Rodger Cleye
11-21-2007, 04:39 AM
Hi Trossen,
It looks like the contest has become a two-month contest.
Therefore, I decided to make my robot a two-holiday robot!
This month, the Holographic Halloween Robot morphs into a spirited Christmas tree with a playful attitude.
You can see a video of what I came up with here:
http://www.youtube.com/v/PfH4n_BwK7c
PfH4n_BwK7c
The project takes advantage of the hacked shop-rider RC mobile platform created for the HBOT.
When I saw the "GE Lights and Sounds of Christmas" at Costco, I knew what I had to do.
Armed with a Wal-mart tree, some Rite-Aid Lights, And some Home Depot reinforcing pipe (the tree was not designed for > 0 MPH operation), I generated a tree that likes to move with plenty of bling. Target had the tree-topper.
I had to move away from the Kragen 400W inverter to a CostCo inverter. The synthetic sinusoidal output of the Costco unit is much more pure and does not contaminate the audio like the Kragen one.
Careful attention was given to make the tree break-down and re-assemble quickly for travel to the various beaches of the California coast where I plan to spread the holiday cheer over the next few weeks. This is in sharp contrast to the HBot that only became operational the night before Halloween. Fortunately, it performed flawlessly on "The big night".
I found it quite convenient that the Wal-mart tree was designed to break into 3 pieces (so it could fit in its own shipping container). That meant 3 independent electrical channels were already done for me. The topper makes the 4th and the red/green bank strands fill of the remainder of the 6 pre-defined midi-sequenced triacs within the GE unit. There was still room for creativity because the 6 strands can be configured spatially any way I desired. Color choice also adds to the artistic touch.
So far, it never fails to generate a smile when it drives past someone. I hope I was able to convey just how ridiculous this is in the video.
Best wishes, and Happy Holidays
Rodger
It looks like the contest has become a two-month contest.
Therefore, I decided to make my robot a two-holiday robot!
This month, the Holographic Halloween Robot morphs into a spirited Christmas tree with a playful attitude.
You can see a video of what I came up with here:
http://www.youtube.com/v/PfH4n_BwK7c
PfH4n_BwK7c
The project takes advantage of the hacked shop-rider RC mobile platform created for the HBOT.
When I saw the "GE Lights and Sounds of Christmas" at Costco, I knew what I had to do.
Armed with a Wal-mart tree, some Rite-Aid Lights, And some Home Depot reinforcing pipe (the tree was not designed for > 0 MPH operation), I generated a tree that likes to move with plenty of bling. Target had the tree-topper.
I had to move away from the Kragen 400W inverter to a CostCo inverter. The synthetic sinusoidal output of the Costco unit is much more pure and does not contaminate the audio like the Kragen one.
Careful attention was given to make the tree break-down and re-assemble quickly for travel to the various beaches of the California coast where I plan to spread the holiday cheer over the next few weeks. This is in sharp contrast to the HBot that only became operational the night before Halloween. Fortunately, it performed flawlessly on "The big night".
I found it quite convenient that the Wal-mart tree was designed to break into 3 pieces (so it could fit in its own shipping container). That meant 3 independent electrical channels were already done for me. The topper makes the 4th and the red/green bank strands fill of the remainder of the 6 pre-defined midi-sequenced triacs within the GE unit. There was still room for creativity because the 6 strands can be configured spatially any way I desired. Color choice also adds to the artistic touch.
So far, it never fails to generate a smile when it drives past someone. I hope I was able to convey just how ridiculous this is in the video.
Best wishes, and Happy Holidays
Rodger