Beam News Archive April 99
April 30
Steven has posted pictures, schematic, PCB layout and all other details about
Smiley, his latest bot.
It is much like his other photovore's except this one has a brain of just one 74HC14 and one
transistor.
Steven has put together a preliminary Robotic Easter Egg Hunt image. It his plans for an advanced BEAM competition.
Looking for tiny gearmotors and servos. Here's a source from the radio controlled Slow Flyer
people:
WES-Technik.
Zoz posted this link for a Tickle Robot. Maybe I should throw a couple mercury switches in my
ATpV! ;-)
HobbyRobot.com is holding a
Robot & Technical Glossary Contest.
April 29
Jason has added pictures and desciptions of 6 of his newest bots to
Beamland. He also updated the
Longneck and OTIS pages.
April 28
Looking for a hackable flying Blimp? Try
The Radio Controlled Flying Saucer or SkyShots.
Darrell posted this link about Neuromorphic Flying Robots from the Telluride conference.
Get your teacher to start the Stamps in
Class program for high school and university classes.
April 27
Rich recommends this PCB fabrication
company to make your own hextiles.
It's Zoz's turn to try to get the ball rolling on this "Genome Project". Add your bots description
to the eGroups database.
April 26
Jesse Meers is creating the
BEAM Swap Shop.
It will enable people to buy, sell, and trade on his site. He needs a webmaster who will check
their mail DAILY and then update the site with new ads. Or someone who knows a java applet or
script that will do it automatically.
Zoz posted this link with lots of technical info on Tilden's
Lamprey.
Zero found this little
program that determines resistor values from their color codes. Great for electronics newbies.
April 25
Come one, come all! The second bi-annual BEAM Contest is underway!
April 24
Dave has added a bunch of new images to him bot galleries. New images include Mark's Lamprey (with
extreme closeups), new RJP pics, new BEAMant 6 pics, and a bunch more. Go to
Solarbotics to take a look.
Rich was looking through the All Electronics
catalog and found OMRON Gear Motors for $7.50 each and 3 volt Solenoids for $1 each.
April 23
Dave posted some info about his new CdS cells.
Ok, the gold CdS cells are quite regular, having only a single type. It
ranges from 3Meg in total dark to 24.3 ohms in direct sunlight, with quick
recovery time. They even come with a 3rd leg for grounding the case!
The steel CdS cells are a bit of a mixed bag, having 6 different types.
They range from over 20Meg dark resistance to 28 ohms in direct sunlight.
The slowest of the bunch (for recovery time) goes from 28 ohms to over 6Meg
dark, taking about 2 minutes to recover.
These steel types we'll try to sell in matched sets, but we're not going to
sort them according to resistance ranges.
Where are you guys getting all these surplus pager motors from?
"Juchniewicz" has some Namiki Pager motors same as the ones from SB for $8 US each.
Some TPM's like the ones from SB for about $5 Us each
And some just regular pager motors for sale at about $5 US each
Send email to vageta@cyberwar.com.
"NSX" is selling pager motors like Dave's TPM's for $10US each. Email
evenflow88@hotmail.com if your interested.
April 22
Steven Bolt's Green Thumb
gets a Finger
.
Turtle Tek's BEAM Island has
moved. Update your bookmarks.
April 21
The Solarbotics website has had a major
update. New stuff includes...Scott Martin's Beer Can Moshers for sale, a page on the
1999 LANL workshop and a
bunch of new components in the product inventory!
Ian has added day 2
of his Los Alamos BEAM Workshop page.
Zozzles has created a BEAM
Heretics Yahoo club.
Dave posted this pic of an old 555 solarengine test
board.
Nik posted this pic of a FLED photovore.
April 20
Check out this robotics page.
There is excellent stuff on implementing "Braitenberg Vehicles" in the projects section.
Nigel found a supplier in Brisbane, Australia called Economic Electronics, they carry 1381's in
stock. Their number if you are interested is 07 3252 7466 (is that a phone number?).
April 19
Nik has started the ball rolling on the "BEAM Genome project". Anyone that thinks there is a BEAM
robot/circuit/idea that is a key step in the the BEAM time-line should e-mail him with the
following information: Type: robot, circuit, idea, etc...
Name: what you call it.
Date: when it was created.
Innovator's Name.
A link to a webpage that has a picture or infomation on it.
Description: a _SHORT!_ description of it.
Direct your submissions to genome@resourcekt.co.uk.
BEAMLand has been updated.
April 18
Rich has posted a few pics of his Spyder frame.
