Faulty CODING & CIRCUIT BUILDING TOY - Can I Fix it?
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- čas přidán 22. 06. 2024
- Hi, in this tea break repair I look at an interesting toy called Power Tracks by John Adams and was sent in by a viewer named Tom. It is a coding and circuit building game, and unfortunately this one has stopped working. 'Volty' only travels in a straight line and doesn't follow the circuit. Can it be fixed? Let's find out.
Remember that this is just for entertainment and I am not an expert in these repairs. The processes in the video may not be the best way, the correct way or the safest way to fix these things. I do love fault finding and trying to fix broken things, so I hope that comes across in this 'Trying to FIX' series. Many thanks, Vince. - Jak na to + styl
Hi, I keep mentioning 'Hall Effect Sensors' in this video. After editing, I looked up the components and they are in fact IR Speed Measuring Sensors and the encoders. Sorry! It isn't the first time in my videos that I use the wrong terminology and guaranteed it won't be the last. IMO it shouldn't detract from the video as it is obvious the components I am talking about. If it does annoy you then I suggest you try standing in fresh dog poo amazingly placed just behind a blind corner with brand new, first time on trainers, as I did last week, then see what is more annoying. Forever Soiled!!! 🐶
When I was younger we actually had those inside mice to measure the movement... It was fascinating to see the design of this robot!
Optical encoders these are usually called. Relatively common - computer mouse use these for the scroll wheel.
Also printer, scanner, etc.
Also: Very unusual for them to fail so fast. These LEDs usually run 10-20 years continuously.
Maybe the LED was overdriven and degraded.
@@TylerDurden-pk5km If it ain't broke...
Why you chattin shit vince 😉🤣🤣
I think we’ll let you off interesting toy I might get one for the kids 👍🏼
I suspect one variable resistor is to change the speed of one motor and the other variable resistor is for power threshold to the IR pickup. Fun Video!
Hi Vince, I think that there were 2 faults - the missing screw would cause the toy to "drop" more to the floor and drag. The other fault, the IR LED or the sensors are wearing out and thus required the adjustment.
the pots are connected to the LED side of the rotary encoder, so yea LEDs getting dimmer, or the LDR isnt as sensitive as it used to be
Hi Vince, those are not hall effect sensors, those are infrared, one emitter and one reciever per package.
Great video 👍🇵🇹
Same sensors as in old ball mice.
Hi Vince, as you already mentioned IR optical sensors not hall effect which use magnetism. The potentiometers probably control the threshold at where it decides if it's black or not. Two either side figure out if it's on the line and the other reads the bar code. Nice job on getting it going again.
When Volty became faulty, a pot did Vince turn, to see faulty Volty be Volty once more, no longer did he yearn.
😂👌
What a great toy nice video Vince.
The little robot looks like a giant Duracell Battery. Entertaining video.
i gues thats the point hence the name
Good job! Wheel sensors are exactly the same as in old ball mouse.Only difference here they are parallel to each other and in mouse they are perpendicular and shafts are not connected to gears but touch the ball. They work by covering the IR beam, and robot / mouse counts pulses of covered / uncovered.
Peel of the protective from the screen please ;)
Great tea time fix Vince, it was very interesting thanks 😊
The kid playing was bored with the basic functionality. Opened it up, played with the pods, lost some of the screws (as it normally happens) and closed it again. Then he or she complained that it is faulty hoping for a better toy. Add 3 ir sensors for full line following capabilities and a programming interface for the microcontroller and the kids should have fun for a longer time.
So it seems like the left pot adjusts the ratio between the movement of the left and right motors on a forward command, and the right pot adjusts how much it turns on a turn command. I might be completely wrong, but that's what it looks like they are doing. So maybe they're not supposed to be the same value, if they do different things.
You would think that if it's measuring the speed of the individual wheels, it would be able to figure all that out on its own though. Not sure why the pots are needed.
Edit: On second thought, it probably has something to do with the IR sensors. So the left one might be adjusting the side IR sensors, which it uses to go straight and stay centered on the black line. And the right pot might adjust the front sensor, which it uses to detect which effects to play and when to execute the next command. And this indirectly affects how the motors work.
