First of all I would like to thank Joe and Arcbotics for the creation of this unique and elegantly designed hexapod!
I am reporting from Brazil where we built seven Hexys over a weekend for a robot playground at Worldskills Brazil expo. We planned to have them here a couple of weeks in advance, but due a hurricane and some Brazilian bureaucracy, it only arrived 3 days before the event. I received the box , and as it arrived, without even opening it, took it to São Paulo. I set up a workshop at the hotel room.
About the Hexy assembly: you really don’t need any tool other than the screwdriver that is supplied in the package. I would recommend you to have a better screwdriver because it will make the assembly a bit easier. The first Hexy took about 4 hours to assembly. I would say the 7th took about one hour, or less. The most time-consuming part is removing the protective film from the acrylic parts. The hardest part is fixing those little black caps to the servos. It took some time to see that the little screws supplied by Arcbotics were much better that the screws that came with the servos. After that, it became a bit easier.
The box comes with extra servos, screws and parts for one extra leg. That was critical for the maintenance during the exposition.
I feel that the tutorial is not emphatic enough about how critical calibration is, to make it work well. The first part of the tutorial to build the legs is really complete. The second part, for building the body is not, and you have to guess some parts. There are 3 pieces that I could not find a use.
It was easy to make PoMoCo work. It is when you notice that you should have calibrated your Hexy better.
We needed it to work unplugged from a computer during the expo and I have a very limited knowledge of Arduino´s Sketch so I asked for some help from Joe. I received prompt support and it was all set at the last minute!
I would say about 10 thousand kids passed through the space. I could´t describe the excitment and the expressions of awe from them! The Hexys worked continuously 12 hours a day for 4 days. (they were programmed to move for 5 secs and rest 10 secs). Some servos stopped working after a day, and were replaced, as they are not designed for this kind of load). At the end of the event, I lost 25 servos out of 133.
Suggestions for future development:
- A pedestal – that is going to be very useful for the Hexy to not “walk away” during the testing and also for exposition purposes: once you have it assembled you will really want it to be on you coffee table all time.
- An alternative way to fix the servo caps – I imagine some sort of clip or something.
- A Sketch code library with standard movements – that would be very nice for people like me, who are not programmers.
- One upgrade package with stronger servos. That would make the Hexys more expensive – but well, some people would pay the extra depending on their use.
- One rechargeable battery upgrade package. It is expensive to run Hexys on Alcaline AAs and the power brick limits the movements.
- In a couple of Hexys, the head didn’t stay properly fixed. It may be the way I assembled it. I ended up using a small zip tie to fix the servo.
Overall, the experience of assembling and making it work, even under the pressure of a close deadline, was very pleasurable. I plan to follow Arcbotics development of Hexy and hope Joe and his team present us with many other creations, as brilliant as this hexapod.