Balanduino - an Arduino based miniature Segway - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: mindThomas
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 23, 2014, 09:51:57 pm
content: Hi Dave and all other electronics enthusiasts in here.I am one of your many subscribers and have been for a long time, watching your videos with the same excitement everytime.I envy your passion, way of explaining and especially teaching the community about electronics.Though I am not actually contacting you just to tell you passionated a blogger you are, but I am rather contacting you as the electronics designer and CEO of TKJ Electronics.TKJ Electronics is a embedded design and consultancy company in Denmark started by me years back when I was just barely turned 18.If you have the time for a quick glance some more details about me and the past year can be found here:http://blog.tkjelectronics.dk/2014/01/year-2013-thomas/From the time when I started the company and till now, I have been developing embedded projects for smaller and larger customers, both hobbyists and companies, but we have especially also worked hard on getting our blog going with different projects and product reviews.Our blog can be found at:http://blog.tkjelectronics.dk/And our Youtube channel is:https://www.youtube.com/user/mindthomasandhttps://www.youtube.com/user/tkjelectronicsA bit more than a year ago I teamed up with a good friend of mine and we started developing a balancing robot platform.Due to the many requests from people on how to build one themselves and the lack of inexpensive quality kits to do so, we decided to start the development and planning of a balancing robot platform kit, called the Balanduino.The platform should consist of a customized Arduino board including all the necesarry features for a balancing robot to function, such as sensor, motor controllers, USB Host for Bluetooth connectivity etc.After several board/prototype spins we had a well working version though we had no idea on how to get it to the public.As we were two poor students who really haven’t got the sufficient funds to just invest in a large manufacturing of kits, we decided to launch the Balanduino on Kickstarter:http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tkjelectronics/balanduino-balancing-robot-kit/Here we received a great support and managed to reach the project goal of $10.000USD and even more.We have just finished shipping the products to all of our backers and have started shipping further pre-orders as the project seems to be going well.Much more information about the Balanduino can be found on it’s dedicated homepage:http://www.balanduino.net/Or if you are just interested in a video of the robot in action you can find such here:To summarize this long post, I am asking if you would like to receive a Full Balanduino kit for testing and reviewing, either as a part of the mailbag segment or as a seperate video?We would like to ship the kit to you from our Shenzhen based manufacturing partner, SeeedStudio, with DHL, so we would need to know a proper address for the courrier delivery.Let me know what you think.Thanks a lot in advance.Kind regardsThomas JespersenCEO, TKJ Electronics

author: fcb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2014, 11:04:29 am
content: Neat. Well done on the KS. Wish I had time to play more with robotics.

author: GeoffS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 24, 2014, 02:21:26 pm
content: I know someone locally who's planning building their own Segway and was looking for software/ideas for the controller.This would be ideal and would (probably) only need bigger motor drivers.Are they available for purchase yet?

author: zapta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2014, 02:45:56 pm
content: Looks very interesting and I went to your web site to order one but the $350 price seems to be on the high side.

author: GeoffS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 24, 2014, 02:52:34 pm
content: Quote from: zapta on April 24, 2014, 02:45:56 pmI thought the same. The kit without the mechanicals - which would be easy to make - is more affordable at $240.Plus of course the battery, not sure what they cost.I'm waiting to hear back from them on availability and shipping to Oz.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 24, 2014, 02:54:45 pm
content: Presumably that $350 includes substantial royalties to the company that owns the Segway patents...?

author: scientist
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 25, 2014, 03:43:10 am
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on April 24, 2014, 02:54:45 pmAbsolutely not! Segway was far from the first to make balancing robots.Dave would probably love it.

author: GeoffS
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 25, 2014, 03:48:35 am
content: Quote from: scientist on April 25, 2014, 03:43:10 amPart ofSegway's failed business modelwas to patent everything they could before announcing the availability of the product.The few Segway patents I looked up, were to do with transportation. The only one registered in Australia has since lapsed.

author: mindThomas
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: April 26, 2014, 04:57:16 pm
content: There is no roalties being paid to the Segway company, as exactly what "scientist" said, they don't have patent on just the balancing robot part.Though we are for sure not allowed to use the Segway brandname which is also the reason for not using this term on our website nor in the name of the productQuote from: GeoffS on April 24, 2014, 02:52:34 pmWe have received your mail Geoff, but when we tried to reply to you it was bounced back to us saying that your mail-address didn't exist.A couple of weeks ago we opened up to our online ordering system that will guide you thru the ordering process including the selection of shipping option.For a full Balanduino kit we recommend the fast and tracked courrier shipping with DHL which is only around $50.Please visit the Buy Now page on the Balanduino website to find the price and order:www.balanduino.com/buy-nowWe are currently planning to build a large-scale model (proper Segway like) by using the Balanduino mainboard as the controller. As we mention on our website as well, all the motor controller pins are brought out, which makes it possible to add some external heavy-duty motor controllers.We would love to get a response from Dave with his shipping address so we can get him a kit ASAP :-)