Been thinking of when I do my low-rider, putting two 5’ square sheets on a Paulk workbench, so the whole thing can be multi-use and stowable.
Pretty much table tennis sized in the end, so I’ve been looking to low-ball purchase a ping pong robot, and I snagged one for £50 on eBay. It’s a top end one costing over a grand new. The one I got is missing the control panel, so it’s a project:
I gave it a look over, and there are 5 motors, which all wire back to the main box, and the missing controller would plug into the main box and control motor voltages. So the good news is, I just need a micro-controller approach, and I can really improve on the analog, knobs based control box it came with:
I also found someone else had modified one of these:
He talks about RC servos and PIC controllers. I was thinking of using an Arduino or RPI type board to control the motor voltages, but I will have to reasearch this.
That thing looks awesome. It’s a ping pong serverbot? A friend took some lessons last year and told me about these but I had never seen one.
I for 1 like all the knobs and buttons. I don’t think it should be too hard to wire back up, but if you do give it a brain you really might have some fun with crazy programming. Looks like it is serve speed, position, rate of fire!, and can’t see the last knob. Looks like a super fun project. Don’t forget to make a collection/catch net.
Dual purpose LowRider and ping pong table sounds pretty good. If I find a bigger work space I might have to explore that option.
You can do serves, and of course all the different spinny shots you’d get in a game.
I hear you on the knobs approach. It’s hard to store and recall programs with analog knobs though (different drill sequences of varied shots). Maybe a midi controller with those continuous controllers that light up (yes I have one, X-Touch Mini).
Good news is, to get it firing balls, I only need the feed motor in the base to turn, along with one of the head’s spinner motor. Plenty of time to work on the long term solution!
Those motors don’t look big enough, you’ll need nema 23s…
You should hook up an Esp8266, and have it respond to things on the internet. Like send a ball everytime the POTUS tweets, or have the speed based on the temp, or some stock price. Maybe crawl this website and fire every time Barry starts a fire.
