Starchaser

Starchaser is a power-smart head with two degrees of freedom. This means it can rotate horizontally and vertically to orient itself towards the brightest source of light in order to maximize its power gathering. I went with the Power-Smart Head circuit again, and this time I ramped up the solar power, using the same panel from the Mazibug, 5V @ 200mA. This panel will easily provide more than enough power in full sunlight. It is a bit large, and definitely commands the focus of the design.

I chose my standard N20 micro gear motors; the 30 RPM variant. I wanted to have precise enough control that the bot wouldn't over-rotate when attempting to focus on a light source. The base is built with brass nails from a wall-hanging kit, that fit perfectly into these screw terminal blocks that I use quite often. They are a perfect match with the N20 gear motor shaft. The bracket that the solar cell attaches to is from the wall hanging kit as well.

Hidden underneath the heat shrink tubing is the Photodiode sensor array. I used break-away female headers to make the testing phase easier, but I liked the function of the setup and decided to keep it in the final design. The heat shrink tubing narrows the photodiode's field of vision from a broad 150 degrees to something more focused.

I used more header pins on the resistors coming from the photodiode array, that way I could swap in different resistor values to adjust the bot's sensitivity to light on either axis. I would have liked to use trimpots for this, but I didn't have any in the 1-5meg range.

Overall I am super pleased with this circuit and its performance! It has constant action and perfect accuracy in the sunlight, and doesnt perform too bad under lamp-light either! Eventually I will build one of these on top of a larger robot as a power source, and/or as a steering function.

Mazibug

I saw the schematic for Mazibug on the Bicore-based photopopper page on solarbotics.net, and thought it would make a nice bot to build around my new 200mA jumbo-sized solar cell. For this bot to function properly, its power source at peak power needs to be able to supply the robot and still charge the storage caps. Luckily these N20 gear motors don't draw that much current.

The bot was built around a battery-powered toy car kit off amazon for a measly two bucks, which is a great deal for all the parts you get in this kit. The wooden chassis, wheels and rubber bands were all re-purposed for this build. Initially I had the front wheel stationary in the forward position, but I didn't like the loud scraping noises it made across the desk when moving, so I build this caster using a pinch roller from a cassette player and some spare parts from a plastic gear set. This improved its turning greatly and made the bot much quieter on the kitchen floor.

I finally got around to installing a touch sensor on one of my bots. Due to this bot's high speed and constant movement, a touch sensor and back up feature is necessary to prevent the bot damaging itself by running into walls. I didn't have any click pens to pull springs from, so I got some 0.012" music wire and a long steel screw and turned my own springs using a hand drill, which came out better than I could have hoped for! I will definitely be using this method for future builds. Using a threaded screw allows the turns to be evenly spaced, and create and overall better looking spring.

As seen in the video above, the bot will continually track the light source, rapidly oscillating the motors when trained on the light source. The backup part of the circuit causes it to back up for about five seconds while still orienting itself towards the light. Once the voltage across the caps reaches about 5v, it will switch to photophobic behavior and take off towards darker areas, in my case retreating to underneath the couch. This back and forth feeding and fleeing behavior reminded me of my first robot kit; Cybug Scarab from JCM inventures. I love this circuit and will definitely be revisiting it again.

Specs for my build:
2x N20 600 RPM gear motors
2x 10F 2.7v super capacitors wired in series for 5F @ 5.4v
1x 110 x 69mm 5v 250mA solar cell (more like 190mA)
1x 74HC240N Octal Inverting Buffer

Starseeker

I returned to the Bicore chip to build a light seeking head, and I chose to use Wilf Rigter's Solar Powered Smart Head Revision 3 schematic. Pretty standard design with this one. I used some solid 8AWG copper wire for the frame. I originally tried to solder the heavy gauge wire together, but I couldn't get the wire to heat up enough. So i used krazy glue yet again.

