Project 1: Coat Hanger Walker

This first project is an ingenious little hardware hack done by a Canadian BEAM enthusiast named Jerome Demers. It wonderfully illustrates a number of principles put forth earlier in the book. Here are a few:

* It revels in the K.I.S.S. rule (see Chapter 3, "Robot's Rules of Order"). It uses a simple control circuit, a single servo motor, and a single gear to create a fourlegged walker.

* It demonstrates some BEAM principles, making use of the Bicore circuit, a two-node timer circuit that tosses a control signal back and forth between the two nodes, creating a reciprocating back and forth motion in the motor and gears, and therefore, in the legs attached to the gears.

* It makes use of techno-junk. Okay, so a coat hanger isn't very "techno," but if you've been doing junk scavenging as we suggested in Chapter 5, "The Right Tools for the Job," and saving the good stuff, you'll probably have some of the other components detailed in the parts list below.

What's on the site:

Bug Report: Known Bugs, "Issues," and Troubleshoots
The breadboarded Bicore circuit (Figure 7.3)
The "Anatomy of a Breadboard" image (Figure 7.13)
And now, a word about Switches
Additional Walker Hacks (Coming Soon)

Useful Project Links:

Solarbotics (Parts source for this project)
Jameco (Source for parts, tools and supplies)
Insectroids (Jerome Demers' BEAM site with the original walker project)
Spec Sheet for 74HCT240 (Detailed tech specs on the chip used for our Walker's Bicore circuit)