Bumper Boe -Bots

musictech

I have been given the task of creating a table that will support multiple boe-bots. It works essentially just like bumper cars. The ground plane is going to consist of a 8ft by 5ft long stainless steel table. The positive portion of the bumper car table will be made out of aluminum screen wire supported a couple of feet above the table by PVC pipe. (I can reverse these if I like). The idea is to run an antenna up and down and make contact with both the table and the screen and pipe them into the stamp, eliminating the need for batteries.

My question is do I need to create some sort of circuit to condition the power coming off the table or can I just use a solid wire antenna straight into the stamp?

KenM

In my opinion you will definately need some power supply conditioning. If the current consumption used by the stamp is minimal, you might be able to get away with a handfull of very large electrolytic caps at each stamp.

The potential problem (pun intended) that will likely occur is voltage supply dropping out momentarily. The large caps would act as a battery for a very short period of time as the contacts bounce across the screen or the floor.

Sounds like a cool project. Please take pictures and share.

Post Edited (KenM) : 4/19/2005 7:43:36 PM GMT

allanlane5

Definitely you'll need a large capacitor (100 uF?) on the BS2 board. Dragging contacts across a screen makes LOTS of electrical noise and drop-outs. This works in a commercial bumper-car arena, because there they are driving motors -- a short drop-out of voltage doesn't bother a motor much.

You'll probably want a diode in there to insure current only goes TOWARD the BS2, as well.