Keep an eye out for the next contest sometime after "Hell Week" (yes...it's that time again)!
April 16
Ian is holding a chat this Sunday to talk about BEAM in general and the BEAM workshop. The chat
will be held at:
US / Pasific = 3:00 PM
US / Mountain = 4:00 PM
US / Central = 5:00 PM
US / Eastern = 6:00 PM
Asia / Singapore = 6:00 AM (Monday)
You can go to:
http://www.timezoneconverter.com
to find the time for your time zone if it's not listed above.
The chat will be held in the Yahoo BEAM club's chat room @
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/beamrobotics
April 15
Ian has finished Day One of his Los Alamos 1999 BEAM Workshop page.
April 13
Ian has added 13 of MarkT's robots to his gallery at BEAM Online.
Anyone interested in buying some OTU's? Steve has some for
sale.
RoboRodentia Robotics
contest is being held this Saturday. It will be viewable via Real Video live starting at about
1:00PM PST.
April 12
What time is best for you to chat about BEAM?
Peter shared this cool news article of a modular robot.
Following the links, I found this article on Tilden's Satbots.
Richard has uploaded a new turbot schematic
.
April 9
The lampray parts pack includes the majority of parts needed to start building and experimenting
with lampray locomotion. There are parts for ten bicores. Eight different 74hc245 Motor drivers,
OR parts for eight H-bridges, using the 74hc139, your choice. A variety of small caps, a variety
of pots, Blank PCB material, or hopefully comming soon, pre-made PCB's designed for Bi-cores.
Small variety of connecters. Structural material, (That yellow Lynxmotion stuff), Rechargable
battery, _EIGHT_ of My Gearmotors and various other materials to assist you in a construction of a
Lamprey robot. There is also an information sheet pointing to net resources for the studies of
lamprey locomotion, including a picture of Mark T's robot, and construction suggestions. This
parts pack includes most of everything you need to pursue building and experimenting with lamprey
locomotion. While, we don't have any actual kit, as we aren't sure ourselves how Mark T runs his
nice lampray, this is an excelent chance to get all the peices you need to start hacking away to
be the first beamer other than Mark T to build one! This part pack is _WELL STOCKED_, loaded with
freebies. Even if you didn't want to build a lamprey, you could get yourself one and be building
bots for months! Think about what you could do with eight gear motors! Two Stryders, four
"miller" walkers, A walkman and a three motor walker, four turbots! And more!
Price? $350 plus $5.00 shipping.
send a check to:
Dennison Bertram
384 Crescent Ave.
Buffalo NY, 14214
But e-mail me first at dennlill@buffnet.net so I know
your check is comming so I can put the pack together for you!
Terry found this cool Bug
Brain program that lets you play with the neurons and nodes that make up the brain for a Lady
Bug to help it feed and survive.
Richard put up new pictures of his turbot
and started a minball page.
April 8
Another LANL news
article about the Workshop and a picture of Ian with a couple bots.
Here's a link from
Steven describing the difference between HC and AC logic families.
Walkman?...STOLEN?!? Have they no shame?...
April 7
Download this very cool BEAM promotional page from LANL.
Going to the 5th Annual BEAM robotics workshop? Lucky you! Here's a
LANL
news article about the upcoming event.
Interested in PortEscap motors for $30 each? The dimensions are 12mm wide and 44mm long. They
draw 5mA at 6v and should be able to run lower then 3v so they would work with walkers. They have
a 1044:1 planetary gearbox. It says 68 RPM at 6v but it should be about perfect at 3v.
E-mail Steve for more details.
April 6
Zozzles has posted a good picture of a
butterfly wing
for those magbot SE's.
There's a new robotics online store called
HobbyRobot.com. It's a
division of Wirz Electronics.
April 5
Dennison can get a hold of 3vdc solenoid's if anyones
interested. Size is aprox: .6"X.34"X.36" Let him know soon if your interested. $3.00 each. Also,
if your interested in 50F and 100F capacitors (no that's no a typo), contact him.
April 4
Check out David Perry's new
BEAM Robotics site.
April 2
Ian will be covering the 1999 Los Alamos BEAM workshop. Hopefully he'll have lots of photos.
April 1
DETAILED SCHEMATICS OF TILDEN'S "MONOCORE" HEXTILE PHOTOVORES REVEALED!!!
James Wilson has found some very small (pager
motor sized) solenoids that operate at 1.5 to 6V. E-mail him for details. He also has 71 gear
motors left for $5.00 Canadian each.
Here's an Australia distributer of Solarbotics kits and components.
robot-Oz.
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