Most Collected: Blog entry

This is my first experiment with the MakerBot. I am totally thrilled with this machine!!!

SSS (servo suspension system) is designed to support standard servo motors and act as a basic suspension. It is still a work in progress and has not been tested yet.

Will update results as soon as possible (still waiting to have my lab back).


I would like to know everyone's opinion on this  :)

I made a battery charger with some free samples of the maxim max713 chip.

Maxim home page.

Chip details.

Datasheet.

Search for samples.

My XMOS entry was to create tutorials that not only taught how to use the XMOS but also lead up to explaining complicated robotic principles as well as good coding standards. So far I have been trying to figure out what to make a tutorial about. Below is my list which I will add or subtract from depending on the XK1's capabilities and the complexity of the tutorial.

2009-11-29

Hi Folks,

 today,  LMR's first Birthday,  you've all discovered the new LMR logo

Fritsl had the very good idea of a logo kit, available to everybody.

here it is http://letsmakerobots.com/files/LMR_logo_kit.zip

it contains various sizes of the logo, in color, grayscale, black/white   (biggest is 4000x1000pixel)

21-5-2010

A few things have happened this last month. I meet Xiao Yue (Little Moon) about a month before I went to Australia. She can't speak much English and my Chinese is still very bad but she seems to like me anyway.

This was taken on her birthday. There was a bit of a food fight with the cake so we ended up with cream on our faces.

 "Wiieasy Rider" Nunchuck /Arduino hack controlling Tamiya Off-Road Car

Update :- Code posted

                  >>> Car Park Video of it in Action at end of Blog <<<

Goal:- Hack a Tamiya Off-Road RC car - and control it with Wii-Nunchuck controller

Well I've decided to replace my 2.4 ghz wireless camera on Ardbot with this guy:

JPEG Color Camera - UART Interface

While it isn't as capable as the video camera I had planned to use, it has the advantage of having a serial interface that can communicate with the Arduino, uses 3.3v, so my hope is to be able to stream the JPEG images via XBEE to my PC.

Read this history first, if you have an hour to kill.

The challenge: make your bot rove around your house. Use no active beacons. Use observations by your bot only. Now, does your bot know where it is?

One possible answer: an eye and a brain.

Room Recognition

Each room in the house has a unique lighting situation. A simple eye that looks around in eight directions would "see" a pattern of light and dark segments. Each cell is connected to one ADC on your uC.

Basically I just printed out one of these (laser printer recommended):

...And attached it to a wheel (double sided tape recommended).

Then I hooked up one of these (a 2$ IR sensor: QRB1134):

...And attached it to the motor pointing towards the wheel.

This project is a driver alternative to the Valkyrie stepper driver boards.

Aim of Project :- Transmit via RF remote values of Temparature & Humidity to a LCD display.

Why:- because i have always dreaded sending floating point values to a LCD display and

wanted to carve it in stone for other projects i have lined up.

& Why :- RF Links are just so cool 8-P        500ft range is not to be sneezed at......

31-5-2009

The last 6 months of my life have been full of ups and downs. I have been on workcover for the last 6 months for an injury I sustained at work. This gave me the time to discover LMR and make new friends (and robots). Thanks to LMR, Jack from DAGU discovered me and is now producing not only my robots but will soon produce other robots from other builders at LMR.

(Update: Some time after writing the below, I made this, that may interest people doing navigation with Picaxe)

How to make a robot do complicated tasks & "act alive".. With ease..

Here is one guys humble input - I am sure you all have your own ways of programming. Just take it for what it is; My personal thoughts, use what you can :)

One thing most robots need is a power supply that can put out a reasonable amount of current for servos and other small motors as well as run a processor and sensors. Probably the best setup is 5x 1.2V NiMh cells to provide 6V for motors and servos with a low dropout regulator providing 5V for the processor and sensors. Unfortunately this isn't always practical. Sometimes you have motors that need higher voltages or maybe the only battery you have lying around is a 7.2V battery from a RC model.

After lots of thinking about what my next robot should look like, I couldn't resist the temptation of trying to improve Edward. I never really made a good program for him and everybody who sees him ask me to switch him on and let him run around. When they do, i shrug and tell them "the batteries are dead" or "I'm still working on the programming".

What happens when you put a laser scanner on a quad flying platform -> here

Just what I need for around the house.

My laser range finder got a lot of interest so I thought I'd try to explain it in more detail.

It's not finished yet as it still needs to be mounted on it's stepper motor with a home position switch.

The sensor side has been tested on an oscilliscope. When I moved my hand in front of it, the pulse width varied to match.  Below is a diagram showing how the sensor works.

Hey, I can hear it now! You've been here for HOW LONG and you haven't POSTED A BLOG????

Hey, I'm I just not a very "daily blog" kind of person. It takes me FOREVER just to design and build something. Course then it is often "over-engineered" - so of course it takes me a long time, and I just don't take the time to blog. :-(

Anyway, the time has come that I at least try a little bit to break this bad habit...

For awhile, I'll need to catch everyone up with what I've been doing - maybe I can do that over the next few weeks (or months). :-()

Yay, I finally am getting to work on my XMOS project. I've had a three foot stick of 1/2" x 3/4" aluminum angle stock for weeks now. Today I lopped two six inch lengths off, nibbled out some pockets for the servo housings, and drilled em. Reall impressive, eh? ;) At least it's moving along again.

So. I'm finally building swarmbots. My goal is to have bot that is small (should be 25mm x 25mm, will be ~30mmx30mm) and cheap (less than 50$ per one. even when building only one).

**Update 4.14.09***

OK, when you watch the video... 

First of all, it is like, 5 minutes -sorry. There is a point though promise, and that point starts at about 3:40 or so. Now, I can't stress enough, the code is wicked chunky as it was written in about 10 min. It is all "bang-bang" and not proportional at all. The final code should be about 10x faster, much more accurate with a lot less trial and error. For now, this is just proof of concept and indeed it has been proven. 

Andrey Mikhalchuk demonstrates how to hack a popular wifi router to have an rs232 interface (or two). The openwrt project allows us to actually use that powerful hack. Andrey did what few people did before: he added a micro servo controller and TING robot's done!

Yes its that time again...........Mystery object to be identified

What is it and how will it be used ?  (wild guesses also encouraged).

Only clue is that its for my latest Picaxe project (would you believe), and promises to be a cool addition ..... when its programmed..

Ok..... i could not wait to post some Video of Basic System

I have seen a few people asking questions about controlling Mr. basics motors. One problem is that they draw more current than an L293D can handle. A L298N will do the job but you will want at leat 6V. Below is a schematic of the simplest way I know of to control your motors. Using a 5V relay you can run from 3.6V to 6V. I suggest a 9V relay if you want to use 7.2V.

About four years ago I came close to taking a job at Honeybee Robotics, a company that makes robots and parts for things like the Mars rovers. One of their robots, W.I.S.O.R., even had a really cheesy movie made about it. It would have been a pretty cool job, except that what they wanted was someone to machine parts for their robots, and I didn't know a single thing about machining.