DC-1 restoration - upgrade

First we got the motor housing and the serving trey cleaned up and put back together. Then Steve Alaniz, one of our volunteers, got DC-1 running under remote control! There are pictures and a video here:

 http://agc.dyndns-work.com/rep/robots/dc-1/

Look for:

2011-04-15 Motor base installed.jpg - the motor housing cleaned up and reinstalled.

DC-1 running.wmv, a short movie of DC-1 operating under remote control;

Steve Alaniz.JPG, who donated the remote control unit and 6 volt battery and made connectors to adapt to the older Futaba motor controls.

Steve's Wall-e.JPG, a picture of Steve’s personal project, a modified Wall-E toy.

OK. There are now more photographs than can be shown in the scrolling list, so be sure to check the gallery. I flipped this bad boy over and found out that the motors are Mabuchi Motor RS-85's. 6 V DC, reversible. A quick check showed that both are working fine. I even found a spare in my junk box! <grin> On the bottom of the barrel is the legend "Born Free." <LOL> I checked what is apparently a power supply and it is outputting 6 V. to the receiver module. Unfortunately the receiver will have to go since the frequencies are not usable now. So I guess I will not bother with checking out why the transmitter and receiver are not working.

There is a noise filter in the lines to one of the motors but not to the other. Any observations are welcome. I gather the channel 3 was used to power on some other equipment in the bot. He had a 12 v. power amp with a remote mike, so it was probably to power on that or to remotely control some lights that are under the head.

Circuit boards? It's almost all just Futaba modules plugged together. I have uploaded a couple of more pictures. I have now ripped out all the disconnected wires. I will take new pics and upload them. The battery was dead so I substituted a car battery for test purposes. I put batteries in the remote, and nothing happened. So I have to start from the motor end and work backwards. The modules are: MC4 (motor controller), R3F (3 channel receiver), MC4-P20 (20 amp driver), T3s and S20 (not sure). These are obsolete modules for the most part and I am not having any luck finding information about them. There is one small circuit board that is apparently just a power supply for the Futaba modules.

The DC-1 was built by the Android Amusement Corp. He is a "Drink Caddie." There were apparently only 3 of them made and this is number one. They later built a DC-2 and there were a couple of dozen of them as nearly as I can tell.

The top globe is acrylic and just lifts off. Under that is an ice bowl with lights underneath. The two arms are dispensers for drink cups. The front deck has slots for bottles and glasses. The slots underneath held beer cans (middle) or canned mixed drinks (L/R.) There was no mechanism for dispensing them individually. The back theoretically held larger bottles, though it was crammed with wires and modules when we got it.

There was a remote voice link so the robot could interact with guests. The front held a radio and there are speakers under the front deck.