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Maintenance and Repair
Alternative Battery Chargers
The center post of the charger socket is the positive (+) side of the battery; the case is the
negative (-) side. A diode protects against the wrong charger polarity. Nonetheless, if
you choose to use an alternative battery charge, be sure to connect positive to positive
and negative to negative from charger to robot.
An alternative AC to DC converter/battery charger should sustain at least 0.75A at 13.75
to 14 VDC per battery, and not more than 2-2.5 amperes per battery. The High-Speed
Charger accessory, for example, is a four ampere charger and should be used with at
least two of the standard batteries.
An alternative charger also should be voltage- and current-limited so that it cannot
overcharge the batteries.
Getting Inside
We normally discourage you from opening up your robot. However, on occasion, you
may need to get inside, for instance to access the User Power connections on the Motor-
Power board and attach your custom electronics. Or you may need to get to your
onboard computer and its accessories.
Open the robot AT YOUR OWN RISK,
unless explicitly authorized by the factory.
We describe here how to remove your robot’s Nose to get at the onboard computer.
And we describe how to access the contents of the Body of your Pioneer 2-DX/DXe or -
AT robot.
Removing the Nose
Pioneer 2’s and PeopleBot’s onboard computer sits just behind the robot’s Nose. And
you may have to remove the Nose to access the front sonar array’s gain adjustment pot.
For early DX, CE, and AT models, and for the PeopleBot robots, the Nose is attached to
the robot with two screws: one directly underneath the front sonar bay and one on the
bottom of the robot just behind the seam between the robot’s Body and the Nose. The
new AT and the DXe model have two screws holding the Nose to the front sonar (or
blank) array, and the DXe doesn’t have the bottom screw since the Nose is hinged at the
bottom.
Remove all Nose retaining screws with the hex wrench supplied with your robot. Except
with the new AT or DXe, if you have either the Gripper or a front Bump Ring accessories,
remove it first.
BE CAREFUL: Delicate wiring inside.
Once loosened, the DXd Nose pivots down on a hinge. For the other models, four pins
along the Nose’s back edges guide it onto the front Body of the robot. Simply pry the
Nose out and away from the Body. Careful: The computer’s hard-drive, fan, and
speaker have attached wire harnesses that you need to relieve before completely
detaching the Nose from the Body. We recommend unplugging the speaker wire and
simply rotating the Nose out of the way to access the onboard computer.
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