project: mantid

Yet another beam bot from my past. This one's an interesting design that I still like to look at from time to time.

It uses a 1381J solar engine I freeformed in one night. The sensors are standard photosensors and the solar cell is a Sanyo AM-5711. He weighs in at 18 grams (.6 oz) and is fairly active in bright sunlight. Below you get a good view of the guts. I used parts and the circuit design from PagerMotors.com and you can scroll down past my pictures to check out the schematic. The hardest part to find is the 1381J CMOS voltage regulator instead of FLEDs. The 1381 looks a lot like a transistor but it's not, it's more like a diode, or a valve I guess. Radio Shack doesn't carry them so you have to order them from Solarbotics, or Andy Pang who sells them for $.68 each.



I tried something different for the motor mount. This time I heated the individual mounts up with a small torch and then soldered them together with some heavy solder. Then I soldered the whole thing directly to the capacitor's negative lead.



He was popping a little too far so I added dual skids in the front. They kinda make him look like a Praying Mantis, which is how he got his name.



Click the image for the full schematic courtesy of PagerMotors.com