Meccasaur Robot Dinosaur
About a year after the original release of the Meccanoid robots Meccano have now released a dinosaur robot known, of course, as Meccasaur.
On a similar scale to the G15 Meccanoid, the Meccasaur meaures 3ft (91cm) tip to tail and comprises some 447 parts (excluding nuts & bolts). I built it over three intensive sessions, perhaps eight hours in total. Build quality and instructions are of the same good quality as Meccanoid. Again constant concentration is required to avoid errors. When I first powered up Meccasaur, rather than walking he kept shuffling on the spot and falling over. It took me an hour or so to pin point the problem as being one nut and bolt in the wrong position on one leg.
Meccasaur is powered by 4 x 1.5v C batteries but rechargeable NiMH C batteries seem to work fine despite the lower voltage (4 x 1.2v) ..
On powering up Meccasaur likes to stomp around and roar a lot. He can be made to walk forwards, right or left using buttons on his Meccabrain. He can also be programmed to follow a sequence of steps using record and playback buttons. For a bit of fun he can be made to answer any Yes or No questions you or your kids may have, which he answers by nodding or shaking his head and growling !
I notice that unlike Meccanoid there is no USB port on the Meccasaur Meccabrain. So it does not appear to be possible to upgrade the software which seems a strange omission given that Meccanoids have gone through several software updates since release.
I hope you enjoy the videos here of my first days with Meccasaur.
On a similar scale to the G15 Meccanoid, the Meccasaur meaures 3ft (91cm) tip to tail and comprises some 447 parts (excluding nuts & bolts). I built it over three intensive sessions, perhaps eight hours in total. Build quality and instructions are of the same good quality as Meccanoid. Again constant concentration is required to avoid errors. When I first powered up Meccasaur, rather than walking he kept shuffling on the spot and falling over. It took me an hour or so to pin point the problem as being one nut and bolt in the wrong position on one leg.
Meccasaur is powered by 4 x 1.5v C batteries but rechargeable NiMH C batteries seem to work fine despite the lower voltage (4 x 1.2v) ..
On powering up Meccasaur likes to stomp around and roar a lot. He can be made to walk forwards, right or left using buttons on his Meccabrain. He can also be programmed to follow a sequence of steps using record and playback buttons. For a bit of fun he can be made to answer any Yes or No questions you or your kids may have, which he answers by nodding or shaking his head and growling !
I notice that unlike Meccanoid there is no USB port on the Meccasaur Meccabrain. So it does not appear to be possible to upgrade the software which seems a strange omission given that Meccanoids have gone through several software updates since release.
I hope you enjoy the videos here of my first days with Meccasaur.
April 2016
