• Ray Edgley posted an update 3 years ago

    After installing Fred’s left Bicep, I asked him to record a video for me.
    This went well until he went to point to the virtual white board on his right side.
    Now he not talking to me 🙁
    So now I’m working on his right arm 🙂

  • Ray Edgley posted an update 3 years ago

    I had a bit of a play with a few servos to see how they performed when the voltage to them started to get a bit low.

    It’s surprising just how much the current increases when they start to struggle.

  • Ray Edgley posted an update 3 years, 1 month ago

    I made Fred a happy robot with the addition of his left bicep, right up until he woke up his virtual white board was on his right side. 🙂

  • Ray Edgley posted an update 3 years, 1 month ago

    Fred’s been at me for a while now on getting him some Arms.
    Here is the start of the left Bicep.

  • Ray Edgley posted an update 3 years, 1 month ago

    The final part of Fred’s Left Shoulder.
    Here we set the feedback pots position and test it all out with MRL.

  • Ray Edgley posted an update 3 years, 1 month ago

    Fred’s Left Shoulder Part 4.
    It’s all coming together 🙂

  • I recently got a new toy.
    I don’t normally post unboxings in here, but this is so handy when setting up your servos.

    This servo tester is great for positioning servos and testing the range before connecting the servos to the servo drivers and fire up MRL.
    I also opened this one up to see what was inside it.

  • In this video we will build and add the bicep rotator to Fred’s Left Shoulder.

  • Part 2 of Fred’s Shoulder.
    More worm drive fun and games 🙂

  • Since Fred was insisting, I started on his Left Shoulder.
    This is the start of the new version of the shoulder with the ball bearings.

  • Just for a laugh, I turned on the webcam to record Fred 🙂

  • When your building a robot, sometimes, you need to sense a signal or a voltage that is well over the rating of your input.
    This is not a real problem, because you can use a voltage divider to drop the voltage down a proportional amount.

    I did this with Fred’s battery monitoring inputs, where the Battery voltages can be…[Read more]

  • Fred’s Brain Part 5
    Fred is a non-standard Inmoov.
    The head in particular has a number of modifications, starting with the Advanced Eyes from Dakota76 and the Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi Spy Camera mounted in one of Fred’s eye’s.
    The other major difference, is in the way I control the servos, using the PCA9685 I2C 16 channel…[Read more]

  • Fred’s Right Shoulder Part 4.

    I released this a few weeks ago and for got to post it here.
    The shoulders in Fred are standard, latest version from this site.
    The new ball bearing setup are much smoother.

  • Continuing with Fred’s Right shoulder, during this I find an issue with the pot and have to replace the pot.

  • In this video, I print out and assemble more components for Fred’s shoulder.
    I also mount the shoulder assembly onto Fred’s upper torso and set the feed back pot position.

  • Today, I start on Fred’s Right Shoulder.
    This updated version of the Inmoov shoulder has bearings in it 🙂

  • Continuing with the Fred’s Brain series, this time I look a speech services.
    Both TTS and STT

  • So last week I unboxed a new Raspberry Pi 4 with 8G of RAM.
    This week, I setup the OS and install MyRobotLab on it.

  • In this video Part 3 of Fred’s Brain, we continue looking at MyRobotLab and how we use the services to setup and control Fred.

    • I really enjoy watching your videos Ray. The way you explain things is great. However I have a confession. I have gone over to the “dark side” that is ARC. I am now running EZ-B controllers and find the ARC software much more intuitive and simpler to work with. I have modified the Nervo Board to suit the new setup.
      Keep up the good work. Warren

      • In the world of robotics, there is no dark side, unless you plan to have your robots destroy other robots ect.
        There is only different 🙂

        In any case, keep on building and posting your progress 🙂

        • He won’t be destroying other robots. His main role is to teach my students about Robotics and AI. His secondary role will be to help teach kids sign language. The second part is not proving straightforward but, I enjoy a challenge. 😉

          • I do remember seeing another design of hand created for the Inmoov robot by a builder that allowed side to side motion of some of the fingers.
            It was posted on Thingiverse.
            It does require more servos 🙂

  • I needed to know what the battery voltage was and also had some issues with the MPU6050 running with the Raspiberry Pi 4.
    To I added one to the I2C port on the Arduino Nano.

