Alitorious: How the heck did the other guy make a tripod?

Ok so this is basically the same concept of the seige turret in the old forums where someone made it out of Lego Mindstorms I do recall. So I tried the project, although this time, a normal Sentry turret. Im going to make it lock on to something (If i can find the Light sensor) And shoot at it. Like a normal sentry turret would do to for example a fade. So this is it so far.

looking awesome

That's a fantastic idea. Maybe it's time to dig out my old Mindstorms stuff

Thanks. I hope Alitorious will be pleased to know that his tripod is appreciated.

Well, my mindstorms unit has been fried 5 times over, so I doubt it still works and I am using the camera part of it for webcam (not sure if the webcam came with mindstorms)

If the camera is associated with Lego, then it might be from a movie making kit. I remember there being one, where you make movies from scenes made of lego. Or it could be from Mindstorms. Im not too shure.

Awesome. Make it shoot at a pet or something... Just kidding.

Can you make it spin slowly until it detects motion in front of it? And when it does, play the firing sound?

You want one of these, they're SO much fun

Yeah that thing still has the same concept of a turret, although I doubt that the discs would really work that well. Of course my turret is even more defenceless that that one! I might try to use cardboard or paper to cover it up so then it looks more turret..ey... But then again, it would weigh down the motor and slow it down or maybe break something.

Hi, I was the one who made the original lego seige cannon ^-^, I made the turret using a crappy brace system, it wasn't too stable, not to mention back heavy. Every time the turret rotated around with the mindstorms module facing the back, it would tend to tip over.

Maybe you could use some 90 degree bend pieces on angles to try and make braces, that what I did

Thanks for the tip. Alitorious just read it and he is working vigorously to figure out the angle. He IS using the brace system though, and he was looking for 90 degree bend peices but yet he doesnt know how they would help. I think im just going to give up on finding the light sensor. Its going to be too hard to find.

Haha! YES!

BRACES! THEY WORK!



The unit is now sitting comfortably on a desk, without falling apart. It can also handle full 360-degree rotation. I managed to get some ugly brace system going halfway down the legs of the tripod.
I also put rubber feet on the legs for 'added grip.' Before, the legs would slide outward and it would fall apart on the desk, but the friction on the carpet kept it together.
That was also before I got the braces to work, so I'm not sure how much they're needed now.

Oh, oh, and I also have the angle part of the legs (up at the connection between the legs and the turntable) using a triangle instead of the 120-degree bend pieces I was using earlier.

The weakest part of the unit is still the turntable, and the joints between the turntable and the legs. However, this is built up and made ugly so it's sturdy enough to survive.

Let's see if Lein can't get some better pics of it.


Edit: I should talk about the software. Because I, *cough cough*, lost the light sensor somewhere... ...

Even if I found the light sensor, I doubt I could make it detect motion too well. The problem is that a light sensor is just that: It detects the light in a particular direction. If it's swivelling around a room, then it would see changes in light - and how would it tell between a change in light that signals a dresser, or a person moving?
Thinking about that, I 'could' set it up so that it records the light around the room and makes sort of a 'map.' Then it just compare light to the 'map' and can tell if something is out of place.
The problem with doing that, however, is that the rotation of the unit can become mis-aligned with where it thinks it is in the map. I'd need a rotation sensor to check it, and I don't even have one of those.

The best I could do is have the turret fixed in position and tell whether there is motion that way, but now the problem becomes that the default mindstorms programming language is, well... very thin, to put it mildly.


So, right now, the best that it can do is turn around in circles and start 'firing' when it pretends it sees something. (Random times)