What is the current state of the Acorn project? Have there been any recent updates?
Great question! We’ve had a big push to get the new robot fully operational. Among other things this involved a significant redesign of the motor controller to fix a few bugs. The controller works great now and the new robot is working well. I was a little busy with a vacation to the desert/mud recently, and am now back home and will begin filming the next video update soon for release some time this fall.
Next steps are to work on testing and finalizing the design and to begin to put the design in to production for volume testing before we put them on sale.
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Is the plan to sell finished rovers, or kits, or some combination? I’m keen to get involved, but it doesn’t seem like that’s possible until the design is “finalized”.
I think the plan is to sell kits, though someone else should probably confirm that
Hello everyone,
Yes the plan would be to both sell kits of fully tested robots (basically bolts together in an hour or two) as well as publish detailed documentation on how to fabricate them yourself.
Currently the V2 prototype is looking mechanically pretty solid, and the new electronics are working nicely. Once that can drive all day long in the field I will start building more and do long term testing of that design. There will be some design revision as well.
This will establish a production line, and once we have a stable reliable system we can make, we will start selling them. There is talk of selling them one by one as they come off the line, but we will see.
In parallel I am also developing Acorn’s first tool, a lawn trimmer. I think it would be useful in harvesting lettuce too. I’m modifying a couple of 40V hedge trimmers and welding up a Z axis for it now, it’s gonna be neat. I will start work on a new video soon.
Here’s the current system:
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I’ve done various experiments with harvesting lettuce. Very little success with hedge trimmers.
However the Quickcut greens harvester is very effective for baby leaf.
It’s not exactly cheap! But it is good: Quick Cut Baby Greens Harvester
For a machine on your scale I think the parts from a Terrateck baby leaf harvester might work well
Hello All! Greetings from India.
We are excited to see this open source project. While looking for a mobile robotic arm for castor leaf cutting/harvesting, we came across your development and this community. We are currently wondering when would acorn be available for sale? What are the prospective costs?
[taylor] I cant tell from your last picture, but do you have pancake slip rings on the steering motors?