  • Part two of Fred’s Brain.
    In this video we look at the Servo Service in MyRobotLab and how we set them up on our robots.
    Fred has quite a number of servos, and once the arms and hands are attached, there will be a lot more 🙂

    • Great video Ray. I wish I was as confident at writing code.

      Warren😉

      • Keep in mind, I’ve been playing with this for 6 years now 🙂
        Confidence comes with time.
        If you go back an look at some of the very early stuff from Gael, he wasn’t confident with programming at all, Look at what he’s doing now and you would think he was a full time programmer instead of a best in field sculptor designer. 🙂
        The idea behind…[Read more]

  • Every had a servo not turn, but still make sound like it was trying to run?
    In this video I have a look at one of the micro servos from Fred’s Right Eye Mech.

  • In this video I upgrade Fred’s one and only Arduino to give it more power.

    During programming and testing, I noticed the Raspberry Pi running MyRobotLab was throtteling and reporting low power.
    This has started since the program has been using the two UltraSonic sensors attached to the Arduino Nano.
    With the plan to…[Read more]

  • This week I look at Fred’s Brain, or more accurately, his program.
    This program is getting to be quite complex, so this is the first of a multi part series.
    Fred uses MyRobotLab at it’s core.
    There are links in the video description.

  • Networking Part 1
    In this video we look at the physical layer of the Open Systems Interconnect or OSI model for networking.

    Please Like, Subscribe and ring the notification bell to be alerted when the next video is released.
    It also a form of support that costs you nothing, but does help the channel a lot.

    Maybe drop into the discord server for…[Read more]

  • Seems I keep getting questions on Fred’s Power Systems.
    Lets try and explain it a bit better 🙂

    • Fred is going great and you have really helped a lot understand how to assemble an inmoov. It also shows, one should feel completely comfortable modding it. This child needs to mutate and change over generations to survive.

      • Modding also makes you go further in to the learning of how things work 🙂
        Good news is there are a lot of Inmoov builders that bring knowledge to the group so we can all learn.
        Most of the printed mods in Fred were created by other talented builders.
        I am working on the power distribution and a different control system, but trying to make sure…[Read more]

  • Time to make Fred a bit more powerful.
    Lets wire up the battery and connect the power switches 🙂

  • In this video I Make up Fred second network cable and the power wires for the Raspberry Pi, the touch screen and the Network switch.
    I also setup the AT30 Switched Mode Power Supply and set it voltage.

  • Terminating Cat5e 10/100 Ethernet cables.

    In this video I install the first of the network cables into Fred InMoov.

    Please Like, Subscribe and ring the notification bell to be alerted when the next video is released.
    It also a form of support that costs you nothing, but does help the channel a lot.

  • For those of you who have been following along with Fred’s Build, I have now added the mounts for the battery packs.
    I have two mounts, each holding up to a 4AH 20V battery, that 80 Watt Hours per battery, compared to the 72 Watt Hours of the 6 volt 12 Amp hour gel-cell battery.
    Having the two means I can change the batteries one at a time…[Read more]

  • Part 5 of Fred’s upper stomach.
    In this video I mount the upper stomach to the rest of Fred’s torso, extend the servo wires and connect it up.

    • encore une superbe vidéo 👍

      • Thankyou.
        Tomorrow I have a video out on an Air Brush kit I picked up online.
        Next week I make the battery cover then add battery mounts for a pair of 20V 4AH Li-Ion power tool batteries to power Fred with.
        Each battery holds more power than the 6V Gel Cell normally fitted to an Inmoov.
        But to use these batteries you need to have a few Switch Mode…[Read more]

  • Fred’s upper stomach Part 4, continuing with the upper stomach, front covers and install the Kinect.

  • Part 3 of building Fred’s upper stomach.
    In this video I install the two servos and assemble the side-to-side torso bearing assembly.

  • Time to continue welding up parts for the upper stomach 🙂

  • So the first in the series of videos on the upper stomach is done 🙂

  • Fred now has a PIR sensor and a pair of Ultrasonic sensors fitted after a bit of repair work to his chest.

  • I actually created this video a while back, but forgot to edit and upload it. 🙂
    I upgraded Fred’s brain from a Raspberry Pi 3 to a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB or RAM.

