ThunderBorg and MonsterBorg

Hi,
I'm trying to design a kit for kids to use to build their first battlebots using Raspberry Pi. I was looking at both MonsterBorg and DiddyBorg as possible starting points to provide the movement/remote control foundation and then adding other pieces to build in weapons, etc. The idea is that the kids could add weapons and program their controllers to control them.

Hi all,

Couple questions:

Q1. I purchased the lynxmotion al5a robot arm kit, they say it weighs 1-2 kg ,do you think it can be easily mounted on one side of the monsterborg?

Q2. Is it possible to change the wheels to air-filled type, and would that improve grip and reduce sliding around?

Thanks so much!

I bought my Thunderborg from Pimoroni a few weeks ago and now I really wish I had the optional lid for putting batteries above it. I only see it for sale here with the board. Is there a way to buy it without the board?

Hi,

I am having some power issues with my MosterBorg based Robot, this seems to have happened after a bit of a misshap with a workbench involving a collision and a drop whilst I was carry it. The damage sustained was to the robot, but the robot now only boots to the rainbow splash screen and reboots again over and over.
The multi colour LED cycles through various colours when the power is switched on and settles on yellow.

If I disconnect the battery and power the Pi from a Pi PSU the Pi boots up fine and the multi colour LED is red.

So I just got the Thunderborg and built a two-motored robot with it and a Raspberry Pi 4. I'm using a battery case with 6x AA batteries for power and occasionally, even if the motors are not running, the system reboots itself. Does anyone know why this would be? Would upgrading to a larger battery pack (8x AA batteries for example) help or is there something else?

Hey @PiBorg

I've ordered some more hardware that I plan to migrate and/or implement a C# library for to augment / substitute your Python libraries for. To that end, I was considering renaming my entire project to something like PiBorgSharp or something along those lines. Do you have objections to the use of the PiBorg name in that manner? Would you prefer I use something else? Suggestions?

Thanks.
-J

Hi,

I'm currently planning a rocker-bogie style robot, so I'll need independent control over six motors. I've been successfully using ThunderBorgs for awhile now and this robot would use three, since each controls two motors.

When looking at the 12v Pololu 25mm motors, they sell both a medium and a high-power version. I'd likely be purchasing the 210-220rpm motor. These are listed at 25D Metal Gearmotors.

I bought a new PI for use with the Thunderborg, and I've just started testing it out by connecting it to 4 18650s. For some reason the Raspberry PI now heats up to insane temperatures on idle (I've seen >85C by using vcgencmd measure_temp), even if I don't even have an SD card in.

This seems to happen to the Pi even when connected to USB power now. Is it possible that the thunderborg might have overvolted and fried the pi CPU, or that I had a faulty pi?

Apparently I'm a sucker for punishment so I'm trying to port some of your software over to .NET IoT with C#. My issue is that the library I'm using - UnoSquare's rather good interface - has provided me only so much. I can get your wheels turning, and I can get the speeds... But that's it. The reason appears to be because the .Read(int length) function is returning only an array of one byte that is [length] long.

Hello all,

I'd like to know if there are plans to make the code open source and if there are plans for another series?

Thanks