hey this mics an easy executive better
from make magazine I'm with Grant
Imahara
here in his garage we're just wrapping
up the cover shoot for the new issue of
make magazine you told me this thing's
called the Spyder tell me about what it
is what it does and how you came up with
the idea to build such an insidious
looking device I think the whole idea
was to be able to make a walking robot
but one that was really large-scale but
I wanted something big enough that I
could ride on have you have you actually
written on this it's it's most of the
way there
I've got a few motor issues but once I
work those out I'm gonna be I'm gonna be
writing this thing down the street now
if you had to weaponize this what would
you do you know it's it's almost a
weapon in itself because it is so heavy
I mean it's nearly crushed me several
times working on it
in my shop by myself late at night it's
just it's it's very unruly but if I had
to choose a weapon for it I would
probably put some sort of automatic gun
on there yeah I wouldn't be street-legal
it would be Street lethal this is
actually the battery compartment but it
also has the brains of robot in here
this is a BS to basic stamp too but in a
40-pin configuration this feeds all of
the movement commands to another board
over here inside here which does the
actual talking to all the servo drivers
I know I'm sure a lot of your readers
will be like why didn't you use Arduino
the simple answer is it hadn't been
invented yet so these these are
wheelchair motors they have a feedback
pot it gets its position from the
potentiometer and then it acts like a
giant giant servo yeah this is a
five-eighths 6061 aluminum that I had
water jet cut
oh it's yeah this thing is pretty
serious one of the things that we look
at in Grant's article in the new issue
is his incredible background of
different robots that he's built what's
your favorite of everything that you've
ever done it's hard to say it's like
picking a favorite child you know
they've they've all been so cool in in
many different ways I mean I can I can
pick out a cool thing about each robot
like the Energizer Bunny had a control
system that was very advanced it had a
microcontroller built in that controlled
all the beating functions you can just
flip a switch and it would execute a
number of different moves without any
other command r2 is a favorite because
it comes from he comes from my childhood
you know growing up watching Star Wars
but I think probably my favorite of all
time that'd have to be my battle bot my
first battle bot which was deadblow was
a hammer robot and that was the one that
I while the bunny and r2 are cool they
were somebody else's idea deadblow was
the first one that was actually all my
design I've seen this plenty of times on
TV but it's my first time seeing it in
person it's solid I mean that thing's
it's a beauty to it things it's a
classic it's it's built to withstand
combat I mean I could I could ride dead
blow up and down the block no problem
cool grant all this stuff incredible
thank you for taking the time thanks for
talking to me and make sure to check out
this magazine incredible stuff
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