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2021-10-04 6:45 pm
I don't know, I've never done it before.
How about the hanging electrodes having an SSR or relays. When the robot first slides into position, they note the presence by detecting that the two electrodes now have some current flowing (from the drone's battery pack) but notes that the voltage is too low (i.e. the battery is not full), it then triggers the relay(s) to dump power down the electrodes until the electrodes circuitry decide that the batteries are full (or else the robot just leaves when it's full) and it stops charging.
The "intelligence" should be in the overhead to eliminate parts and extra weight on the robot. It just needs to know enough to leave when it's "full enough".
Anything seems possible when you don't know what you're talking about.
DroneBot Workshop reacted
2021-10-04 6:56 pm
Indeed a meritorious suggestion. But wont the rods be connected to the battery which could then be short circuited. However I expect some cleaver circuitry could be employed to prevent such disasters (maybe 🤔 )
A good point about shorting out the battery. Perhaps you could add a sensor and a relay so that those leads are only connected when the robot is in its "charging station"? Or keep the leads retracted and only expose them inside the "charging station".
One other point, if you're actually serious about charging LiPo's autonomously. You don't just charge LiPo batteries, you also need to balance them. So you'll also need connections for the balancing wires as well. A 2-cell Lipo will have three of these, while a 6-cell unit will have seven of them.
If you're using 18650's, as I am with my other robot (DB1.1?) then an onboard battery manager can do the job, as in that case you are charging them cell by cell.
But keep this in mind. My way, simply removing the LiPo batteries and recharging them outside the robot, has an advantage in that while the robot is charging you can replace the batteries with another set of charged batteries and keep the robot going. If you have to wait until the batteries are charged and balanced, the robot is out of action while this is happening.
You might have to give the squirrels aluminum track suits to lower their resistance enough for the terminals to notice their presence.
Perhaps it would be easier to spray them with conductive paint!
😎
Bill
"Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window." — Steve Wozniak
2021-10-04 7:06 pm
You might have to give the squirrels aluminum track suits to lower their resistance enough for the terminals to notice their presence.
Perhaps it would be easier to spray them with conductive paint!
😎
Bill
It would make watching them cross between hydro wires a lot more entertaining (but wouldn't augment your reputation as much, assuming you didn't want to make your squirrel spraying public knowledge.
Perhaps you could mount a heat sensor on the bottom of the charging platform and spray the area when it rises suddenly (and no robotic presence is sensed, of course). That way they could get conductively coated the first time and conductively exploded on a subsequent visit 🙂
Anything seems possible when you don't know what you're talking about.
DroneBot Workshop reacted
2021-10-05 7:40 am
@amitjo
@dronebot-workshop
@will
@byron
There is the old joke that should computers try and take over the world all you have to do is pull out the plug. If however they have battery power they can just plug themselves back in again!
This is an example of where what kind of docking you can use depends on the hardware and sensory system implemented on the robot.
https://singularityhub.com/2009/10/20/intel-robot-senses-wall-outlet-plugs-itself-in/
If you do have a robotic arm and want to match how a human inserts a plug (or picks a piece of fruit) you need to understand the computational power of the human brain to use touch/pressure and force feedback to make fine adjustments for easy fast insertion of plugs or plucking of fruit.
We can recognize objects just by touching them. Unlike vision, touch gives an exact size and location of the parts being touched along with other characteristics like edges, indents, rough or smooth and so on. Try building a robot hand that can recognize and manipulate objects with the speed and accuracy of a human hand and you will see how far we have to go. A claw hand doesn't cut it.
For me I would locate the power socket visually. You might use thousands of images and deep learning so the program can to learn to recognize a power socket. My approach would be the old method of figuring out how to extract the desired features using hand written algorithms as I shown here where a webcam could track a high contrast target for the location and orientation of a robot relative to the target.
So it might look for features indicating a power socket or actually have recorded where these sockets are in the building. When it get close enough it can locate the position of the connections and identify them perhaps by that fact there are (in this case) three "blobs" of equal areas and relative orientations with fixed spatial relationships with each other.
DroneBot Workshop reacted
2021-10-05 10:38 am
I remember seeing a robot design in Byte magazine (anyone else remember Byte?)
Oh yes! I still have my copy of Issue #1. Used to have every issue with just a few exceptions, but got rid of all but the first year issues.
SteveG
2021-10-05 11:15 am
I remember seeing a robot design in Byte magazine (anyone else remember Byte?)
Oh yes! I still have my copy of Issue #1. Used to have every issue with just a few exceptions, but got rid of all but the first year issues.
I used to get byte and I particularly liked the Chaos Manor articles by Jerry Pornelle (though I just had to google to remember Jerry's name). It always made a good lunchtime read. As the years went by the mag got really bloated with ads and I rather disliked the way the articles were split up into pages interspersed with so many pages of these pages of ads.
It got the prize for the weightiest mag on the shelf, so I suspect your wife was mighty pleased when she regained some cupboard space when you got rid of most of the issues. 😎
Topic starter
2021-10-05 11:32 am
Hi Bill,
LiPOs are being used in phones and laptops (besides drones, other bots and autonomous cars). Is it that the fire hazard is directly proportional to the "instantaneous power delivering capacity"? Making batteries targeting these high action applications more susceptible!
Which type of batteries do you plan to use in DB1.1?
