that it can turn on the spot and there are no protrusions to get snagged on anything. The central column (the base is actually from a 50-CD box and the top from a box that once held 100 discs) is drilled through at the top, so that a felt pen can be dropped down it and I’ve already had the thing drawing some spirograph-type patterns on some sheets of old wallpaper.
The next step is to include some sensors - I’ve got an ultrasonic range finder module, some light sensors and some little micro switches to make ‘whiskers’