Tribute to the Heathkit ET-18 Hero 1 Robot

Показать описание

Although robot shown in the video was built from a kit and is over 38 years old, it is really an engineering marvel that was manufactured by Heathkit, a company that sold various electronic kits including HAM radios, electronic test equipment, stereo equipment and even a do-it-yourself television. What made these kits useful was that they were also educational. This was due to their well written and easy to understand instruction manuals. Heathkit also provided a unique kit builders warranty that they would help you get it built correctly and working. There were over 18,000 Heathkit Hero 1 Robot robots sold during the period of 1982 to 1989.

What made this robot unique was the functionality that Heathkit squeezed into the electronics and mechanical electro-mechanical system so that it could perform various practical tasks at home or in the office or at school.

Legacy Heathkit Hero 1 Robot's specifications:
• 1 MHz Motorola 6808 motherboard with 4 kB of RAM
• ET-18-9 BASIC ROM Requires Memory Expansion kit, uses Wintek Basic language that allows you to program and run the robot in Basic using the serial port
• ET-18-6 Memory Expansion Board kit
• Experimenters Board (On robot's head)
• ET-18-4 DEMO ROM kit Sings songs and performs other demos
• ET-18-7 Auto Mode ROM kit Lets HERO 1 navigate a room while avoiding obstacles
• 12 Volt and 5 Volt Power Supply board
• Two 12 Volt SLA batteries
• 6 Volt SLA battery
• Battery Charger used to charge all the Hero 1 Robots batteries
• Ultrasonic Transmitter board
• Ultrasonic Receiver board
• IO board
• Sense board used to read all the Hero 1 Robot's sensors
• Main Drive PWM DC motor driver board
• Arm Drive Stepper driver board
• ET-18-2 Speech Votrax SC-01 speech synthesizer board
• Two 8 ohm speakers
• Keypad board with LED display
• ET-18-1 Robot Arm 5 Axis Robot arm kit
• Two light sensors
• Two ultrasonic Rangers
• Motion detector
• Two sound detectors
• ET-18-11 DEMO cassette (More Demos stored on cassettes)
• ETW-18-10 RS-232 serial interface that plugs in Experimenter board on head (110 Baud to 9600 Baud)
• Teaching Pendant used to control and train the Hero 1 Robot tethered
• ET-18-35 Remote control (75.43Mhz) with RS-232, used to control and train the Hero 1 Robot

This video shows a customized Hero 1 Robot with many new upgrades, features and functions that improved it from its original configuration.

Please be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and "like" the video if you found it helpful! And check out the following links for more information on how it is done with articles that I have written and other tutorial videos.