New chassis for my hexapod :)

Bajdupod 996R: Arduino hexapod from Bajdi on Vimeo.

I finally finished the design of my hexapod chassis and had it laser cut this week. I had 3 plates laser cut in acrylic. The original chassis was a bit to small to fit everything. So I designed a bigger chassis and went for 3 decks. This gives me enough room for the battery and electronics. Between the bottom and the middle plate are the Lipo battery, UBEC’s and power servo power PCB. Between the middle and the top plate are the Seeeduino Mega and my Bajduino Mega 3A with the ATmega1284 micro controller.

I could run all the code on one micro controller but it’s more fun to use 2. The 2 micro controllers communicate with each other over hardware serial. The Bajduino Mega 3A has a header for the nRF24L01 module and at the moment it only handles the wireless communication.

Hexapod Bajdupod 996r chassis

While I took the hexapod apart to fit the new chassis I replaced all the servo horns with metal ones. I also fitted bearings in the bottom plate of the chassis, these hold the legs. As you can see in the video the servos need to be better calibrated so all 6 legs are the same. Sounds simple but it’s not that easy to get it right.
I have not fitted the top plate yet, that’s for later. I’ll also be adding some leds and sensors.

BTW If you’re wondering what the strange music is in the video, the ice cream van just drove by while I shot the video in the garden 🙂