BusterHaus

The curves on this MOC are great!

I like it, but why does it look as if the drawback is flexed upward? Is it just perspective, or is it not aligned with the hitch?

Very well modelled MOC. It looks like the real thing.

You should ask a moderator to pin this topic. All kidding aside, while I'm pretty new to this forum, all other forums I've participated in the past have had more active and less active posters. The different posting frequencies and styles make up the flavour of the board. If official posting rules are being broken, it's up to the poster to clean up their act. If someone has beef with the quality or quantity of your posts, you can listen to what they say and decide as objectively as possible if they have a valid point. Take a couple of days to ponder it. If they do have a point, consider changing your behaviour. If they don't, move on. There are better things to do than argue on the internet.

Read Sariel's photo processing tutorial. It covers a lot of the basics. From my experience, you will need to adjust his tutorial to your own setup. Don't spend money on a fancy camera and a full-blown light tent at the beginning. All you need is a tripod and a white cloth or sheets of paper (I liked to layer them to get them as white as possible). Familiarize yourself with the manual controls on your camera - even cheap point-and-shoot cameras have those. You may want to overexpose a few shots to see if it helps in the processing. You will probably want to set the ISO to the lowest setting, unless you're looking for a grainy picture. You will definately want to adjust the colour temperature (white balance). Then, spend a weekend photographing one model and processing the pictures from it. You will learn what it takes to make that model look good. It may apply to other models, or it may not. In my experience, white bricks with a white background pose the most problems. Once you get comfortable with picture processing, you can start thinking about a light tent, light diffusers, a sync flash for washing out the background and other fun toys.

Good idea, but the oscillation is probably not desirable. You almost need a ratchet mechanism to lock it in place. But then you'd need a second motor to unlock the ratchet... It's starting to get complex.

Fantastic MOC. Put me in the camp of those who love the orange and chrome.

This is one design (not mine): http://lego-technique.blogspot.ca/2013/02/geneva-drive-in-lego-technic.html?m=1 You can find other designs with Google, but I can't vouch for any of them, including the one I linked to. From what I can tell the lock on the dwell has quite bit of backlash. I wish I had more info to offer but a Lego Geneva mechanism is still on my to-do list.

This write-up sets a new standard for me. Its excellence is on par with the model. Kudos.

Would a Geneva mechanism do the trick? It offers a dwell time during which you can stop the motor.

Pretty accurate review. I got this a few weeks ago to pilage for parts. That dog bone is a godsend for installing the medium EV3 motor in tight places.

The belt line on this car rises - maybe not as much as it does in the MOC, but it's not parallel to the ground like the picture would suggest. The perspective is very misleading in this case. It would help if you could compare the profile of both.

I prefer picture reviews, although I don't have any objections to videos. It harks back to being a kid and looking at pictures of sets I didn't own at the end of instruction booklets. I would examine them for hours, trying to reverse engineer them from a couple of tiny pictures. I would then try to build it and figure out how it was made. The same goes for pictures today: I get a lot more satisfaction out of staring at a single good picture than at a 5 minute review.

Nice. Now we need to build a Mindstorms robot that can speed-solve the cube in LDD.

Thanks for the second video! Looks pretty speedy for a model that size.

I'm hesitant to post this after sm 01 showed his Hot Rod - Lucky 13. That being said, the Skunk Hot Rod my first MOC with Power Functions. Two large motors provide rear wheel drive through an adder (differential). The steering is done by a servo motor. The elements are placed asymmetrically to lower the COG. The battery box is in the trunk and its switch is accessible through a swivel door. Suspension is independent in the front, trailing arm (is this the correct term?) in the rear. I used the small shocks for two reasons: the travel is supposed to be short, and I wanted the suspension to be preloaded about halfway. Because of this, you can see the car bounce up when you switch the travel direction rapidly. The car drives very well although the steering is very slack because of the multiple gears. If I were to rebuild this again, I'd place the servo where the engine should go and would hide the two L motors. Here are some pictures and a video:

This is simply beautiful. I finished a hot rod last night and it has nowhere near the features of the one that you made. Any chance of seeing it driven? How does it handle? Edit: driven outside or in a larger area than a hallway?

Welcome! I'm in Canada and have joined recently as well!

Hi Omikron, From my experience, four-legged walkers are very jerky and unstable if they have a long stride, making them more likely to tip over. If you want the walker to have a smooth(er) walking motion, consider a short stride. As far as motors go, you can pretty much use anything you like as long as it's geared low enough to move the legs. I've used a 2838 motor (very weak) to move bipeds in the past. It was geared down drastically, but it worked. The heaviest biped I've built to date (around 1.2 kg?) was with Mindstorms EV3 components and it had very little gearing besides the internals of the motors. The gearing will affect how fast your walker travels, but since you're planning to make a large one, I would put the walking speed at the end of the priority list. Make sure your walking motion is smooth, make sure the walker doesn't tip when it stands on three or two legs, and worry about the speed last. You can always put in a bigger motor later.

On the topic of contest length: wouldn't a variable time limit work better? For example, if you have a "sequel" to the Mini contest called Micro, it could be two weeks. If it's a contest to build a flagship model, it could be six or eight weeks.

Hi, I'm BusterHaus. I got my first Lego set over 30 years ago and fell in love with it right away. I built for the next 10 or 12 years and then entered my "dark age". That ended somewhat when my kids were old enough to start playing Lego, and I got back on the wagon fully when I picked up a Mindstorms kit last year. My favourite themes are Mindstorms and Technic. I am fascinated by walking robots and clever mechanisms. I look forward to participating in this community. BusterHaus

If your creation is stationary, you should consider a 9V DC adaptor. Strip the wires, solder a couple of alligator clips and attach inside the battery box. Make sure to attach the + with the + and the - with the - and that your adaptor puts out the required amperage (maybe someone who knows what that is can chime in). I'm sure there are more elegant ways of doing this, but nothing will beat being plugged into a wall socket for running an exhibit all day long.