Inside the Carapace

I've been waiting for what seems like an eternity on DJ Sures at EZ-Robot to decode version "2007/02/03" IR signals, I made the decision to explore the connectors and see how the motors are wired. He mentioned, in the version that he had modified to work with the EZ-B, that there was a 200 millisecond delay which the Roboquad could receive IR / EZ-B commands. This was a trade off for the library of movements the Roboquad had in it's on board programming. Now the delay is a mute point; I'm going to go with 3 H-Bridges for instantaneous movement. Will they fit in the carapace or will they ride on it's back along with the EZ-B v. 3...

The Head

The Roboquad's head is currently very limited from a perception point of view; it can only sense IR light in a somewhat general way with a depth of vision at approximately 4 meters. It has 6 flashing LEDs and a nice saucer like design giving it a cute yet alien appearance. My hack requires beheading it completely. Here you will see some scanned images of the head adapter:

The Starting Line

Welcome...

The Wowee RoboQuad is an amazing work of engineering and design  As I have taken it apart piece by piece, I am amazed at the level of craftsmanship  It is a very complex toy with many seams and screws. It is not recommend to disassemble the RoboQuad unless you no longer plan on using it as a toy and as the starting point to liberating if from toy status into hack du jour.

This blog is about hacking a toy. Learning electronics. Using the EZ-Robot micro-controller. Best of all just messing around...