Daniel Hingston

Thank you!

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it

Thank you very much

Hi Joe, sorry I've only just seen your comment. The best angle to attach the legs/servos is to set the servo to 90 degrees (the central position), and then attach the legs in a neutral position (doesn't matter exactly, but roughly 1/2 way through their range of movement as you judge it - that way you'll be able to cover the whole range of movement within the range of the servo rotation). When the legs shook, was the dog standing on it's own weight? I found a small box the right size so that the dog could rest on its belly, and the legs were moving in the air without taking weight which was useful for test. If you're seeing shaking otherwise, is it in all 4 legs? It could be a faulty servo if just in 1. Otherwise, it might be a fact of the dog is relatively heavy for the 9g servos we use -…

Hi Joe, sorry I've only just seen your comment. The best angle to attach the legs/servos is to set the servo to 90 degrees (the central position), and then attach the legs in a neutral position (doesn't matter exactly, but roughly 1/2 way through their range of movement as you judge it - that way you'll be able to cover the whole range of movement within the range of the servo rotation). When the legs shook, was the dog standing on it's own weight? I found a small box the right size so that the dog could rest on its belly, and the legs were moving in the air without taking weight which was useful for test. If you're seeing shaking otherwise, is it in all 4 legs? It could be a faulty servo if just in 1. Otherwise, it might be a fact of the dog is relatively heavy for the 9g servos we use - you can see in my testing video that the range of motion is relatively small as otherwise the motors don't have enough torque to lift the dog's mass. I hope your testing is going better now, but please let me know if you need help. Thanks!

Thank you! V2 is still some way off I'm afraid, got distracted by other projects as usual, but I would love to make it happen still - mainly want to try reducing the weight of the dog further as far as possible, to achieve a better walking motion on just these cheap 9g servos ...

Hi Bob, thank you for your comment I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thank you vey much for the Teensy suggestion - strangely enough I'd actually been looking into that at the same time you commented! Definitely definitely worth exploring, so thank you. I'm planning on updating the Instructable in a month or so with an update to the code - I am working on using the same hardware (including the Uno) and reducing the time required for a distance measurement (my first program can definitely be improved a lot) and adding a little more sophistication to how it performs the scan. After that looking at something with a much faster clock speed sounds great, definitely want to get my hands on a Teensy 4.0 soon ...

Hi Sanjeev, thank you very much! Nice to hear from you

Hi there, thank you very much for your kind words, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I agree with you 100%, not only is the range quite limited but because of the wide spread of the laser light (I believe it's a 19 degree cone or something similar) it's not good at all for precise readings at anything above 50cm or so. I'd be interested in looking at a more focussed sensor for a V2 of this project, or maybe trying to lens the light. Processing time wise, I'm planning on releasing soon an update to the code of this project, trying to cut down the time required for each reading so that it can take more readings per revolution, or just rotate faster - either would be a good improvement. I think there's plenty of things in the program itself that can be done better, but after that I'd like to try usin…

Hi there, thank you very much for your kind words, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I agree with you 100%, not only is the range quite limited but because of the wide spread of the laser light (I believe it's a 19 degree cone or something similar) it's not good at all for precise readings at anything above 50cm or so. I'd be interested in looking at a more focussed sensor for a V2 of this project, or maybe trying to lens the light. Processing time wise, I'm planning on releasing soon an update to the code of this project, trying to cut down the time required for each reading so that it can take more readings per revolution, or just rotate faster - either would be a good improvement. I think there's plenty of things in the program itself that can be done better, but after that I'd like to try using a microcontroller with a much higher clock speed than the Uno to see if I can process the sensor data much faster that way.

Hi Mario! Thank you very much for your comments, really glad you enjoyed the Instructable. Sounds interesting the use of the sensors on your scooter, clever idea. I think the VL53L0X could definitely be better than the HC-SR04. The HC-SR04 are definitely affected strongly by dust etc. The VL53L0X can also be much smaller, which would make it easier to install I'm sure. As the VL53L0X is using light rather than sound, you could probably install it behind a glass/perspex window to protect it, but you'll have to test that I'm not 100% sure.In terms of range the accuracy of the VL53l0X was great up until about 50-75cm, but beyond that it did start to vary, so I think you'll have to get one and test it!So I don't think the VL53L0X will give you better range, but it might be better for dust etc…

Hi Mario! Thank you very much for your comments, really glad you enjoyed the Instructable. Sounds interesting the use of the sensors on your scooter, clever idea. I think the VL53L0X could definitely be better than the HC-SR04. The HC-SR04 are definitely affected strongly by dust etc. The VL53L0X can also be much smaller, which would make it easier to install I'm sure. As the VL53L0X is using light rather than sound, you could probably install it behind a glass/perspex window to protect it, but you'll have to test that I'm not 100% sure.In terms of range the accuracy of the VL53l0X was great up until about 50-75cm, but beyond that it did start to vary, so I think you'll have to get one and test it!So I don't think the VL53L0X will give you better range, but it might be better for dust etc, although definitely need to test everything a lot. Good luck with the project and I look forward to seeing it on Instructables one day if you do a write-up.

Hi there! Thank you very much for your comments, I'm glad you like it. I'd like to explore sending the data via Bluetooth - my next project is going to be mounting this on top of a small 2 wheeled rover and exploring a room, so it would be nice to be able to send the data back via Bluetooth for monitoring. Mounting it on a drone sounds ambitious, I don't know if the scanning rate of this design would be enough for that application. It should be easy to make it mobile though, it just needs a 5V power supply (with sufficient current for the motor - 1A is more than necessary), and data connections for an Arduino or another microcontroller.

Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed reading it.

Well done! I really like the look!

Looks good! So exciting to see another Goodboy out there! How did you get on with the final assembly and programming?

This is so well done! I can't imagine the dexterity required for this. Well done 👍

Hi there, glad you like it! I hope you can manage to get it to fit rotated, but if you have access to CAD software perhaps consider shortening the body by 10mm? It should be quite easy to do in the model and shouldn't make a great deal of difference I think to do this. Cheers!

Thank you very much, I enjoyed your guitar build a lot! Great to hear that your school has an Arduino class, they're lucky to have that and your enthusiasm for sure.

Hi there, sorry I hadn't had the chance to reply to you before. The LEDs are there to help debugging primarily, I used them when developing it to show when the ultrasounds and ldrs were detecting for instance. This is because you can't have the Arduino usb connected whilst the dog is powered by battery, hence no use of the Serial Monitor which is normally what I'd use to debug. You're right actually, there could be more information about servo allocation in the wiring and matched in the code. I'm currently working on another YouTube video which will purely discuss the wiring and will cover this, I'll release it this weekend. Hope that helps!