  • Now that Fred has a back cover to protect any electronics, it time to install a Switch Mode Power Supply (SMPS) and the servo driver 🙂

  • Last week, I added a chest to Fred, Somewhere to attach medals I guess 🙂
    This week I add the back cover 🙂

  • Fred looks better with a chest, In this video I give him one 🙂

  • In this video I continue in building the new stand for Fred’s head.
    To make a stable stand, I’m using the upper part of a standard Inmoov torso and using a bust set of parts I was shown on Thingiverse, we now have a stable base.

  • Well, started on a new stand for Fred’s new head today:

  • I’ve been printing out the torso to use as Fred’s new head’s stand.
    I’ve been pointed to a bust stand for the torso, which is very cool.
    When looking for the instructions, I found all the torso ones, and the back one’s, but is there any for the chest?
    I thought there used to be, but i could be wrong…
    If not, I guess I’ll have to document it as I…[Read more]

  • Merry X-Mass to everyone out there.
    Tried to setup a new and better neck assembly for Fred’s Head.
    Didn’t quite go to plan 🙁

  • Ray Edgley posted an update 4 years ago

    Well, it was a long time coming, but here a video on driving the joints of our walking robots.

    • Excellent info clearly explained!

      • This project will take a while to complete.
        I’m trying to work through all the possible design considerations including the maths.
        Last thing I want is for my Inmoov robot to fall over and break. 🙂

        I’m working on the basis, if I can explain it to others, then I have a reasonable understanding myself.
        Also, if I have made an error, someone may…[Read more]

        • I agree with that philosophy, my father a physicist says ‘The best way to learn something is to teach it’! Regarding it falling over and breaking you could do what Boston dynamic does with a simple track on the ceiling and a safety cable, here is a video of one of their early prototypes: https://youtu.be/SD6Okylclb8

          • I can’t attach the track to the ceiling in my home (the wife would kill me 🙂 ) but I did build a frame on casters that can help support the robot when I first start testing. 🙂

  • Ray Edgley posted an update 4 years, 1 month ago

    Got Fred on a power trip this week, talking about power 🙂

  • I started to look at joints that can be used in robots.
    There are quite a few and a lot of different ways they can be driven.
    Here is a look at some of the different types and a bit of a peek at the new foot design.

  • The default Text To Speech service in MyRobotLab (MRL) is not the best out there.
    For Windows users, MRL comes with the Mimic Speech service.
    Mimic Speech was created by MycroftAI and sounds very good, but if you run MRL on a Raspberry Pi, then its just not available, unless you download and compile the binary yourself and tell the MRL MimicSpeech…[Read more]

    • Hello
      very good tutorial.
      But how to put MimicSpeech in French?

      • I may well be very wrong, but, if you pass a French language phase to it with a voice more suited to the French language.
        I did try a test copying some text from this site (The post below), but I can not judge the result as I don’t speak or understand the French language at all.
        I did try this line at the terminal window.
        ./mimic -t “boujour je…[Read more]

  • I let Fred get in front of the camera again 🙂
    This time he;s talking about the power of rotation in part 4 of the Walking Robot series.

  • Ever wondered about PID Loops?
    These are used in servos, cruise controls, industrial ovens, and pressure control systems.
    Here is a video where Fred explains how they work.

    I hope you enjoy 🙂

  • Just out is the Walking Robots Part 3, Rate of rotation video.
    This one goes into the speed at which the various leg joint will need to rotate at for a normal walking gait.

  • Part 9 of the building of Fred’s head is now up on YouTube.
    In this video I get MarySpeech working with the MouthControl service to work the jaw.
    Now you can see how Fred hosted the Walking Robot’s Part two video 🙂

  • It was a while in production but here is Part two of the Walking Robots Series.
    Presented by Fred, an Inmoov Robot, or at least his head 🙂
    Feel free to ask question in the comments

    Next week in Part 9 of Fred’s Head, I go in to how this was achieved.

    Don’t forget to have fun building your robot 🙂

  • Looking at making Fred a Bipedal walking robot.
    But before starting on the design, we first need to know and understand what all the challenges will be.
    As part of working on this I have now uploaded the first of the walking robot series to YouTube

    This will be a huge project as I investigate each of the problems we…[Read more]

  • Got my Son to program the finger starter on a RaspberryPI. He is learning python so this was a great intro for him. We have the head and neck, printed now.

