Hi - I just saw 3pi at the Maker Faire in Austin, Texas and have a few comments.
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It would be fantastic if there were a way to hack the motors to support some form of position encoder. A full-blown quadrature encoder would be nice but not necessary. What I was thinking of is painting one half of a gear in the gearbox white, the other half black (on the face, not the teeth) then using a tiny SMD-sized IR emitter/detector glued into position in a hole cut into the mounting bracket. Has anyone done this - or any other form of encoder for 3pi?
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If hack #1 above were possible, then IR wall detectors would make 3pi into a nice micromouse platform. I would buy one immediately.
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Late Sunday afternoon at the Maker Faire, there was a 3pi running around on a line on top of the table where they were being sold. I watched it a while then walked away. Roughly 5 minutes later I came back and the poor thing was spinning in circles. It appeared one wheel stopped working. I tried to put it back on the line but one wheel refused to turn. To prevent it from hurting itself, I removed one of the batteries. A short while later I went back and saw that there was a 3pi happily line following again. Does anyone here know what happened? Did the motor really stop working and someone replaced the 3pi with a new one? Was this just a software issue and a “reboot” fixed it? How reliable are these little motors?
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I think the 3pi is an excellent value for such a powerful platform. If I knew the motors had some form of encoder, I would have bought one on the spot at the Maker Faire.
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Thank you for choosing the AVR for 3pi instead of the horrid PIC! (Although the TI MSP430 would have been even better!
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- Dan