Levelling Up with XR1

Hi Everyone,

It's been a while since I made a post. And I've come a long way with my build.

Lots of stuff to share.

Let's look at the picture above. This robot is approximately 46 inches or 115 cm high. I chose the first head that was posted to the site, it is Oblivion, a female fighting character from the game Fortnite (shown below).

Now, as you may have noticed, there are slight differences between what I have built and the two pictures I've provided from the game 😉. However, what I have will suffice for now. But it's not like it's not going to change either.

1st goal: build the robot closely to the XR-1 specifications,

2nd goal: get the thing walking (power up, set servo sequences in ServoOrchestra (available on the site)

3rd goal: get the robot working off battery power (M18 Milwaukee{s}),

4th goal: get the robot to see (cameras, facial tracking),

5th goal: hearing and speaking with microphones, speakers,

6th goal: give it something intelligent to say with an LLM working from the little blue computer

7th heaven: the sky is the limit: modifications!!

The 1st goal is getting completed as I complete the build, the second goal was partially met when I powered up the main circuit board (shown at the bottom). Also, I've downloaded ServoOrchestra from robotsbuilder.com.

When I first powered up the main board, I actually used battery power. I used Milwaukee battery connectors from AliExpress, a DC voltage regulator, also from AliExpress (I think they are normally used in cars, but it converted my 18VDC to 12VDC for my purposes (shown directly below is my voltage test:

Here is a picture of things hooked up and working:

The other goals I am working on, some of the group are much farther ahead of me with the robot being able to see, hear and respond. However, I can trust that I will get the help and knowledge will be shared as I broach these parts of the build. It's not easy to get actual helpful help in this world today, so I definitely enjoy the chat in the Telegram group.

Robots Builder is much different than any experience I've had with this type of things because we are encouraged to modify our builds as much as we want! This project is in it's infancy and there is plenty of room to grow, modify and make choices with the build!

This means that what I started with here in my kitchen/dining room can look much different if I can learn to make modifications. I downloaded Fusion 360, took some lessons and then found I couldn't modify the .stl files for the build. I was advised to just try TinkerCad and after watching five YouTube ten minute videos (only two of them were relevant), I managed to make some different legs (elongated to match proportions of the original Fortnite character). I have further plans to modify other things. But even so, underneath it all is the beating heart of XR-1.

Well, maybe not a beating heart, but we have a Windows mini PC installed in the center of the chest. This PC takes 12 VDC, some servos will take 6 VDC, the power is drawn from the circuit board on the back between the shoulders of XR1 (shown below).

The circuit board is printed by JLCPCB and arrives as a multi-layer bare board (this is version 3 with extra pins for servo feedback in case you choose the option of modifying your servos to gain the feedback information (I wanted the option). Two Mega Pros sit on either end of the board. The servo pins are the green, red and black pins at the bottom of the board. There are connections for 12VDC, 6VDC, and 5(.2)VDC. The Mega Pros connect to the Sabrent USB hub, I have some cheap LEDs on USB in the two middle ports. I want to say that maybe you don't enjoy soldering, but I found that I improved my soldering skills greatly by doing this project.

The first thing I want to say is that I've enjoyed things immensely coming this far. If I suffered a brain injury today, I still have a posable (freestanding) mannequin! But that is the least of things worth mentioning here.

I chose levelling up as a title today and what I wanted to talk about is something that many of us struggle with: learning something new. It's possible for you to gain the skills to build stuff like this and more. And this is a great project for it. I just joined robotsbuilder.com, found the printable parts on the site after I joined. I decided I could do this and there has been no looking back. These are the early days of XR-1 and it has just been a lot of fun. After joining robotsbuilder.com, I had access to print files of all the parts. I also had access to the Telegram group where we constantly talk about this robot, share links and YouTube videos of other robots and anything we find futuristic or cool throughout our day. Sometimes I am not sure about correct orientation of a part or am just having difficulty with some part of the build and usually get a quick response with ideas on surpassing that difficulty.

See you soon with more updates!!

Neil Manthorne