At work, in as slightly tongue in cheek way, we call issues opportunities.  Opportunities for improvement and boy do I have them.

I thought RX talks to TX on the DF Player but apparently it is not the case. Need to flip these pins to work. 

SCL and SDA are flipped on the Gyro board. Oops.

And running the Int pin from the Gyro to GPIO 4 on the ESP puts it into boot mode so the combination of these issues required surgery to remove the Gyro to get it to work. 

Once I got to PCA9685 on the right way, at least I could read the sensors and control motors.

Last weekend I laid out the parts to take to Doug for our solder fest on Saturday. Strangely a half dozen parts are already changing.

Motors - I had been trying to used the 48:1 version because they were more common. I soldered up some flexes this week and tried them out but they just do not have the torque. I will need to use the less common 120:1 version.  There are some inexpensive options on Ali Express but so far the Amazon options are scarce. I have bought out 2 vendors so far.

The shaft adapters next to the motors needed to have the shoulders a half mm shorter for ease of assembly. I did that yesterday and they are printing now.  The Flex base, Hips and  Tibia are unchanged. However, I did a major update yesterday on the feet.

I have moved the battery board to the ankle instead of under the foot. I also moved up the switch and put it on the back of the foot. This allowed me to remove 10mm from the height of the robot which should make it more stable. I added a boss so they snap together. 

The switch was placed perfectly and battery fit well. The downside is the I had to make some "adjustments" to fit in the inductor on the battery board. Also I see there is a switch on the batter board with is no longer accessible. I am going to have to blow a bigger hole in the side of the foot. 

I like the compactness of having the board on the ankle but the through hole to pad joint is not robust enough. I am going to have to put a pin through it. The MH-CD42 battery boards are awesome. They are compact, boost to 5V and have battery protection for charging.  Here are some descriptions.

https://www.robotics.org.za/MH-CD42

https://techobsessed.net/tag/mh-cd42/

I got the new flex circuits in and the pads changed back to plated thru holes. This is what is on the Gerbers so I can not complain but last time they had pads which actually worked out pretty well.  The motor terminal connects worked out pretty well. I opened up a NPTH next to the plated thru hole. I can connect the motors without wires now.  The down side is I have had a couple of motors shorting under the sensor board because the solder for the blind connection comes together. This is what derailed by build this morning. I was supposed to be shooting video by now!  I also have had some broken traces when I crease the flex. I may need to order it in a thicker vintage so it is more robust. My brother called me out as I said the flexes would make it more reliable and then I am struggling with them.

Test

On the bright side, I displayed the status of 6 sensors and 2 switches on the screen, I was able to run 4 of 6 motors and the motors that did not run were debugged to solder issues. I also determined I can print a full robot in one go on the Sovol SV02..

Too bad I have to blow out the hole in the foot. It only takes 28 hours!

So my updated punch list is as follows:

1) Resolder two more flexes and attach motors

2) Run this sketch again to confirm function.

3) Blow out hole in the ankle for the battery board. Print.

4) Design and print the flexible sole to cover the bottom of the foot.

5) Make hanging trellis to suspend robot for testing.

5.5) Assemble plastic parts on the motor/flex assembly.

6) Run through each motor movement and take a video.

6.5) Get the sensors to have consistent reading. (Averaging, vinyl cover to block light...)

7) Run the motors to the extreme, and record the sensor values for calibration.

8) Map the values to 1-100 and put them on the screen. 

9) Move a motor to to a targeted 1- 100 position.

9.2) Robot shuffle step. Video.

9.4) Robot get up. Video.

10) Make a state tree function. Check sensor positions, change the PCA9685 value to make it move to the desired position.

11) Change the speed of the PWM to be proportional to the change necessary.

12) Get ESP-Now working.  Send targets to robot by ESP-now.

13) Make robot teaching pendant. Manipulate one robot to move another.

Maybe that is enough for now.....