This week I finally received the rest of my smaller parts, everything except the female coaxial cable. Why do we need a female coaxial cable? It’s part of the “recipe” for making an AC adapter. I keep looking at the adapter’s recipe thinking, “there’s got to be an easier way of putting that together…” and I’m sure there is, but I don’t know what that is yet. Someone in last few days posted a note on the site that sates, “I’m going to try making the AC adapter now without the coaxial cable. I think I can do it simply by soldering the wall-wart to the wires connected to the Qwerk.”
To me that says that my intuition was right, the AC adapter recipes has just a few too many extra steps, but I still don’t know exactly how to do it without the female coaxial.
So, I went to Radio Shack again… (They’re getting to know me as that girl who comes in with a short list of items that they never have, and a longer list of questions they usually can’t answer.) They had several different types of adapter and coaxial heads, but after almost an hour we decided that the best bet would be to wait for the arrival of the coaxial cable I ordered (because they did not have any females in stock. Psh. That’s what you get when you hire only men at an electronics store.)
Anyway, I made the new reinforces templates and re-mounted the IRs. Since I just got the screws I needed I attached the stem to the Qwerk, and then attached the petals to the servos using double sided mounting tape. I wiped the sides of the servos down so that the tape would hold, but not to my surprise, they had a difficult time staying on, so I have taken them all off, and will remount with a dab of super glue once I have also labeled the servo and IR wires.
I ordered 10 servo extender cables and received exactly one in the mail. I called the company back and they said they would ship the remaining cables out with overnight express.
Right now I am disassembling the top part of the stem joint because the connection between two of the brackets is too slack and the joint keeps falling. Once that is tightened, I will put the flower bot back together, make sure it fits snuggly in its basket, and then move on reviewing the sample code provided on a website for the Sharp IR sensors.
About the digital photos I have taken: For some reason the camera is not connecting to my lap top. I am trying to get my computer to recognize the usb drive, and until it does, I can’t upload the photos.
Working on it right now…more in a couple hours.
