And We Have a Driveable Antweight!

We received some parts today that mean we can get back to our cutest 'bot: Poor Punctuation 2.0, and see whether we can install the drive ESCs. Unfortunately this was going to mean soldering - never our favourite task - but we steeled ourselves to the task and decided to see where we can get to. Hit Back after viewing an image.

Here are the parts in question: eight TinyESCs, version two, from Kurtis at FingerTech Robotics. These things are awesome for fairies and antweights, and in a pinch can be used in a beetle, depending on the motors. Plus Kurtis gives amazing customer service, so if you're looking for small-bot ESCs, definitely check these out!

Here's our current situation - 13.47 ounces with everything but the weapon ESCs (which should arrive tomorrow) that weigh less than an ounce for the pair of them. We have plenty of weight to work with. We've also thrown in a couple of bronze bushings and two idlers for the weapon ring to help keep it in alignment.

As we're going to be soldering in the drive ESCs we need to make sure we're going to get them hooked up with the right polarity to the motors, so we're running some tests to verify which lead goes where. As you can see we've tied the battery down to prevent it from sliding into the weapon motor gears and getting chewed up.

On to wiring. We've stuck down the receiver with some heavy-duty 3M double-sided tape, and started routing wires. In order to run both weapon ESCs at the same time we need a Y-cable, but for some odd reason the only cable we found was quite literally two feet long! Fortunately we have pins to be able to cut them down and replace the connectors.

At this point the TinyESCs have been stuck down and soldered to the drive motors. We've been careful to leave clearance around two of the stand-offs where the weapon idlers will be located.

Test Drive Time! We didn't take video because it wasn't super-exciting, but it was great to see the 'bot running around under direction. The wiring is going to be super-tight, but we think it's doable.

Now that we have the 'bot running around, you can see from our To Do List there isn't a whole lot left to do on this 'bot - as soon as the weapon ESCs show up we'll wire them in and take the 'bot for a real test drive!