Pretty interesting, question, can you get a good amount of speed out of the FP motors? I'm a little concerned about that, they don't seem to pack much punch.

i think with a 12 - 16" wheel the FP motors have good speed,

BUT they do not seem to have the torque required to hold a rider upright and compensate their weight to keep them balanced

we will be trying the CIM and possibly the van door motors..

What's interesting about the Craigway is that the rider stands far ABOVE the axis of the wheels passing the task of balancing largely to the motors and software. I just thought I'd point that out.

nice observation :-)

that was the goal of teh project, to see if we could actually build a self balancing device. As stated above, in its current state (early engineering prototype) is needs a skilled rider to try and balance, but that is only b/c the motors can't handle the load. But the autobalance/propulsion code works perfectly... I'll try to get some vids of the Craigway wthout a rider so you can see it balance itself.

Our hope is that in the next egineering model, the motors will e able to support the rider, and look and feel like a segway HT.

Our programmers is very pround of his programming skillz :-)

Hmm, thats interesting I jsut realized that as well, wouldn't it be considerably easier to balance with the weight below the wheels? Above them the motors are sortof playing catchup...

Sorry for the double post, but I hate editing them, it leaves that nasty little tag at the bottom. I was also wondering for the team's that've done this, how good are you with battery life?

Quote: "how good are you with battery life?"

Ours will go a few hours per charge!


Just how many Team Segways are there out there? We have two, a team behind our pit at the Nats had two (fourwheeler) and another team had one (fourwheeler) then the Craigway prototype (I like it by the way I just saw the video!)

I have a vandoor design that is a vast improvement over our current KnightKrawler! 16" Skyways, narrower track, battery is inline and upright, more ground clearance and more CG offset
to the platform. I'll show it soon......

So on the Knight Krawler, you used FP motors and their respective gearboxes correct? Did you mount the wheels straight to the gearboxes? Sprocket and chain? Also, did you do any more tweaks to the ratios? More speed? More torque?

No, the KnightKrawler uses window motors from the 2000 kit. I was just relating that all other teams have been using the Fisher Price motor/transmission on theirs and I have to think it is for a reason....

Personally I would like to see what a Chiaphua could do.
But I would want a near zero backlash transmission and would want the motors pointing inline so we are talking a worm gear (friction) or a 90 degree bevel gear setup.

Look at the pictures on page three and you should pick out the windowmotors and how it is set up.

The motors are mounted to the upright motor mounts as are the axles and the gears on the motor mate with the gears on the wheel.

We have five different gear ratios to choose from.

Ok, sorry, misinformed. So how is it on speed? Is it snappy? Sluggish? Also, hows it balance, are you wobbling around a lot on it?

Vandoor Power
 

Here is the Vandoor powered two wheeler....

very nice design...

did you use inventor for that?

Quote: "hows it balance, are you wobbling around a lot on it?"

Ha Ha! No way! I don't wobble around on anything! (Ego kicks in) :)

I would like to get out some clips of this running around but don't have a way to post them because they are too big about 1.5 megs. Does someone have a way for me to get them linked for everyone to see? I can send them to your E-Mail address.

I have some animated gifs that were taken with my digital camera
in my living room. Getting on, figure 8's, circles, takeoff, etc.

Can I put files that big here in a different area?

e-mail them to me at b3@buonomo.org

I will post them on my server and then post the URL where people can access them...

Well, you can send them to me for my personal webserver but unfortunately it doesnt have that good a track record for staying online :-). In a few weeks I hope to have a linux webserver up and running, if it works out I'll let ya know.


Oh btw, you know there is a quote button right?