  • Got my son involved in the build now.

  • Finally the power up and testing of Fred\’s head

  • Fred\’s Head Part 7.
    This is proving to be a bigger job than I first expected, Hopefully it will be all worth it in the end 🙂

    Next week, the power up and testing

  • Part 6 of build Freds head is now out.

    I hope you enjoy it 🙂

  • In this weeks video, I mount the Raspberry Pi 3 into the head of my Inmoov robot Fred

  • Now that I have most of the head together, I should think about setting up the Raspberry Pi 3 with MyRobotLab
    In this video that what I will be doing.
    MRL is not the only way to control the Inmoov robot, but it is the official system for the Inmoov project.
    Others have successfully used EZrobot for their non-standard robots, and recently I was…[Read more]

  • Well i finally got the Advance eyes installed in to the new head for Frem, my Inmoov Build.

  • Continuing on with building a new Inmoov robot head for Fred.
    This time I work on the eyes 🙂

  • So I started building the new head for Fred, my Inmoov build.

    The Transparent filament looks really cool for a robot head. 🙂

  • Starting to work on a new head for Fred.
    This time, I\’m going non-standard and printing out re-mixed parts,
    but before starting, I needed something to sit the head on while i work on it.

    Meet Fred\’s new head stand.

  • I decided it was time to look at the NeoPixel ring in Fred\’s stomach.

    • The NeoPixel Ring video is great! Ray, your series of videos are very helpful to InMoov makers. Thanks.

      • Thanks for your comment,
        There are a couple of us who are showing the way now,
        There is only so much that can be conveyed with words and pictures, and with so many languages, sometimes a moving image can be better.
        I know I have learned a lot with this project, between this site and the videos from Kyle Campbell…[Read more]

  • I spotted this Grove AI HAT for Edge Computing.
    Its designed to connect to the Raspberry Pi and act as an AI Accelerator for the Pi.
    So I got one to have a bit more of a look.

  • Well in my last video, I ran into a problem when i went to attach the legs, they didn\’t quite fit.
    This week, I have fixed that and now Fred is standing
    He\’s taller than I thought he would be, either that or I\’m shorter….

  • Continuing the video series on the Static Leg,
    Here are the thighs 🙂

  • Turns out the Inmoov robot is taller than me 🙂

    • Love the red. I’m enjoying your videos on the static leg assembly. I’m interested in the sizes and quantities of any nuts and bolts used.

      • Hello Steve,

        The following quantities are for each leg, so you will need to double them for both legs.
        1 x M8 x 125 mm and 1 x M8 x 95 mm long for each knee.

        • Connecting the knee to the Tibia I have used 3 x M4 x 40 mm long with the head of one flattened to allow it to sit flush against the front wall of the Tibia when facing up.
          Theses could have been 25 mm long, however only had 20 mm and 40 mm long on hand.
          As it turns out the middle of those three is convenient to tie back to the small trolley I…[Read more]

      • Hello Steve,

        The last video in this series is scheduled to go live on Friday.
        Do you link it would be helpful if I include this list of parts in the description as well?

        • Yes as it will make it easier to find. The info will probably get lost in this forum as time passes.

          • Good news is, as a result of your request, I also went back to the last video, and added the parts list in the description of the Video.
            If one person asked, then there will be many other who will want to know as well 🙂

  • Now complete, Fred\’s Knees

  • So continuing to build the static leg for Fred, my build of the Inmoov robot.

  • Ok, so i started to print out the feet and ankles.
    So far all looks good.

  • Since the last video generated some interest in my build of the InMoov robot (Fred) I thought I would pull off one of his arms and give you a look inside.

    • Great job Ray. The print look outstanding.

      • And that was done with what was then a very cheap CTC printer back in 2017.
        The printer also had errors in the calibration of the X and Y axis, so all joints had to be filed to make them fit.

        So even with a crappy print, you can still build a working Inmoov 🙂

  • It\’s been a while since I did anything with the Inmoov project.
    So I decided to print the Inmoov statue again, but this time at 300 mm tall.
    Came out OK.
    But have a look for yourself 🙂

  • Making headway Pun intended! I have the head and jaw printed working my way down to the chest. I want to get the head operating and then the chest to be able to attach the shoulder to it. Also I have been updating the Excel BOM list with links and I will share it to those interested.

