Sorry this picture is a bit big, I'll change it later, you can scroll down the page and view the text discription and construction. Also this page is very simplistic to meet the deadlines so be prepared.
Well I'm done my Microvore, and not a day to soon. Looking back now it seems stupid how I missed out on all those days of possible work to do homework and other things. Well here are the specifics of the bot:
Standard photopopper solar engine, with touch sensors. Calculator solar cell output 2 V(open circuit under 500W lamp) Capacitor is a Al gold 0.33F type
Motors are TPM from Solarbotics (they were smaller than I thought they would be).
Touch sensors are of my photopopper (it's because they are smaller than any other springs that I got out of old pens, I replaced the photopoppers springs with the larger springs)
Wheel which forms the third sopport is a gold bead ( its not real gold, just gold in color) within a sopporting paper clip. Heat shrink Tubing feet are used.
Trim pot is 100 K and the voltage triggers are quite low I forget their value now, I just remember that they had a low trigger voltage.
The dimentions are max hieght=2.7 cm lentght including touch sensors= 5.1 cm lenght with out touch sensors= 3.2 cm width including touch sensors= 3.2 Wheel base width= 2.9
Here the picture is a bit blurry for the close up but the parts are pretty much visible.
these probaly show the electronics better than the other picture, this is Midas complete except for his wheel and his gold covering.
CONSTURTION
I started My microvore back in October, sometime, I set up the engine and brain stormed a few other ideas. Then I got caught up in doing schoolwork, midterms, essays, etc. Grade 10 is tougher than junior high, well at least I think so. About a week ago I looked at the date and was shocked to see that my birthday was in two days, and the contest deadline was in 8 days. So I started to get back down to work. I decided to go with everything cramped together with a basic frame made of paper clips. I wanted everything to tie together leaving almost open space within. So I put everything together with some Putty to get an idea of how to best lay this thing out and then I went ahead with the building. Finally I added gold tinfoil, it was tin foil that was painted gold, and then had a masking tape backing put on it so it would not conduct. I was hoping to mimic the gold paper on space vehicles, which I did with relative success. Also instead of just pushing the capacitor along causing unnecessary friction I used a gold bead threaded through a bent paper clip to form a free rotating wheel. Because of the set up and weight distribution my capacitor would be unable to wheelie as the engines fired. Everything slid together nicely, the cap was just the right size for the engine, and the motors were tiny.Back to the pictures.
Here is the first picture with the gold foil on, I'm not sure if it is too much of a improvement but I definitly think that it dosn't make it any worse.
another electronics view, still a bit blurry.
Opps these two are upside down I will reload them tommorow if it is not breaking any rules of the compation.
This is meant to me my stepping picture. I think that the sand that I had was to thick and I could not get it thin enough to show the steps properly. It is almost impossible to even follow the tracks, that is why I added a black pen mark along the photovores left motor, so it is atleast possible to see where it began and finished. Also a quick note that piece of bent wire is meant to reprent the starting point for Midas
OTHER DESIGNS
I just thought I would add this as something to read while the pictures load and give you a look at some of my other ideas. Here I will just tell you of some other designs I was thinking of for my microvore. One was to use a Canadian dime as the base (is that legal?) having soldered paper clip mountings come of the sides. The solar engine would go on top with the solar cells on very top, one sitting on top of the engine and the others sloping down at about a 45-degree angle and the cap would be on bottom. Another design that I thought would use resources and space effectively would be hollowing out a relatively large capacitor and placing the engine in there. It would be like the Exo-skeloton of insects, offering a strong protective shell which would make the bot very robust and drop proof. It may also be possible to seal of the motors and the rest of the bot making it water worthy encase it fell in any. The touch sensors would come out from inside through small holes and they would connect when they were bumped into the sides of the hole that they were coming out of. That would be the ground coming through a resistor. I think that the second idea could be quite effective, I'll have to try it soon. If some one has thought of this and tried it out feel free to tell me email me at connolly@uleth.ca if you want.