Ultimate running aid

Duel camera mounts. If only lions could afford 2 cameras.

The 1st shot with the pole mounted gopro yielded a better view of water behind the lion than before.

The previous mounting showed nothing but a wall.

With tire wear continuing at full speed, the problem trended away from toe in & towards camber.  

Long thought to be unfixable, the camber is determined by a bend in the wishbones.

It turns out the wishbones can be flipped over, giving a closer to ideal camber position.  Further refinement is within the limits of changing the suspension height.

The result was much closer to ideal, but can't be known until replacing the right wheel.

The wishbone hack changed the toe-in again, which also can't be aligned without a new right wheel.  The right wheel bearing should now be the biggest source of wear.  

Towerhobbies was established when the population was concentrated on the east coast, so still relies exclusively on a warehouse in Illinois.  Hobbyking was lucky to arrive after the great westward migration & benefits from a warehouse in Oregon.  Unfortuntely, all the lunchbox parts require the slow truck from Illinois.

Shapelock was long theorized to be an effective adhesive on plastic, but never used it in 7 years.  Decided to finally apply it to the front wheels & made a test blob.  

For this application, it was easier to use hot air than boil it & reheat it with hot air after applying it.  It melted the plastic slightly.  No amount of hammering could kick the test blob off.  After a 10 mile drive with 5 at higher speed, it was declared a success.

The repaired shaft was misaligned, there's absolutely no way to release the shapelock & we know the consequences of misaligned wheels, so they still have to be replaced.  Creating shapelock fillets around the bearing is another necessary step in fabrication.

23.5" off the ground.  Still has room for cargo.  Couldn't make the carbon fiber rods work.  The most versatile shape is the angle rod, but carbon fiber is too brittle to form angle rods.  


In its 1st drive with the higher mount

The left wheel broke off again & the right wheel finished completely worn down again.  It was toed out a few more times & didn't show as many signs of lateral wear, but still ground down in no time.   At least the video was good.

The last left wheel break was Dec 18, 2017 & the right wheel had come loose to some degree.  

Was quite pleased by how stable it was at 10.9mph.  For most of its life, it couldn't go straight at 10mph, even when completely empty.  It now goes straight even with a camera pole on it.  Better living through FIR filters.

Toed out the left wheel by 2 turns, relubed the transmission, rotated the tires, & went 8.15 miles at 319mAh/mile.  

A 9.8 miler with 2.6 at 7m15s/mile at 361mAh/mile was uneventful.  Higher speeds & hills decreased efficiency more than payload.

Then, an 11.15 miler at 345mAh ended with a noisy transmission & steering that only went left.  It carried 1lb of food back.  Still efficient, at least.  The Hitec HS-311 could be at the end of its life.  Noticed when turning left, the right wheel doesn't move because the servo horn is too small.  It drags the right wheel.

Finally cut together another video from the sphere cam on it.  Disappointing to not have figured out how to do what dollar startup insta360 does & stabilize it.  Camera shake doesn't accumulate properly in euler angles.  It might require accumulating in a quaternion.

Went 10.65 miles on the flat ground & hauled 1lb of food back.  It burned 4Ah or 375mAh/mile.  Didn't expect it to be that efficient.  The payload was spread more evenly, instead of being concentrated in the rear.  Concentrating it on the rear wheels decreases their diameter & slows down the odometer.

Burned 4219mAh or 387mAh/mile 10.9 miles later, hauling 1lb of food the final 3 miles, the lion kingdom was wishing there was a way to pack a bathroom on it.  Unfortunately, lions couldn't digest the oats from that cereal at all, while they can manely digest other oat permutations.

Did another 7 miles at 350mAh/mile, then 14.5 miles with dual batteries.  The dual battery run burned 432mAh/mile & had 2 miles at 10mph.

After the 14.5 miles, all the tires were more worn than desired, but the right front tire was completely shredded.

Tough break, indeed.  The left front tire was also toed in, but wore less.  The right rear tire also wore more than the left rear tire.  The only asymmetries are the motor, the speaker, & the road camber.  Toeing in seems required for the most efficiency.

It burned 4000mAH to go 10.75 miles or 372mAh/mile.  2.6 were at 10mph.

Another 11.25 miles in the hills, without any cargo & no headlights burned 3350mAh or 298mAh/mile.

Finally loaded it with the sphere cam, 2nd battery, & food.  It burned 2892 + 3187 to go roughly 11.5 miles or 528mAh/mile.  That's highballing it, because it spent 2 hours on a train.  The spherecam cage was finally tested when it flipped hard into the ground.  It actually survived & proved the cage was necessary.  

Getting video out of spherecam on the lion kingdom's obsolete computer takes 1 hour per minute of video, so that hasn't gone very far.

Did an 11.1 miler with 2.6 miles at a 7m12s pace, but didn't track the energy usage.

Finally mounted the gopro on it for 6 miles, without the speaker.  This burned 2188mAh or 364mAh/mile.  After conjuring up different ideas, the best idea was bolting it on the side of the pole.  It was a heavy mechanism & as top heavy as the spherecam's higher position.

The mane advantage was an easy way of rotating it in all directions.  

The mane use of footcam is documenting feet.

But aiming it is so hard & the field of view is so wide, it might as well document the whole lion.

For the 1st time, did the 12.8 miles to Walmart with a single battery while it carried chocolate for the mane & supplies for the sandal project.  Previously used 2 batteries & it was  a pain to carry around the store.  This time, it burned 4Ah or 312mAh.  At least without headlights & right after the rebuild, it seemed to get more efficient over time.  

Then, it died after a 12 miler.  It did 4 miles at below 8min/mile & carried food back.  The headlights were on.  It burned 4458mAh.  It would be nice to have current usage over time.

Finished Ready Player One & it was pretty much the ending you want.  The author threw no curve balls & wrote around all the mane character's missteps.  It took quite an imagination to come up with the challenges & the visuals in it.  The lion kingdom often thought of hurling Jeff Bezos another $180/year for an Audible subscription, since millenials aren't nearly the audio pirating fiends that generation X was.  

11 miles burned 3682mAh or 334mAh/mile.  It carried 14oz of food back, so it benefited greatly from the transmission rebuild & new tires.  Dialed the wheel diameter to 109mm with no obvious change in speed.

The next 11.25 miles were manely flat, without headlights, & burned 3608mAh.  Did some 200m intervals.  It did feel a little hotter at 109mm.  Drove through a puddle & the motor stopped.  Managed to get it going again after waiting a long time for it to cog.  Eventually, it wouldn't restart & the CPU was dead.  It was the 1st time such a puddle completely disabled a vehicle.  It must have reached into the CPU compartment.  Just a dot of water on a reset pin can disable it.  Another problem area is the bootloader, which is hung by any stray signals entering the RX pin, but this appeared to be a reset issue.  It was a very slow 1.5 mile walk before the CPU booted again.

The previous puddle encounter caused the tachometer to fail.  It had to be pulse driven until it finally worked again.

burned 3594mAh or 335mAh/mile, so the transmission rebuild with new tires was the solution.  The maximum single battery range would be 13 miles again.  It had the headlights on, the speaker, & carried 5oz of food back.  The wheel diameter had to be set to 110mm.  It had worn down to 108mm.  No obvious signs of wheel alignment error, but it's hitting right near the highest efficiency.  A rain storm passed through, but the paw controller continued to work.

Desperately need a way to access the 1 bushing.  It's on the end of a shaft & the shaft is pressed into plastic.  It may require a teardown every 2 months or when the range is needed.