New antweight kit

[petec]

Folks

I've been doing some research with a view to putting together a gear-motor based beginners kit for the shop. The spec I have to date is:
2 6v 200RPM gear motors
2 control boards from standard Hitec servos (HS311s currently)
1 MG90S servo for a weapon
2 little wheels from RobotBits
2/3 AAA battery
Plug charger
Plastic
Wires
Giantcod 2.4Ghz Tx/Rx

The cost for all of this, including postage is likely to be £110. If that seems like a lot, consider that the postage on the items for me to get them all comes to nearly £25 and that is being smart with combining things from same vendors.

Interested to know what people think of this - especially any new members. Also interested if anyone knows of any sources for any of these things that are postage free.

[razerdave]

I think that its very reasonable price for a starter kit . Do the servo boards have resistors on them rather than pots ?

[petec]

Do the servo boards have resistors on them rather than pots ?

Don't know yet Dave - might use presets but I'll see what works best.

[Andrew_Hibberd]

Seems very reasonable Pete. My only concern is that with 2/3AAA batteries this robot is going to be very slow. I haven't used these motors personally. Would faster motors make the robot more competitive?

Has anyone had any experience with these motors comment on pushing power vs speed?

[PBx]

There is clearly an appetite for this sort of thing. At Barnsley we started counting the 'serious' requests for kits and got up to 15!

[Remote-Controlled Dave]

Seems very reasonable for a complete kit, I certainly would've paid that when I was starting out! Considering my first purchase was one of your original kits for about the same price back in the day.
I'm sure you'll be putting together a robot made from these components just to test how well they go. I would say maybe remove the POTs from the servo boards to make it a lot simpler for beginners, but its not essential.
Good work Pete!

[peterwaller]

I have used the 6V 300 rpm in various robots I am fairly sure they were in some if not all of my three run all day robots at Brighton.
They were quite adequate for the job running on 8.4V but will obviously be slower and less powerful on 6V.
You could go to an extra cell to overcome this if the charger can handle it.

[petec]

Thanks all - this is useful. The logic to the batteries is that lipos are just too fragile for beginners and you can't get a decent plugtop charger for them. I must admit that I hadn't thought about the speed under 5v. I've got some faster motors here so I'll give them a go at 4.8 and see what they're like.

I was hoping to get it under 100 quid but that just doesn't seem possible.

[haz]

you can get 20g 6v packs for 4 quid, they are pretty good.

[BeligerAnt]

Pete, have you added in all the plugs and sockets to make a "plug & play" kit, or would this one require soldering?
I had a quick think about it the other day and I can't come up with a simple method that avoids lots of soldering Adding all the plugs obviously increases the cost

The list looks good. I'm not sure if the standard Rx/Tx chargers will charge 6V NiMH packs. If so it would make a good speed/power upgrade.