TheCowGod's blog

Well, I finished the construction, added the second drumstick up front, redid all of the circuitry on a PCB to eliminate the breadboard and clean things up, soldered up ribbon connectors instead of having loose wires everywhere, and glued down everything that was still hanging loose. So it's done, mechanically. Now I've turned attention to the coding.

Ahh, I've made a lot of progress. LDM is now almost complete, construction-wise. I still want to cram in a second drumstick up front somewhere, and of course I need to attach that sampling board hanging out in space (I'll probably just hot-glue it to the side), but there's enough there to start working on the code.

The first Solarbotics GM10 motor I mounted or LDM for the "bass drum" quickly started getting stuck, as if the gears were faulty. I cursed, cut the hot glue to get the motor off of the robot, and soldered up wires for another motor. With the new motor glued onto the robot, I tested it and, just like the first motor, it worked great for about a minute or two, and then started getting stuck as well. So now I suspect that the gears are just getting damaged when the stick hits the ground repeatedly.