More construction

So the second shipment of servos arrived the other day, along with the generous donation of some sheet aluminium from the guys at Farrell Precision Metalworks in New Milford. They made everything so much easier on my end, and the quality of the the cuts was something I couldn't have come close to doing with a jigsaw.

Anyways, 2 of the servos were screwy, (one only had half range with slow updating, and one just had a mind of its own, and didn't like being told what to do.), so I will hopefully be able to ship them back tomorrow for new ones.

There are 2 more servos added on to the snake, and it really is starting to look like a snake, where you can see the pattern of metal running down. The longer it gets, the smoother the action will be, and the range of motion it will be able to have will get much wider.

Anyways, here's some updated pictures. Check out how it really is starting to look like a snake now, and not just a couple segments hooked together.

Here's a straight shot of it. Notice the pattern now?

Curved up on the floor.

Almost three and a half feet of snake, hanging in the air.

Bent up on the workbench. Sorry about the mess, although that's always the sign of a good project.

I didn't know snakes came in squares either.

Movement

I've reached a new stage; where I'm letting the computer do all the thinking, instead of manipulating individual servos with a single joystick axis, I'm letting the computer do the thinking, and only using one axis on one joystick, and that's just for speed control/direction. However, for the first time, I have some videos up (sorry about the quality) to show a general idea of the basic movement gaits. These will smooth out over time.

A cool shot of the underside of the servo controller PCB.

All booted up and ready to go

A new addition, the Arduino micro controller. Too bad it's broken, and will need a new controller sometime.

A single joint

The whole thing.... so far.

And finally.... some video: