Turbots are strange critters, moving like nothing else. Turbots are fairly slow, but what they lack in speed they more than make up in capability. I have a few more turbots that I will eventually put up when I get the time. In the summer of 2000 I did a fair bit of time-lapse of some slower solar powered Turbots. The time-lapse did show that Turbots can be made phototropic, up to that point I had yet to see any conclusive evidence of that. Recently been experimenting with battery operated turbots.

Also included here are a pseudo Tubot like bot I called a "Turmet" its sort of a cross between a Tubot and a Symet. Its surprising how capable these little guys are, I don't recommend leaving them alone the vicious little raptors they can be.

A new addition to the Turmet family the main difference is the GM11 instead of the GM12 (from the old solarbotics miniball kits) Makes it quite a bit faster (should be 1.77675 times faster actually).

I provided a few construction detail pics for those that want to build one of your own.

Part list:

1*1381 "C" trigger (want a low Vtrig when the solarcells are parallel to the light)
1*2N2222
1*GM11
1*3300uF cap (nearly the exact diameter of the motor)
1*1N914 diode
1*0.47uF cap (actually used a 1uF SMT cap but 0.47 is also fine)
2*SC2433 solarcells

Build Date: Nov 24, 2000

Here is one of my older attempts at a Phototropic solar power turbot. I did include a 3.6V 60mAH rechargeable battery for battery operation. I used mostly silicon bronze for construction and really high quality gear motors, ironically too high quality I have to change the circuit a bit to accommodate them.

Build date: May, 2001

"Turmets" what? they are a combination of the turbot and the symet henceforth the name. These little guys are vastly more capable than a regular symet and as I found out they are vicious in a slow sort of way.

For circuitry these just use the simple, reliable and efficient Miller engine. 

The first Turmet I built was similar to these but was stolen at a BEAM workshop and never returned. It's ok tho that's what motivated me to build these two. 

Story of the first micro turmet:

I left my finished prototype on my workbench and went to work for the day when I got back the Turmet was happily chewing up a nice space grade solarcell. What happened was that the sun hits my workbench during early spring and winter, Turmets just eat up the sunlight and become relatively active. So it slowly made its way across my workbench and got tangled on the solarcell wires. It eventually reeled in the solarcell and proceeded to break it into a few pieces. Too bad the one that did that got stolen, I kinda liked it.

The first tumet, its kind of a cross between a turbot and a symet. Not very fast but very capable at getting over rough terrain. Originally this was built to see if a solar engine could be squeezed into the space inside of a servo... it can and easily too!

It can't be seen but there are solar cells on either side of the servo, so when it flips over it will still be getting power.