Fot those of you, that have attempted using drill motors....

How did you attach the motor to the wheel. I have been working on the drawings of the one I am trying to build, and I can not find out how to attach the motor to the wheel.

Thanks.

The Vandoor version was done in Anvil 1000, an old 80's 2D drafting CAD program! This is not a school design, they dropped the summer program for Team 122 students also. If it gives direction or sparks thought and imagination that's great!


MrB helped set up a link for my animated gifs of the KnightKrawler I will add more soon.

Find them here...Thanks MrB and Team 871 !!!


http://wihs.zapto.org/~knightkrawler/

Nice, it's a little hard to to tell but you do like quite steady, hope our design comes out that well, I'm in the process of redesigning to use the FP motors :mad: So we'll see how they handle it. Thanks for all the help and thanks for giving me a good excuse to get my post count to 150! :D Check out the custom title all!

What kind of control algorithm is being used to balance your "Craigway"? PI, PID? Something else? How well is it working?

I'm not sure what pi or pid are. But the algorithm contains a few complex steps or reverse engineering.

Right now it balances decent, but i think it's balancing for a weight somewhere between what the average rider is and what the unloaded craigway is.

Hence it overreacts to unloaded sway, underreacts to a load. Our test driver, Craig, was able to do a very good job controlling it. Staying upright, swivel turning, and moving across the room. Check out the videos on the first page of this thread to see for yourself.

I'm currently working out a far more complex algorithm to determine speed, with a configurable user weight input. I only wish i payed attention in ap physics. Stupid torque problems!!!

So is there any way to turn it without pushing off a wall or something? How does one control that?

<EDIT>I have no clue what pi or pid is either so don't feel bad ;) </EDIT>

PI and PID are simple algorithms for stabalizing a system. In your case this could be applied to preventing your sooter from toppling over. For a simple explanation of PI/PID as well as some stuff about diferential steering click here. Scroll down to the section entitled "Differential Steering and PID".

</edit> I just found this. Its another pretty good explanation of PID.

No problem, my pleasure. I'd be more than happy to host all Craigway/knightkrawler/Homebrew Segway pics and vids....

OK ! What did I do wrong in setting up the link in my post?

Yours works ...mine gives an error message.

The tilde looks different in yours ...is that it, MrB?

The "text" of your link is fine. But for some reason the actual CODE of the link is just telling it to go to "http:///" which obviously isn't going to go anywhere.

I'm not really sure what you did wrong in order for that to happen, but for some reason it did. :p

Just edit your post and take out your url vB code and just leave the url and make sure "Automatically parse URLs:" is checked. :)

sliding a little OT here, so on the Craigway and Knight Krawler, how do you turn? on the Craigway can it turn without losing its ability to balance gyroscopically?

A suggestion to the makers of the "Craigway"
 

(To the makers of the Craigway)
Just a thought . . .

I looked at your video clip and I noticed something. You still were having a hard time balancing on the platform. (This is just a suggestion but . . .) I would try to lower the center of gravity on the machine a bit more. Most importantly put the platform under the wheel axle.

I don't know if this has been mentioned before, or what problems others may find with this idea . . . its just an idea.

Good luck :)

Having seen both these devices:

Knightcrawler: Turns by adjusting the speed of the motors (ie, tank drive on 2 wheels) through the handlebar throttles.

Craigway: It doesn't, yet. The turning you see in the video is simply caused by the rider shifting the balance of his weight. And no, the turning in the final product should have no affect on the gyro at all. That's more a programming issue than anything else, but if you think about it, the gyro is only 1-axis. When the device turns, it is simply rotating that single axis that the gyro can read, so it should not be affected at all. :)

Thanks Sanddrag! That advice was right on the money!
The link works now!

The KnightKrawler does turn like a tank but the right grip throttles forward and backward and the left twist grip controls left and right steering.

The cool thing is that when you are spinning around in a circle, you sense your lack of balance, and make corrections with the right grip like normal! I suspect this is identical in a gyro segway and on our KnightKrawler this feels good! Just maintaining your balance manually feels good, I wonder how fast and how powerful can a manual machine get assuming good control charactaristics and low CG platform design. Can we overtake a standard Segway's 12.5 MPH limit? Manually?