Robot Dialogs

A few months before Maker Faire KC a friend started working on a Mini Sumo Bot and in passing I said I could probably get a bot ready for that...well those months slipped away and two weeks prior to the faire I had no bot (and had been constantly hounded by said friend). So I did a grand total of 30 minutes of research on the internets and ordered some parts (not recommended). I ordered everything from Canada (Fingertech and Solarbotics) so I had to wait almost another week to get started. Here's the parts list I ended up with: Chassis/Motors/Tires/Line Sensors: FingerTech "Cobra" Mini-Sumo Robot 4WD Kit Motor Controller: 2x Sparkfun's Motor Driver 1A Dual TB6612FNG Micro-controller: Arduino Pro Mini 328 - 5V Proximity Sensors: BittyBot 3-Way Object Sensor Battery: Venom 10C 2S 1250mAh 7.4V LiPO Line Sensors (Included w/ chassis kit): Phototransistor - QRD1114 More Stats below...  The first thing I did was construct the BittyBoty 3-Way Object Se...

21.2 FPS! I'm borrowing a ChipKIT Max32 from a friend. Hooked it up to the long running GameBoy Classic LCD project I've been working on and after some optimized code I hit 21.2 FPS! Best result yet. I'm used a simple java program to generate a version of my AVR C code in optimized Processing (Arduino-ese). I had to un-roll loops to the point of absurdity that's why I started using code generation... Java code is here . Up on my plate in the near future: IOIO Tinkering - I need to come up with a project worthy of android powers. 30 Days of Creativity - June 1-30 - I'll be doing this again for sure! Maple Tinkering - I think this board might be the next step for the GameBoy Project. I have to return the ChipKIT Max32...the thing can only toggle an I/O pin at 719 kHz (I can get something better at the same price point). And most importantly the KC Maker Faire: June 25-26 :

This is mostly just to get some pictures up. I'm just getting this posted so I can try and refocus on thesis...I should be so easily sidetracked... Any future developments will be posted in the forum first...I'll post here as facts become more concrete. The farthest I got with this setup was a man-in-the-middle setup (as shown below) where I could intercept the CPU's commands to the LCD passing them through the microcontroller and then to the LCD board. I had to move up to a ~11MHz crystal (not shown) on the microcontroller just to come close to allowing the signals to pass through unhindered. The best I managed was a slightly distorted picture...I'll need something faster to actually read the signals so I can reverse engineer them. I've also removed the GameBoy's oscillator so I could clock the GB at a slower speed. This did work but I haven't taken a ton of time to work on the coding side. The goal when I can work on it again is simply to replace th...

This is a dump from the forum...it's notes on an in progress GameBoy hack. I will refine it later. Forum thread is here . I'm trying to identify and spec out the LCD signals in the GB (classic). I'm looking to do away w/ the GBs original controller board while keeping the LCD board. Basically I want to plug the ribbon cable into my on PCB and output the necessary signals to drive the video myself. I'm just wandering if anyone has more info on LCD signals output by the z80 so I can emulate them to display stuff. So far I've mapped all the buttons, speaker, power LED, LCD negative power to the appropriate pins on the ribbon cable. What I have so far: Note: Pin 01 is the pin on the ribbon cable closest to the power switch (at the cables connector). Note: Pin LCDV1 is the pin closest to power switch on the LCDs vertical axis connector (beneath LCD). Note: Pin LCDH1 is the pin closest to power switch on the LCDs horizontal axis connector. Pin 01 GND Pin...

This is an update and rehosting of a senior design project completed in Spring 2008 at RIT . It is (to date) my favorite robotics project. Myself and two friends collaborated to create a remote controlled turret that was accessible from anywhere on the web. The project makes use of a 5 gallon air tank at ~80 psi to fire foam (Nerf) darts. One servo operates six rotating barrels which are mounted on two more servos that provide pan and tilt movement. There are two ultra bright LEDs providing light in dark conditions for a top mounted web-cam. An Arduino is used to control the turret, while communicating (via serial over USB) with a web server that hosts the custom web page and live video stream. A modified PC power supply was used to provide the power. Here's a video of the finished turret... Full System Test I was in charge of most of the hardware and electrical work, Mike programmed the Arduino (I usually work with other AVR stuff ) to take serial commands from a server...

This post is a retrospective look at the first robot I built solely for myself (back in 2008). I had only helped build one robot before this. It's clear I got a very late start into robotics. Although school did prepare me formally to dive right in, I wish I had been more focused on it when I was younger, I would have really flourished in college. This robot was designed mostly on a whim, but has turned out to be a nice solid prototype, and it is very useful for testing sensors and AVR code... The Parts List: Aluminum Chassis, Motor Mounts & Tire hubs - Machined while I was still at RIT when I had access to their machine shop. No original designs are available, I just went in and used what scrap I could find...I'd be embarrassed by providing the true measurements :). Stepper Motors - From Sparkfun ...I may replace these some day with cheaper gear motors so I can use these steppers in a CNC/Drill Press. EasyDriver Stepper Motor Driver - Also from Sparkfun...sim...

Time for the code... The software portion of this robot was fairly straight forward compared to the electrical and hardware designs. I had several previous robots and experiences to pull from when writing the code. As a result the code is very clean and well documented. There are two languages required to understand the code: JAVA and C ( AVR Libc to be precise). JAVA: I used JAVA to create a user interface which would take keyboard input and translate it into serial commands. The UI is very simple. It uses a KeyListener (which is added to all visible components of the UI) to pick up key strokes from the user. When a key is "typed" a string of characters is sent via GiovynetSerialPort1.3 to the XBee Module attached to the PC. The XBee acts a transparent serial cable with the XBee on the robot as the other end of the cable. Any serial data coming from the robot is displayed in the text area... I used Giovynet's serial port library for two reasons; first, Sun (JAVA)...

Well it seems that every attempt I make to reduce cost on this robot just comes back to bite me in the end. I think I've learned my lesson...buy new shit and don't try to cut corners. I'm referring to the motors and the motor controller... While investigations into the motor controller resulted in a good design (based on that of the Open Source Motor Controller ) the cost and time needed is prohibitive at least for the motors I'm going to use. So I've ended up purchasing two 9A motor controllers (one for each drive motor). They work very well for these motors (they are way bigger than necessary). One issue came up when I mounted these to the chassis though... Two of the controller's mounting holes are attached to OUT A on the PCB as you can see in the picture. So when I bolted the things to the bot and started using them, a full 15V was applied to the chassis. This burnt out two cheap sensors (fortunately I had enough replacements on hand) and it wouldn't l...

I did some scouting at local pawn shops for suitable power tools w/ strong motors over the last two days. I ended up finding 2 14.4V Craftsman drills (each of which came with 2 batteries and a charger) and a 14.4 V Black and Decker circular saw (w/ 1 battery). Grand Total $140...Doh! I shopped around with the intention of matching the two drill motors so that they would be balanced in torque/current/dimensions/etc. I made the assumption that being the same voltage and brand would be enough to get evenly matched motors. Unfortunately when I disassembled them later I found that the Larger (red) one had a motor much larger than the other (gray), and the transmission was very different... The circular saw has a motor similar to the larger drill. All three have different drive gears. So the plan at this point is to ditch the transmission from the larger motor and the gear box of the circular saw and find gearing for these two to make them drive motors. Next time I think I'll just bu...