I May Have to Scale Back a Little

I just did a short computation on what the hardware is going to cost to build the SpiderBot.  And for cheap, it is going to be just under $1000.  That is $200 over budget, of which I have already spent $100.  Thus I need to figure out how to save $300 to get it done.  That is why I have been thinking about buying bits and pieces and constructing the rest myself.  The problem that I forsee, is the weight of the thing.  I need to keep the weight down in order to have something that can be run with the current set of servos that are available.  This is one reason that I have been looking at trying different avenues to getting the parts.  The basic spiderbot hardware, sans servos, servo controllers, and processor is around $260.  I could live with that purchase, buying a little bit at a time.  The servos that I want cost about $40 apiece, pretty cash hungry.  So anyway, I think that I should go back to the drawing board and rethink this a little.  On a positive note, I could simulate the parts and just use the Chumby as the go between for simulating what happens to the servos and display a simulation on the screen.  In that way, I could contain the costs of the project (just takes a lot of time to program the simulation) and still use programming on the Chumby as the way to do it.