My aesthetics on this one were pretty poor, but I was more concerned with building an appropriate frame to mount the bot on. The motor is an Omron R2DG-B01-30. My smallest gear motor I had. I believe it was salvaged from a DVD drive. The storage capacitors are three 0.3F supercaps wired in series to boost the operating voltage to a max of 8.1V, which this solar panel is capable of putting out!

Unfortunately this bot doesn't perform as well as I'd hope. It seems to have trouble with the 1381 latching, similar to Simon Fraser, who used the same schematic. It will stall in bright light, not function at all in lower level light, and only seems to turn sporadically. At least it turns in the right direction. If anyone has any advice, I could use it here. I never seem to have much luck with wilf's circuits.

EDIT: So after some testing in actual sunlight, it seems to perform much, much better. Even though the solar panel is putting out more than enough voltage for the 1381 to latch, it doesn't seem to cooperate in lamp-light. I'm sure more research is needed into the circuit theory as to why this is.

Electropopper

Electropopper's solar cell and wheels were salvaged from an earlier failed experiment involving me not understanding what torque means. I wanted to explore more capabilities of the Bicore chip after my success with Fleet Beacon. I was looking thru some schematics and found the Shokpopper circuit that people regarded as a worthy build.

I had just received two beautiful new 200 RPM gear motors, and wanted to put my torque issues to rest. These would definitely do the job. Normally I would use crazy glue to mount these to the bot, but in case I wanted to repurpose them later, thus I opted for zip ties.

I went a little overboard with the aesthetics on this bot, starting here with the Bicore. I just got some new solid core wire (24 AWG) in various colors and wanted to demo them out. I am using 0.22uF timing caps. I could have gone bigger, but I wanted its behavior to be different from the miller poppers in the robot park, with smaller more rapid steps. I doubled up on the 4700uF caps to give the motor steps a bit more gusto.

I had a lot of fun putting this guy together, mainly because I was happy to turn a failure of a bot into a successful one. The solar panel on this bot puts out 4.3V at 80mA, which is enough to make this bot pop about 4 times a second, almost run continuously in full sunlight. This bot was my best example of good aesthetics. It takes time and patience, but is sure rewarding. Electropopper, along with Scorpio; his brother will be receiving touch sensors soon.

Fleet Beacon

Fleet Beacon was my first attempt to utilize the 74**240 Bicore chip after my last failure with Syko. He is a pummer that builds charge during the day, and when the light level gets dark enough, switches on an LED blinking circuit. I used a 1.5F Powerstor supercap and a 74HCT240 chip to do the thinking.

With a 1.5F cap, this bot blinks away for about an hour after sunset before draining it's power. The efficiency on this bot could be improved by implementing Wilf Rigter's PowerSaver Flasher circuit, using a storage capacitor that has a higher voltage rating. Currently this one is rated for 2.7V. From what I know about the HCT flavor of bicore chips, they seem to work better when normalized to 5V supply voltage. I could be losing power there. I also did not have any schottky diodes on hand, so I had to use a standard silicon 1N914 version. Other builders seem to get much more efficiency out of their nocturnal pummers. I must have a power leak somewhere!

I do not like how I designed the LED antenna. It doesn't match the style of the base of the robot. I may re-design it later when I get some inspiration.

I used this Makezine PDF as a guide, but altered it a bit by removing the 'pumming' feature and opted for a simple alternating blinking set of LEDs

UPDATE:
In case you were wondering what a blown out capacitor looks like, here it is.

This is what happens when you try to store more charge at a higher voltage than the capacitor is rated for. The Solar Cell on Fleet Beacon can put out 4.7V, while this capacitor is only rated for 2.7V! Since the capacitor remains charged while it is sunny out, this voltage is held on the cap all day. After less than a year the cap called it quits and blew out. I have replaced it with two 10F 2.7V capacitors in series equaling 5F rated at 5.4V, which will do just fine in this circuit. Fleet Beacon will be repurposed soon in another project!