  • Just a splash of red paint, cause everybody knows, red goes faster….. ;=)

  • 2 out of 3 Raspberry Pi 3’s installed in the head.

    • That’s alot of pi! Is fitting a third in there possible? Looks great though, very clean setup in that limited space.

      • It is possible to fit the third one and then i still have to work out how I want to split the processing load across them.
        As Gael said somewhere on this site, the RPi even the Model 3 still is not quite powerful enough, but they are cheap enough to add multiple so speed up processing, paralleled processing if you will…

        • You could put one PI in the body to connect to the Kinect or just give him a gut feeling. Nice HAT on the PI.

          • The HAT on the PI is the Adafruit 16 Channel servo driver. Also breaks out the Pi Header and is where I grabbed the 5V from to run the other Pi.

  • Fred InMoov first video, shoulder view of Bicep rotate.

    • This video upload is in response to lorn Campbell query as how it works with the Bicep rotate.
      My recommendation for anyone wanting to do the same thing, would be to use a ribbon with more than 16 conductor and spit the extra across the power wire.
      I used 3 for the servo power 6 Volt and 3 for the servo power 0 Volt, this may not be quite enough,…[Read more]

    • Got to the bottom of the Elbow destruction.
      The smaller servos for the forearm were a long time in coming, so i had the larger joints all fully operational and calibrated long before the servos for the fingers arrived.
      After I installed the servos for the wrist and fingers, i neglected to re-test the elbow until yesterday, at that point the wires…[Read more]

    • Nice and smooth. Your print quality looks really good with no banding.

      • Looks can be deceiving, but thanks for the complement.

        The shoulder pieces are probably the best parts on the whole robot, I’m more pleased at getting the ribbon to work through the bicep gear.

        Some of the earlier pieces had real bad banding, turns out a spacer i fitted to the top of the Z axis screws to reduce the banding actually made it…[Read more]

  • Success,
    Mounter 16 channel PWM Servo driver in the left bicep.
    Also added a small SMPS buck converter in the power supply line to allow for later increasing the a 12V or higher battery system.
    Tripled up the wires for the power supply to cope with the current draw of the servos.
    Only need to sort out a connector for the power in the shoulder and…[Read more]

  • Running a 16 way ribbon through the Bicep Rotator is tight, but it is doable.
    Held in place with CA glue.
    Next job, terminate each end to where they need to go.

  • Coming up on 6 weeks, the Top Stomach parts have been the biggest challenge so far.
    Parts were very tight, then one of the wire came off the servo pot, worked during testing, but not after assembly. Bummer.
    Have now mounted the servo’s in the left hand, will have to work on the fingers next.
    Can’t install the Neo Pixels yet, turns out it not…[Read more]

    • I am unable to snake my wires through there. The piston interferes. I have them bundled though and might have to unbundle them so they can fit. I am using servo extension leads though and not ribbon cable.

      • Wow, the cables fit through the gap. What happens when you rotate the arm? The arm cables have always been an issue on my InMoov, have run the forearm & hand in sleeving externally, but the shoulder cabling is still a mess.
        Great pictures, looking really good Ray

        • The cable relative to the shoulder moves in the gap, the cables relative to the bicep are stationary. The elbow piston clears the ribbon cable by a 2 mm inside the gear, gets a bit closer outside the gear on the bicep end but still clears it just.

  • This being my first post here, I must thank Gael for all his work on this project that he has made freely available and more importantly the foundation of this community.

    5 Weeks in the making, it is soooo painful waiting for the 3D printer.

    I do have a query, has anyone else had trouble with the InMoov scripts not using the config files for the…[Read more]

    • You have hit the same problem as I have. The InMoov services are made specifict to use Arduinos. I discussed this with GroG last weekend, and I learned how they can be changed to make it possible to use the type of configuration that you have. The problem with making that change is that it’s difficult to make that change, and still keep backward…[Read more]

    • Hello Mats,
      Your timing is incredible, I have just did-assembled half my robot to start installing the top stomach. In the photo above you may notice the pistons on the table already printed. Yesterday, all the small servos arrived, so I now have the jaw working and have mounted the 6 servos in the left hand.
      In a day or two when I have Fred…[Read more]