Content in “Picaxe”

Yellow Drum Machine II

fritsl — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:42:13 +0200

Primary image

What does it do?

Gets funky with it's surroundings

Audiofile Engineering asked me to do a sequel to a robot of mine, Yellow Drum Machine.

It got the name Yellow Drum Machine II (YDM II).

I am going to ship it to the states now (I live in Denmark), so that it can be first prize in a world wide promotional contest from Audiofile Engineering

How to make / get your own Yellow Drum Machine

Pictures of the robot here

For more details of this project, I would like to start with this picture:

Is is taken from our house, looking up. To the left is a TV-areal. Please note how one stick is missing.. and how that left drumstick on YDMII is looking like something from a TV-antennae! I do not have much time for watching TV myself, but I told my wife that signal strength might possible increase if we took of that very one stick from there!

Also thanks to my wife for making the fine belt-track-pattern in black & yellow! (She did it while watching TV - and honestly nothing happened, picture is just as fine now as before)

To the right is my weather-stations wind meter. One might get the idea that the right drumstick on YDMII resembles that. Materials and inspiration can come from many places!

In most ways YDMII is the same as YDM, but for these differences:

A) The yellow "hat" instead of the huge speaker on YDM. I did not have more speakers like the one on YDM, so I spray-painted half a tennis-table ball and mounted it on top of a small speaker, that I mounted on top of the front part of a small flash-light.

This gives a perfect sound for the sample-playback!

B) YDMII has a tea-cup-speaker mounted on an old radio-antennae, the telescopic kind. By re-thinking (erh - in YDM, the original I did not plan or think much at all) .. by re-thinking ins- and outs to the standard picaxe 28 board used, I got some extra things to play with, and so I gave this fellow the possibility to twist the speaker that on YDM was placed in between the belt-tracks, bottom.

The videos:

Well - it is hard to do a number II; You have all seen a drumming robot now, and this one is even much like another robot of mine :)

I wanted the robot to play on a large fish's head. But I just could not find a fish with the right size head, that also had a good sound to it.

So what I ended up doing was just to carry the robot and a camera with me for about a week, shooting when/where ever.. And the last couple of evenings I have been editing little videos out of that material.

The programming / the code:

I ended up re-writing the "musical parts" of the core, and kept all the navigational from YDM.

I also created 3 extra "modes"; "Curious and playfull", "Tai Chi", and "Jam to musician". However, the basic code "Search and play" is now so expanded that there is no room in the tiny brains for anything more than that.

If you are the winner of the robot, you are very welcome to contact me, so I can advice you on how to enter the other "modes" by uploading other instructions to the robot, instructions I can send you :)

A nice detail IMHO is the on/off-switch:

It is two very powerfull (rear earth-material) magnets incapsulated in heat-schrinking plastic, with wires mounted on.

I tend to use this more and more over standard switches; It can be switched on/off by one hand.. and one can place a strip of plastic or paper between; Then it is a matter of pulling this out to turn on the robot.

It gives a better feeling; the robot is not something you just turn on or off; It wants to be on, but you can stop it by pulling the plug. Also this way you can attach a string to a door, attach the string to what's between the magnets.. and when you come home and open the door, you pull the string, and the robot greets you, and start it's business :D

I cannot remember where I got the pre-soldered magnets from, I bought a bunch.. But I will edit this as soon as I do :)

Congrationlations to the winner of this robot :)

I hope it makes you happy! I did my best to create and test it so it should be a good beat-maker for you in years to come :)

Get funky!

Cost to build

Embedded video

Your browser is not able to display this multimedia content.

Finished project

Complete

Number

Time to build

30 hours

Type

URL to more information

http://picasaweb.google.com/fritslyneborg/YDM...

Weight

250 grams

Little 8R

fritsl — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:40:04 +0100

Primary image

What does it do?

Shows how far you can get with very few and cheap materials

Ok, I can now proudly present part II of the "Little 8"-project!

