3 ms·

Hey all, my group in Stanford Student Robotics made Pupper. Happy to answer any questions!

canada_dry 6y ago
Awesome project! I'd love to build one, except for sourcing the parts - esp. the carbon fibre (out-of-stock) bits! If your team sold it as a kit I'd be your first customer! Of course, you'd have to ship to Canada too. Q. Was there a price point you had to aim for in the development (i.e. under $1K)? And, if you were to double the price, what improvements would you make (e.g. even better servos)?
- NathanKau 6y ago
  We're actually working with some people who are interested in selling the kits as a side project. Stay tuned. With double the BOM cost, we'd use torque-controllable servos. We're testing out the DJI M2006 right now.
- cypresssoftware 6y ago
  Hi Canada_dry, We are selling Pupper kits now. Please check out our website link below If you have any questions you can can contact us at:cypresssoftware@gmail.com https://cypress-software-inc.myshopify.com/ https://cypress-software-inc.myshopify.com/
  - canada_dry 6y ago
    Awesome! Emailed you with some questions.
e-_pusher 6y ago
Awesome project Nathan, kudos to the team. I'd love to use the Stanford Pupper at some point for K-12 outreach efforts myself. I reviewed your power distribution board. I think it needs more safety features before it can safely be entrusted to the hands of K-12 kids. Couple of comments: - The battery input is unfused. I would HIGHLY recommend adding one. - I know you guys wrote in Github about how people should not plug in voltages above 8.4V, and not overdischarge batteries, but I would not trust K-12 kids to follow those instructions :) It would be best to add a overvoltage, overcurrent and reverse polarity protection circuits. Those are pretty simple and should not take much space on the board. Jerri Ellisworth has a great video where she explains these circuits in detail, and how to make them low-cost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ0WXQWND-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ0WXQWND-I - I would add a schmitt trigger circuit to sense the battery voltage and feed that as a digital input to the Raspberry Pi. If the batteries are too low, the Pi then can throw an audible alarm and disable the servos. This would prevent kids from overdischarging their batteries. As a future addition, I think it would be sweet to add a Teensy somewhere. Then students would be able to easily add extra sensors and have their robot respond to changes in the environment etc. So much potential for fun. Congrats again!
- NathanKau 6y ago
  Great feedback! Will definitely incorporate those features into future revisions.
- dekhn 6y ago
  I can't emphasize enough how much overvoltage, overcurrent, and reverse polarity protection has saved me when wiring stuff.
jimsmart 6y ago
Great project, thanks! Is Pupper in any way related to this quadraped robot here [1] — or do they just have a similar looking physical architecture? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnEtJSkUFDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnEtJSkUFDk
- NathanKau 6y ago
  Martin's robot was definitely an inspiration. As far as I know he was the first one to figure out how to make cheap, nonbackdrivable servo motors work for dynamic quadruped movement. Wouldn't have started the project without seeing his videos.

Awesome project! I'd love to build one, except for sourcing the parts - esp. the carbon fibre (out-of-stock) bits! If your team sold it as a kit I'd be your first customer! Of course, you'd have to ship to Canada too. Q. Was there a price point you had to aim for in the development (i.e. under $1K)? And, if you were to double the price, what improvements would you make (e.g. even better servos)?

NathanKau 6y ago
We're actually working with some people who are interested in selling the kits as a side project. Stay tuned. With double the BOM cost, we'd use torque-controllable servos. We're testing out the DJI M2006 right now.
cypresssoftware 6y ago
Hi Canada_dry, We are selling Pupper kits now. Please check out our website link below If you have any questions you can can contact us at:cypresssoftware@gmail.com https://cypress-software-inc.myshopify.com/ https://cypress-software-inc.myshopify.com/
- canada_dry 6y ago
  Awesome! Emailed you with some questions.

e-_pusher 6y ago

Awesome project Nathan, kudos to the team. I'd love to use the Stanford Pupper at some point for K-12 outreach efforts myself. I reviewed your power distribution board. I think it needs more safety features before it can safely be entrusted to the hands of K-12 kids. Couple of comments: - The battery input is unfused. I would HIGHLY recommend adding one. - I know you guys wrote in Github about how people should not plug in voltages above 8.4V, and not overdischarge batteries, but I would not trust K-12 kids to follow those instructions :) It would be best to add a overvoltage, overcurrent and reverse polarity protection circuits. Those are pretty simple and should not take much space on the board. Jerri Ellisworth has a great video where she explains these circuits in detail, and how to make them low-cost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ0WXQWND-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ0WXQWND-I - I would add a schmitt trigger circuit to sense the battery voltage and feed that as a digital input to the Raspberry Pi. If the batteries are too low, the Pi then can throw an audible alarm and disable the servos. This would prevent kids from overdischarging their batteries. As a future addition, I think it would be sweet to add a Teensy somewhere. Then students would be able to easily add extra sensors and have their robot respond to changes in the environment etc. So much potential for fun. Congrats again!

NathanKau 6y ago
Great feedback! Will definitely incorporate those features into future revisions.
dekhn 6y ago
I can't emphasize enough how much overvoltage, overcurrent, and reverse polarity protection has saved me when wiring stuff.

jimsmart 6y ago

Great project, thanks! Is Pupper in any way related to this quadraped robot here [1] — or do they just have a similar looking physical architecture? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnEtJSkUFDk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnEtJSkUFDk

NathanKau 6y ago
Martin's robot was definitely an inspiration. As far as I know he was the first one to figure out how to make cheap, nonbackdrivable servo motors work for dynamic quadruped movement. Wouldn't have started the project without seeing his videos.