Blogs

The first Library Basics blog covered a basic conversion from a working sketch to a very simple library using the C++ class.  User mogul correctly pointed out some code optimizations that we can make.  His original message was:

You seem to waste a little resources here and there:

You store 4 private variables.

After about 8 months part-time development, after many VHDL-related headache, after lots of failures, after few successful moments, after anger, after surpises and finally with a big portion of luck I am today very proud to annouce the first working proof-of-concept for live stereoscopic vision using two CMOS camera modules, the Zeiss Cinemizer Plus video eyewear and of cause with my DIY side-by-side encoder.

Introduction

OddBot (Russell) sent me a DAGU Playful Puppy Robot kit to check out. This little guy is really neat.

After nearly a month of waiting (shipping was a nightmare) I finally have my picaxe 28X1 starter pack. I want to thank everyone on LMR for answering all my ridiculous questions before i jumped in! Now, for me to contribute back :) 

Introduction

 With all the questions surrounding libraries in the Arduino IDE, I thought I'd start my next blog about creating a class used as a library for my Ping sensor.  As a start, I'll use the example sketch from the Arduino examples.  Below is the example code created by David Mellis and Tom Igoe with the majority of the comments removed:

Original (uncommented) Sketch

Besides writing about our robot addiction, microcontrollers, bits and bytes, infrared eyes and all the other cool stuff is this website also a community with some space for our other real life.

I know that Google is highly localized and personalized these days. But still, I was looking for any stock image of "a robot", so I searched the big G for images on the word "Robot", and look what I got:

(the second row, with yellow background to the right is LMR "Start Here robot")

:)

Friday 27th January, 2012
This blog is a an ongoing list of my thoughts, as I attempts to create a library for the Micro Magician. It is boring and should not be read by anyone :p

As some of you may already know, I am designing a new Arduino compatible controller for small robots. One problem with small robots is limited space. This makes sheilds, motor controllers and wires difficult to fit. For this reason I tried to incorporate a few useful devices onto a controller while keeping the cost low.

This is the first part i made for my bot.

I Used an old RC car, or parts from it anyways.

I will use pressure sensors so it can "sense" how hard its holding things.I will also add another servo so it can spin it's hand.

I am leaving lmr till i m 13 or 14. my dad says i cant soldier or buy parts until then so bye

Idea :-Damage control ...... take the control off the operator if it exceeds the design limits of the robot - robot makes necessary actions to get out of danger and only then hand control back to manual operator control.

Not bad for a single set of  fixed Infra Red sharps .... positioned to detect Cliff and Obstacles......tuning needed though.

In the second video it fails only because it was over-correcting the correction and exposing its back to the cliff ....... to solve this i programmed faster but shorter turn corrections.

Well, I don't know what happened.  I rewired up the Robot to get that snarl of wires out of the way and now the motors don't work with the motor shield and the servo used with the Ping sensor jitters.

Here are things I've tried:

I've tried rewiring the motors to the breadboard a few different ways to no avail because I thought it was the poor soldering job I did on the wires and the wires I made were not seated in the breadboard properly.  I made new solid core wires with no effect.

If I put power and ground from the breadboard to the motors, they work fine.

Introduction

I was crusing YouTube and saw a few videos on these homemade filter fans from Altoid tins.  I don't have a fan system since I usually just do my building on the kitchen bar area, so I thought this would be a good idea to build.  After watching these videos and finding out that it was some article in Make magazine, I breadboarded the circuit and wrote down the diagram for the project.

The Filter Box

I've been planning, shopping, ordering parts, and waiting for what seems like forever. I want to show you guys what I've been working on, but it's still just a pile of assorted parts while I wait for certain important odds and ends to get it all together. But a couple of weeks ago I put together a sketchup model to get an idea of some sizing and fit and finish. Since I couldn't upload the model, instead I offer a few screenshots of what I've been working on.

Introduction

Well after some sleep we got back to work on what we thought we could accomplish without getting a headache.

Afternoon

Screw Shield

Introduction

Ever since we purchased our Arduino and tinkered around with a few simple electronics projects, we been itching to make a real robot.  Well the time has come where we had a few extra dollars to spend and we splurged and purchased the following to help us along:

It's really not easy for me to start,but I am here!
I'm so happy to find this great place,with so many funny friend and robot!
This is my first project from last years which called “LiteCar” , I wish to program my LC running without Delay(); Feeling with a Light Sensor and Fighting with a "Laser Gun".

Project plan:
1,moving action(WASD) by Computer Operator
2,recording its absolute position
3,feedback and maybe some PID? or Balance Filter?
4,Automode:moving by some prepared positions
5,add some other sensor or what else...

There is not much to document in this project. I built a Joule Thief....who didn't ;-)

Mine is powered by a LR44 button cell (1.5V) and it light up a white LED which usually needs a minimum of 3.3 voltes to light up.

I just built it to test how long the LED can light with this one battery (it might be interesting for throwies). 

Will update the blog when the battery is completely depleted.

Power on time: January 14, 2012, 3:30PM

I started welding on the CNC project today. Woo Hoo!

Blog Entries:

Intro: Materials, costs and where I bought stuff

Day one, building Z axis 1.14.12

Well 2012 is off to a great start with a brand new Arduino compatible controller, A car controlled by your phone and a robot arm with teaching pendant from DAGU.

The Micro Magician is designed for small robots running on low voltage batteries. The controller works on voltages from 3.6V to 9V.The heart of the controller is an ATmega168 running on 3.3V with an 8MHz clock. Check out the great new features!

I got some ATTiny and now need to transfer the program from the Arduino IDE to the ATTiny without a programmer.

The solution is, just make your own programmer shield. Based on this tutorial http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=1229 I created my programmer shield for the Arduino Duemilanove. It's not pretty since it's just a ugly board out of my box but it works. Preparing the Arduino duemilanove according to this tutorial and then hook up the ATTiny into the header pin socket, open your sketch and click upload. Done!!!

May I introduce myself, I am TinySpider. I was build a couple of days ago after my creator got some ATTiny and needed to try them out. I was inspired by this  http://www.instructables.com/id/Computer-Bugs-Additional-Ideas-Tips-Tricks/step15/4-Spider/  

Basically I am a bare ATTiny85 some copper wire, two LED's and one 3.7V/50mAh LiPo battery.

 I've worked on this alot latley. It's an improved version of my text editor. Basically, it was made to test the keyboard input and TV output for the propeller, but ended up being alot more work than it was worth. In the end, I just realized that I only needed to use the ending string (13, 10). Only some minor problems remain: no tv objects will work unless the prop. is plugged into the computer and no spaces show up when using the read method. Here's the code:

Horay! I just got my GG propeller board USB:

 And, for the record, I did blink some LED's (video 1). Parts shipment 1 of 2 has also arrived:

Started this weekend with the 2nd version of my IOIO-SHR (Start Here Robot). Because Santa brought me a Rover 5 chassis on christmas, this would become the chassis for it. I got the 2WD version including wheel encoders and the motor controller board.

Here are some shots from the assembly test.

The IOIO is mounted on a carrier board with 3 pin headers for all IOs. Some Jumpers are available to select the supply voltage for the IO headers, 3.3V, 5V from the IOIO or external servo voltage.

NOTE: IF YOU WANT TO COMMENT, DON'T COMMENT HERE, COMMENT ON THE PROJECT PHOENIX ROBOT POST, I'M VERY LAZY BUSY TO CHECK THE COMMENTS HERE

Another update once again, and this time, my project's BRAINS ON BOARD PCB

After a long time being silent here in LMR I finally got some time to post an update to my weather station project.