Darn good question, that.

Though he wishes he was being serenaded by celebrities, turns out he’s been up to some major RPM building bots. We’ve mentioned the SWARM bots, which have been kicking some serious Rotor butt. But we returned the favor: last week we brought one out to the desert to see how it would do in the heat. Well, after some impromptu desert repair (featuring a heatsink fortuitously found on the floor of the Rotormobile) the Orb did some fine fine rolling. And we met some cool folks out there as well.

Speakin’ of heat sinking, the Rotor is up to another bot with co-conspirator Al Honig. More pictures soon, but Chassis will be a mobile drink-serving robot inspired by our fine friends at SHIFZ; with luck we can join the cool crowd at Roboexotica.

But first Chassis has got to get a move on. To this end I scavenged some burnt-out motor controllers from the FIRST robotics team. (Those who know the Rotor will be familiar with his cry of “Wait — don’t throw that out!! I can fix it!”) Now most of my scavenged junk goes into the junk pile, but because these are Rather Expensive Brand Name motor controllers, I thought I might have a go at salvaging them for the cost of a few new power FETs.

High-school students are tough on motor controllers:

Check out them dead FETs! When I blow them, they don’t look nearly as cool as this:

But Hail Mary Full of Magic Smoke, I was able to resurrect two speed controls of the four I had. (Of the remaining two, one only goes forward, and the other only goes backward. I’m saving those for Useless-Turn-In-Circles-bot.) Two, it turns out, it perfect for Chassis’ two drive motors.

More later!

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