Next up was mounting some of the electronics boards. To start with I need an arduino uno, an adafruit servo controller, a power converter and the slip ring board. I plan to run all power from 12v batteries in the body. With all the gadgets I have planned I know room in the dome will be tight so my main objective is to keep everything as compact as i can.
I got some simple pcb mounting feet and will mount some boards directly to the dome with captive studs and some bits on a plastic board.
First up was the servo board. I mounted this on a plastic board which I then mounted to the dome. To make the feet mounts fit to the contour of the dome I just shaved a bit off the outer edges.
Next up was the arduino, I just mounted this to the dome directly with the feet and chose to put it directly above the front PSI.
I decided to mount the slip ring dome board (from glynharper) and power converter (from Chris) together. I made a quick mount using plastic board and a cut down piece of mini trunking.
Next up a temporarily connected it all up and wrote some basic code.
I have an arduino mega adk that will eventually go in the body that has a blutooth dongle. This is then connected to the arduino in the body and the servo controller using I2C.
I am powering both Arduino's with 12v and the servo board with 5v (though I have read that 6v is better so may change this).
I have written some test code for the body arduino that enables me to receive commands from a playstation3 move navigation controller. The button presses then send an I2C command across the network to the dome arduino.
I then wrote some code for the dome arduino that receives the I2C command and moves the servos.
The code is a bit buggy but for now it proves the servos all work at least.
I plan to write most scripts myself and will post them up when they are more complete and reliable.
Anyway, here's a quick video...
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