All I did was actually to cut the bumper's wire, place a ER900RS-02 instead of it (tried to have both, but nogo), fire up my old joystick Black Box.. and camera.. and go :D (20 minutes max)

The code in it:

'What is recieved for any 9 possible positions of jopystick + 2 buttons:
'ABC
'DSF
'GHI
'X Y
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
'high 0,1,2,4' set all pins conected to motor as output pins
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
high 0,1,2,4
main:
serin 3, T2400, b0
select case b0
'case "X" - not used to save memory in Picaxe 08, tricks are performed with trick-data send from outside
'case "Y" - not used to save memory in Picaxe 08, tricks are performed with trick-data send from outside
case "B"
let pins = %00010010
case "C"
let pins = %00010000
case "A"
let pins = %00000010
case "F"
let pins = %00010001
case "D"
let pins = %00000110
case "H"
let pins = %00000101
case "G"
let pins = %00000100
case "I"
let pins = %00000001
else 'Case "S" for "Stop"
let pins = %00000000
endselect
goto main
' There you go - total drive-control in every way from serial input..in 104 bytes out of 128 possible with Picaxe8.. 24 bytes left ;)

- So all tricks and everything is actually made in my magic black box, which is esentially an old joystick with an Easy Radio, Picaxe28, LCD, some nots etc.. From that I send all the commands, and so i just press "Fire" on the joystick to make it spin 360, the other button to do another trick, turn a not and make ajustements etc :)

So.. Now little 8 can be controlled by a picaxe28 with an EA on it. Well.. Now another robot is going to be just that, and so another robot will control Little 8 :) .. I think ;)

Cost to build

$50

Embedded video

Your browser is not able to display this multimedia content.

Finished project

Complete

Number

Time to build

5 hours

Type

wheels

URL to more information

Weight

75 grams

Little 8

fritsl — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:06:59 +0100

Primary image

What does it do?

Very cheap but fun little beginners robot. It think' it has a brains within a Picaxe 8

From building big, nasty, with large shovel, 2 cores, multiple sensors, soundsystem etc, I got tired of that.. and decided to see what fun I could have with a little Picaxe 8 on a board ($16, total prize for robot is about $40).

Version II of this fella here: http://letsmakerobots.com/node/101

I have since recieved some interest in how to build this extremely easy and cheap robot, and so I hereby transform this post to a small and simple tutorial:

Shopping list:

Can be bought from Picaxe:

1axe023 Is just plu'n play all in one, no soldering needed, just a screwdriver, use the manual that comes with the board.
1 USB Download Cable if you do not have one allready.
1 (free) Programming editor
1 5V Voltage regulator Read more and see how to connect here
2 "bumper-switches"

You can get this from anywhere:

1 9V battery
Some sticks and something to cut them
Screwdriver
Soldering iron and led
Some pieces of wire and something to cut it with
Some different types of glue or tape etc
a table-tennis ball and a knife to cut it

- And then you need some motors with wheels. I recomend these, used in my robot.

I like the challenge of only having 8 pins and 128 bytes of code etc. But be aware; you get a funny robot, but it is blind, can only sense a bumper in front, and you really do not have much memory in it etc.

What I did after building this, was i set it up with Easy Radio serial wireless input on the only pin left for anything. This made it possible to control this little robot by another robot, which opens new windows etc.

Some friends and i in our local club also had a contest of making it draw the number 8 on a piece of paper with a marker glued to its back.. Good fun little fast and chep robot!

A stick, some switches, and a sliced up table-tennis-sized ball for "the third wheel"

To get the 9V down to 5V, I use a voltage regulator.

I was just mounting with some glue, the strips just tohold things in place..

An angle grinder may look like an extreme tool for such a small job - but I use it quite often. Just turn it on, hold it steady against something, and anything you stick in there is just vanishing, nice and smooth - compared to cutting such small parts. I also use it for acrylic (Plexiglass), again it is perfect to make little cuts and markings.

Just follow the instructions that comes with the board - it cannot be more simple, hook up the 2 motors.

The motors I recomend are incredible! Fast and strong, even though I only feed them 3.5V due to the 1.5V drop from the Motor Driver. So I actually had to make a "tale-bumper" (red square) as it was lifting the front a little too much :D With the bumper on it turned out quite cool, as it is just as capable of navigating on only the rear-wheels.. there is nothing else but a glider in front anyway.

All needed now is some code and the battery.

TIP: Get rechargeable batteries (and a recharger) - Or you will soon have used as much on batteries as on the Robot itself!

