Resources
I am by no means the first person to have worked with an Armdroid 1000 or any of its relatives.
Here are some other people’s sites I found that would be worth looking at.
Unfortunately, most of these sites are written around the Armdroid 1, made by Colne Robotics (not the armdroid 1000, made by D&M Computing), but since the 1000 is a derivative of the Armdroid 1, the mechanical systems are pretty much the same.
You can also find some of these links at the bottom of every page.
Armdroid 1s
Armdroid 1000s / LabVolt 5100s
As far as I know, the only difference between the Armdroid 1000 and the LabVolt 5100 is the color. They are lumped together here.
Component Datasheets
- 2N3771 NPN transistor
- 74LS175 voltage regulator
- TIP29 NPN transistor
- 2N6509 thyristor
- 74LS175 D flip-flop
- ULN2003A Darlington array
- UCN4204B stepper driver
- LM340 / LM7805 5V regulator
- 74LS123 monostable multivibrator
- 74LS138 3-to-8 demultiplexer
- 74LS125 tristate buffer
Miscellaneous resources
Dan Kohn has done the work of reverse-engineering part of the circuit of his 5100. You can find it here (local copy) It’s not 100% wire-for-wire complete, but it shows the general block diagram.
Andres Gazso has scanned his Armdroid 1 manual and it is now hosted on Alex Zivanovic’s site and linked here.
- Intro (local copy)
- Mechanics (local copy)
- Electronics (local copy)
- Software (local copy)
- Command Routines 1 (local copy)
- Command Routines 2 (local copy)
- Subroutines (local copy)
- Applications (local copy)
- Blueprints (local copy)
Neil Fazakerly has a full copy of a manual that has been run through an OCR program so you can search the text. To repeat Neil’s warning, there might be a computer error with the OCR here and there, so it’s best to cross reference with Andres’ scanned copy above. You can find that manual here (local copy)