Decimus 4 progress – minus a little smoke

It didn't take long to get the first Decimus 4 board on the bench for a build. This first one will serve as a static testbed for code development and sensor testing. After verifying that the power supplies were good, the LEDs, display, buzzer and pushbuttons were added for a…

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Searching for the perfect screw

Here in the UK, we use metric fasteners. When you go shopping for small screws though, the only sizes you can generally get below M3 are old, awkward imperial sizes. Even if you are happy with M3, the variety of shapes and lengths is woefully inadequate. Imagine my delight when I found perfect screws on Amazon of all places. (more…)

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Pinion interfering with the tire

When I applied power to the motors on Zeetah VI (ZVI) for the first time, the motors seemed to struggle and the PWM value to get the wheels to rotate seemed higher than usual. Since this was my first four wheel mouse of this configuration (ZIV is a four wheel drive, four wheel steer mouse), I wasn’t sure if the higher load was normal or not.

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