REMEMBER: If you make anything like this, to take a picture and show me :)

Here is the code used in the robot on the video. Don't mind that the names of the sub-routines does not make sense to you. Fact is that nothing in this code makes much sense, it was just the fun I had at the time when I shoot the video :)

I will have a closer look at this soon, but on request, here the code from the video:

symbol fw = 20
symbol bc = 200

b0= 175

''''''

dav:
random w5

for w3 = 0 to w5
if pin3 = 1 then
gosub bum
end if
next w3

b0= b0 +1
random w5
if b0 < w5 then goto hest

random w5
if w5 > fw then
high 1 low 0'ForwardRight
endif

random w5
if w5 > fw then
high 4 low 2'ForwardLeft
endif

hest:

random w5
if w5 > bc then
high 2 low 4'ReverseLeft
endif

random w5
if w5 > bc then
high 0 low 1'ReverseRight
endif

goto dav

bum:
w4 = 32212
return

high 2 low 4 high 0 low 1'Reverse
pause 300
if b0 > 175 then
high 1 low 0'ForwardRight
high 2 low 4'ReverseLeft
else
high 4 low 2'ForwardLeft
high 0 low 1'ReverseRight
end if
pause 300

b0 = 175
return

Cost to build

$40

Embedded video

Your browser is not able to display this multimedia content.

Finished project

Complete

Number

Time to build

5 hours

Type

wheels

URL to more information

Weight

75 grams

Skiwalker

fritsl — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:25:41 +0100

Primary image

What does it do?

Pushes itself around, freeweelin'

This was in a series of robots I made when I was really fond of the idea that instead of giving a robot wheels with traction, it should just be "something" that could push itself around on free roling wheels.

Hard to explain, but take a look at this:

It is tha base of an old Nielfisk Vaakum Cleaner.

Wouldn't it be fun to have a robot placed on top, with arms that it could push itself around with? (whatch video to catch my drift)

I want to do more of that kind some day soon ;)

I mainly show you this because of the video; I hung up a camera behind my head, and a remote in my hand to start it every now and then - just as an experiment, I would love to see other peoples ways of building, filmed that way :) (I know I am a mess, btw)

Cost to build

Embedded video

Your browser is not able to display this multimedia content.

Finished project

Complete

Number

Time to build

15 hours

Type

URL to more information

Weight

My second robot

fritsl — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:55:29 +0100

Primary image

What does it do?

Drives really fast, but poor, as both rear wheels turn the same, and no weight on front

This time I wanted a faster robot. No turning head, just some parts from old toy, mocked up, and getting much too high voltage!

It went completely beserk, but frankly; It was quite a poor robot, haha. (But fun)

Cost to build

Embedded video

Finished project

Complete

Number

Time to build

5 hours

Type

wheels

URL to more information

Weight

My first robot

fritsl — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:51:24 +0100

Primary image

What does it do?

Drives around and navigates via ultra sound sensors mounted on a servo. Also shoots "laser" and make sounds :)

UPDATED: Code on how to make this sort of navigation inserted below.

My first robot!

I did not have a clue to all the stuff you can buy, and so I thought I was the only one in the world making Robots, and was inventing eveything from scratch..

But.. I actually managed to make some pretty cool code, quite nice navigational system that I have been using in many projects afterwards:

Basics of the code:

Main routine:
Drive ahead!
Pan head from left to right, and back
Constantly return sonar range

When facing green areas:
if sonar range > “interesting” (if there is no obstacles even faaaaar away, an open door or similar to make us curious) and if we did not just do this several times already without seeing anything close, then stop turning head, and start to turn body till head faces an obstacle, or just something far away, or body-turning has ben done for a while. Then continue in main routine

When facing red areas:
if sonar range < “danger” (if something is close in front of us), and head is turned more left than right (in this example):
Turn body a little to the right (away from danger) while turning head a little to the left (towards the danger) - Keep this up until head is in green area, and then continue in main routine

1.000 pics, sorry if this is too much, but I was so much in love ;)

Thanks for asking about the code. i have made a simplified version (without all the extras of this particular robot), just the navigation.

Hardware setup needed for this to turn into something:
1 "Picaxe robot":
2 motors on a motor-driver
1 servo, on which is mounted 1 SRF05

The code below will make this setup navigate like my first robot, featured in video above - you can use belt-track or just a robot on 2 wheels - same code.

Feel free to ask or comment & have fun :)

CODE BEGIN:

EEEH! EEEH! EEEH! ALERT: Since this code is now slowly becoming a "standard" base for quite many projects, I am only updating it one place, you can find the latest version here from now on :)

Cost to build

$80

Embedded video

Your browser is not able to display this multimedia content.

Finished project

Complete

Number

Time to build

30 hours

Type

tracks