Most Collected: Blog entry

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

Maxim home page.

Chip details.

Datasheet.

Search for samples.

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  :)

WARNING! this blog is just my thoughts on the subject and may be prone to rambling, monologs and contradictions.

I want to develop a universal navigation system for my robots. By universal I mean that the same code should work on almost any robot with only minor modification to allow for I/O pins used and number / type of sensors. This code is being written for the Arduino but I will document the code well enough that it can be easily adapted for other processors.

Theory Stage:

(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 :)

I've been asked by a few people from different places if there is a simple way to use an Arduino to build robots. I explained there are ready made boards like Roboduino, Romeo, Motoruino, etc. that can be used. Or a custom compatible board. I told them that I went both ways, mostly because Roboduino doesn't have an H-bridge onboard, so I designed my own customizable board, R-Dev-Ino. Usually people are puzzled with all that information, as they have heard about Arduino, some have used it in art projects or so, but did not hear about the other variants. Seems complicated...

Well i finally went through with it and started on a quadcopter. I will probably just stick to doing RC with it but who knows, maybe one day i will make a quadcopter UAV.

12.24.10

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.

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.

"LoMoR" - Lets Orientate & Map Our Robots (Sonar Based)

 Also Blogged as Mystery Object Here

My System Uses a LCD display to Map an area which is scanned by an Ultrasonic or IR Distance_ing transducer.

The Angle of the Probe is converted from polar Coordinate to Cartesian Coords and then displayed X,Y fashion on the LCD Display.

The System works pretty well i must say, however the "Extra" echos of Ultrasonic signal can be miss-leading.

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)

**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. 

 "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

I'm trying to build some sort of RC transmitter using the 434 MHz radio link set. Sometimes called Easy Radio, but not by SparkFun. Edit: because they're not the same thing!

I am setting this up on a breadboard with a Picaxe 08M and two potmeters as inputs. The two ADC bytes are combined into one byte. The one byte gets transmitted.

2009-11-29

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.