Some of these coding things for kids are actually very clever
I love how editing Vince shouts in 25!😂 What a funny little toy.
I think those are optical sensors, instead of hall effect, since the N64 analogue stick has those types of gears as well and those are definitely optical. And yeah, I think it was likely the missing screw all along, rather than any capacitors.
What a great fix! I liked your story to gift it to a school for that one geeky kid every year that might find a really nice path in his life because of this. :)
when I was little I always loved Lego Technix
I had a compucar back in the early seventies and that had a card that you would insert in the back. You would cut notches in the card to make turn, stop or reverse.
I think it must have hit a the mark with me as I'm now in my sixties and play racing sims and enjoy programing Arduinos and computers although not very well.
Fascinating toy … our kids started on the turtle programming language but this looks good for those that need more ‘hands on’ 👍😀
I don't recollect the precise details, well enough but I think it was one the chief designer's of the ZX Spectrum, in a specific interview he mentioned he was, quite rightly I think, very annoyed that the educational benefits of Turtle programming were not adopted into the curriculum; instead school IT lessons became learning about GUI's like WINDOWS, how to use a Word Processor, etc, basically training users who wouldn't have a clue how to program anything, even a microwave, or a VCR. ☹️
Interesting that these aren't for sale on Amazon in the US. Seems to be UK-specific. That's unfortunate! I've been teaching my oldest basic coding concepts using the Osmo Coding Kit. That's been great for a more advanced set of coding concepts, but something like this would be PERFECT for a younger set of kids just starting to explore concepts around logic, cause/effect, etc.
Also, big props for fixing it and then offering to donate it to a local school for the kid to learn with. That will be an absolute treat for them to have this in a classroom. What I wouldn't have given to have something like this when I was a youngin' in school!
Very good 👍
Thats a good toy. I wonder if they are literally just black lines and squares or is the track ink conductive somehow? I think if its just lines, it would be fun to make you own tracks
Just lines and squares for sure. Same fundamental tech as barcode readers.
Thinking its the same issue that a laser disk reader has. Over time it needs adjusting but its a sign its time to replace. If this is only £20 on Amazon then its possibly cheaper parts. Could also be as you say that it got dropped or placed down too hard and the laser got set back so couldnt read the 'barcode'. Being set back would also cause it to turn.
Mentioning bigtrak reminded me of a robot thing I had as a kid was the same kind of idea.
Can't remember the name of it but it kind of reminded me of the robots from Disneys Black Hole movie.
I suspect the pots are for the right and left optical wheel sensors. Each one sets the pulse level that goes to the cpu, which does the per wheel odometry. Measuring the distance each wheel moves. I once stepped one dog poo with just one shoe and it made me turn to the right slightly as I walked. I could go straight once the poo was worn off. The smell took a bit longer to wear off :-))))))
I like how it's modeled after a duracell 9V battery.
@my mate vince. Its basically a barcode reader when the car goes over those thin and thick line it converts that to a command. Your diagnosis would be correct as i think it jad trouble reading the whote lines on the elongated barcode👍
I had a toy truck that came with a dry erase marker and sheet you can draw a line on and the truck would follow it and it used the same sensors as this toy but over time the front drive tires rotted off. I may still have it somewhere.
I think it was either struck by a cosmic ray which changed its programming or, more likely, after a year of use it became self-aware and decided it wanted to escape the drudgery of going round and round a track and being manhandled by kids. Thus, it decided to try and make a run for it, hence why it would just continue off the end of the board.
Of course, I could be wrong!!
As you corrected yourself, those sensors are infra red. An emitter and detector in one. The potentiometers probably adjusted the gain, so that it can detect reflection from non reflection, of the black line. The chopper slots on the wheels looked similar to a computer mouse. Counting the pulses and and which direction they travel.
Took me the whole video before I cottoned on that "Volty" is a Duracell battery, Doh!
Funny how the toy is like the colour of a Duracell pp3 battery ! same shape too plus with the 2 eyes that light up at the top ! like the connectors !
It looks like its using a modern version or approach of the Logo programming language. I came across this integrated into the CPM OS supplied with the Amstrad cpc464 and later the cpc6128.