2021-10-05 12:38 pm
I particularly liked the Chaos Manor articles by Jerry Pornelle
I loved those as well, as I recall he had names for each of his computers, which were "cutting edge" designs in the late 1970s.
My favorite were the Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar articles by Steve Ciarcia, who once said "my favorite programming language is solder". It's nice to see that Steve is still active.
Oh yes! I still have my copy of Issue #1.
I wish I did, and it's my own fault. When I packed up all my belongings and took the train out to Calgary to start my new life in Alberta I had a limit in what I could carry with me, especially as my cargo included two guitars! So I clipped all of my favorite articles from Byte and Popular Electronics (my other favorite magazine) and put them in a box to take with me. Which means I literally destroyed all of my original issues of Byte.
Really wish I hadn't done that!
😎
Bill
"Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window." — Steve Wozniak
2021-10-05 12:44 pm
LiPOs are being used in phones and laptops
And there have been consequences in doing that. Sony and Apple had laptops that would burst into flames, and Samsung had a phone (Galaxy 7) with the same problem.
Not to mention the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and it's issues with them, or the FedEx plane that was destroyed with lithium batteries in the cargo.
Which type of batteries do you plan to use in DB1.1?
A bank of 18650's.
😎
Bill
"Never trust a computer you can’t throw out a window." — Steve Wozniak
amitjo reacted
2021-10-05 8:29 pm
My favorite were the Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar articles by Steve Ciarcia, who once said "my favorite programming language is solder". It's nice to see that Steve is still active.
That was an interesting read particularly regarding the politics. If I was young again I would probably be reading the DIYODE magazine which is filled with projects.
https://diyodemag.com/
amitjo and DroneBot Workshop reacted
2021-10-06 12:43 pm
Google flags it as Not secure. Not sure what that potentially means in terms of web safety.
It means that the site owners are too cheap to purchase a proper security certificate, or too clueless to implement a free LetsEncrypt certificate LOL! Chrome flags it as unsecure, as it is HTTP instead of HTTPS. They have been doing that since October 2017.
[snip]
Bottom line - I'm pretty sure that the site is perfectly safe to use, as long as you aren't submitting any sensitive information to them.
[snip]
😀
Bill
True that! 🙂
It surprises me how many http sites are still around, especially when you can get one for free... even Cloudflare offer a free SSL certificate for personal websites and blogs.
Cheers.
DroneBot Workshop reacted
2021-10-06 12:53 pm
You mentioned not autonomously charging LiPo batteries. Is that due to its fire hazard probability?
Yes, exactly. I won't even leave the batteries in the robot when I'm not using it, they get stored in a fireproof (and explosion proof) container, with a big bag of sand on top of them. And when I do charge or discharge them, I'm always in the room with them, with a fire extinguisher handy just in case.
There was a horrible fire across the street this spring, in a unit identical to my own, and it started in their basement. It took 30 firefighters 7 hours to extinguish it, and they are still rebuilding the house. Sadly one person died in it and one was severely injured. So fire safety is a top priority for me.
Bill
Batteries can be very dangerous, for sure!
Cheers.
DroneBot Workshop reacted
2021-10-06 1:09 pm
How about a simple channel formed by 2 parallel walls ? The robot has two rods on it's top spaced by a few inches which rub on two bent-metal leaves protruding from the "roof" over the channel. When both rods touch the leaves, the circuit is closed and charging can proceed through them. When charging is complete, the robot simply moves on through the channel (and the next robot moves into place).
Interesting idea.
And if it has enough voltage and current, it could also be used to fry squirrels! Note that I'm sort-of kidding here, I'm actually an animal lover and wouldn't really want to hurt one. But as squirrels ate all the wires in my car this spring, resulting in a 1700 dollar repair bill, I might make an exception for them! In my neighborhood, the squirrel population outnumbers the human population by about a factor of 10.
I do see the use for autonomously charging an outdoor robot if you are using it for security or to tend to your garden. My robot's main purpose is to scare my neighbors and maintain my reputation as the weird old man who lives in the corner house!
😎
Bill
Here's another idea... how about building a 2 piece transformer?
Part A (vac) resides on a wall, and part B resides on the robot (bridge rectified, etc).
Make the winding's yourself, and mould the plastic or resin or even 3D print the docking housing for the winding's. It could be flat, or even a cone shape when the male and female parts can align and dock properly - Add 1 or 2 proximity sensors to get you close first.
Just a thought 😉
2021-10-06 5:46 pm
Had the same thought myself.
You can get wireless chargers for some mobile phones.
https://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/august2013_Bates
https://www.jjplus.com/robotics-charging/
You could also use a light source to transfer energy to the batteries using solar cells.
Outside you can just "plug into the sun" to recharge your batteries.
2021-10-06 6:22 pm
As I think @robotbuilder has mentioned in the past regarding the vacuum cleaner bot base he uses, it has a mechanism for getting itself recharged.
I see there are now plenty of outdoor grass mowing bots that have an outdoor docking station to which they automatically return for recharging. They use the same sort of batteries that are found in power tools, but these batteries would be just as good for an outdoor bot (with care due there high amps). I think that whatever mechanism they use for their charging would be a good starting point for any outdoor bot charging arrangement one might construct.. I have not found out much by googling yet, but I will keep trying to find out more about how they go about it.
These charging stations do not seem to fry squirrels though.