October 25, 2014
Lots happened today…
We started by unboxing our first hydraulic components. We decided to give hydraulics another look after talking to Adam Zoss at Ekso Bionics.
The hydraulic power unit (the larger component) along with a cylinder that we’ll use to build a prototype knee.
The hydraulic power unit should give us plenty of flow and pressure to reach our speed and power goals. Once the solenoid valve and pressure relief valves come in we should be able to assemble and test the knee.
The nice folks at Adafruit got in touch with us offering a few free copies of their new sound board. We’ve been thinking it would be great to add sound effects to the suit, so Cole and Gabriel spend some time getting that to work.
They got the sound board working right away using headphones. They then tried to get an audio amplifier board we had lying around for Project: Varia.
Cole and Gabriel reviewing the manual for the audio amplifier.
The amp didn’t work at first. The problem was tracked down to some dip switches that control the volume. They were switched off.
Meanwhile, Conner, Thelonius, Ed, and Joseph had a long and spirited discussion about the design of the shoulder.
Conner suggested a design something like this.
Finally, Gabriel etched the control board for the linear actuator elbow.