I think it's a combination of the two the screws missing and the potentiometers.
Volty looks like a Duracell PP3 battery . The eyes look like the pos/neg connections .😉
Thanks! That is a fascinating toy. Idea of screws makes perfect sense.
Another great fix. :"D Good job, Vince!
That is not a hall effect sensor, Vince, it's an optointerrupter.
optoelectronic product suffer from a lot of dispersion, at least photocouplers. Counting the theeth wheel probably is not a problem since the contras between on and off is higher. Also, it is enclosed. But to following the line in the board or reading the squres, problably is more on the "analog" side of thing ans this neet to be tuned up from one device to another at factory (well, the variation of characteristic between the SAME reel is not big enough. But from reel to reel it can change. A reel is a where the components are supplied and usually are from the very same batch. Probably changing the level of some comparator of something in the intention to convert analog to on / off signal. But optos then to drift as well with ageing, OF course a better circuit will be able to deal with it on a wide range. They coul have adjusted by program ... and avoid those pots that wont hold the adjust after a drop. IT is a toy. NICE VID Vince. Cute thing indeed.
I suspect the issue isn't the encoders on the wheels - the potentiometers you were adjusting were likely related to the sensitivity of the IR sensors (line follower sensors) which were not able to read the line correctly - so it was intentionally tracking left/right as that was where it thought the line was.
I don't think a school will get much use out of it at all.
Between Osmo and the Bee-Bot, the only advantage this one has is being cheaper.
Osmo is more for the older kids, Bee-Bot is designed specifically for the same agegroup that this product is designed for, and it allows control via an iPad along with the 'paper' control, where you can draw your own tracks on paper and have the Bee-Bot follow it around.
It only occured to be my the end of this video, that this toy looks like a giant 9V Block. :D
I see others have already mentioned the turtle program/ language/ tutorial, from back in the day.
Brilliant job =D Those pots were probably adjusting the voltage to the IR diodes!
Thank you Gadget👍
Elephant in the room a red mat, hurrah.
I like how Volti looks like a Duracell 9V battery🤔
Vince I love your videos
those markings are called bar codes I think Vince
Following your instructions, I am now standing in fresh dog poo. What do I do now?
😂
Fun fix of a nifty little toy.
hey vince amazed that you already have almost 1 million subs ive been watching your videos since you were mr telephone and have been learning from you all this time keep up the good work and hope you have a amazing day
Volti looks like a duracell 9v battery 😂
I wouldn't say "somethings not right" he's definitely got right down. Lol I'd say somethings not left.
Those aren't hall effect sensors. It is an open IR opto coupler. That is why the wheel has holes. In the result the sensor array gets x pulses per wheel revolution. The same way old fashion computer mouses worked in the ball mouse era. Ball rotation was transferred to the counter wheel and the IR sensor detected the movement by the holes blocking the view.
As you figured out, the ‘hall effect sensor’ is an IR encoder to measure the speed of the wheels. The potentiometers probably go to the ir sensors at the bottom. The led’s in them maybe wore down a bit and so it couldn’t read the difference in black/white and decode the barcodes. The 2 ir sensor in front keep volty on track, the 3rd one reads the barcode.
Oh my god I would have killed for this as a kid!! Love the video as always :)
Free Volty
What is happening with the Corsair EP2 and so on? You just worked on the keyboard and nothing else...
I was about to mention you calling them hall-effect sensors, but you figured it out yourself. 🙂
The soldering on those caps looked different from the rest and did not look professionally done so my guess is that someone recapped it for some reason and probably messed with the potentiometers in the process. Perhaps thought they were screws that needed to be taken out to remove the PCB and then after noticing the mistake, was unable to figure out how to adjust them back. If someone had taken it apart would also explain the two missing screws.
Hey bro 😅
I have to say Vince, the last 2 videos are a bid dull.
Irons and an old naf toy.
Expanded imagination is needed.
27th comment
TWENTY FIVE!! lol
First
🐼China is holding on line 2. They want you to come work for them. And as a side job you can correct their jinglish user manuals (for the whole country). Wow... Now that's something to consider. GR8T video V-Man. Cheers from So.Ca.USA 3rd House On the Left