Robot Dialogs

The Maker Faire has come and gone and was a pretty big success. We had a news crew in the morning and then a whole slew of people showed up. I had the RC Nerf Turret and other robots on display. It was a long day with a lot of interested people and a ton of kids. The turret got most of the face time, even got on the news and a mention on the Make Magazine blog . There's a bunch of pictures here and here . I bought a LoL Sheild and Diavolino and got it up and running this week. I'm pausing progress on the Gameboy project so I can fix and upgrade the software in the turret before I take it into the office. Note to anyone reading: We are going to have another Maker Faire next year. We don't know if it will be mini or full sized. It all depends on how many exhibitors we get...but... WE NEED MORE ARTISTS . A Maker Faire shouldn't be confused with science fairs (which this one was...far too often for our liking). So carpenters, welders, sculptors, photographers, n...

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...