Robot Dialogs

Time for another post not about robots... Most projects are on the back burner because I've been poking about with an Ubuntu Server, Drupal and CiviCRM for CCCKC . I decided to make some coasters as a gift a family member. I went to Michaels to pick up the wood circle blanks, and Hobby Lobby had 4 inch cork coasters. I used one coat of stain before using the method I've described here to do the knot designs. This coat keeps the Sharpie ink from bleeding too much. When the designs were done I used 2 more coats of the stain and glued the wood disks to the cork coasters. Pictures taken with my EVO and the Droid Tripod Mount (yes it works with the EVO too!). I'm still on the fence about the Gorilla Glue. Hopefully it holds...I'm not sure I used enough. I tested one of them overnight with a puddle of water on the stained surface and it seemed to be sufficiently water proof.

Another video made by an attendee. Better than the news spot if you ask me :)

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...

First: The Open Logic Sniffer is the best thing since sliced bread. Second: I finally have reliable recorded data from the GB CPU to the GB LCD. Okay so before making sense of the data here's what you need to know. I clocked the GameBoy CPU with my own micro-controller the resulting GameBoy CPU Frequency was 812 kHz. That's 24.63 times slower than normal (20 MHz), so all of the data collected needs to be time scaled appropriately. The data was collected on Pins 12-19 of the ribbon cable between the CPU board and the LCD board (See previous post for pin numbering and pin names, some of which are guessed). These pins correspond to inputs 0-7 on the logic analyzer respectively (see labels on image above if you're confused). Two of the data sets were sampled at 10MHz and one at 1MHz. The 1MHz set was only taken for timing of the Vblank (it isn't a high enough sample rate to be considered accurate for data analysis). I won't be drawing conclusions about the...

So I'll be participating in my first (Mini) Maker Faire next month. I'll have most of the projects from previous posts there with me on display. I don't know exactly where I'll be, probably get that email in the next few weeks. Should be some good projects out there. In the time between now and the fair I'll be working feverishly to finish my GameBoy project . The idea has picked up some new traffic in the previous post's comments and on the forums so I've got some new data and help in that respect. New data is below and I've ordered a logic analyzer so I can get even better info. 1 Frame of GB LCD Data More Data

Quick post of some old video of Spin Cycle ...just now got around to uploading it.

I've been tinkering about with making panoramic pictures lately and when I'm out and about my Droid is the only camera I have. But taking panorama quality pictures with it is pretty tough. So last night I whipped together a very simple tripod mount. It's pretty self explanatory...here's what you need: Wood, I used 3/8" pine from the scrap pile. Small screws Wood glue Drill and bits (1/4" for standard tripod screw) Saw (I prefer the small teeth of a hack saw for little stuff like this.) Paint I had some in progress pics but Windows ate them. Essentially the only part I measured accurately was the slot the droid slides into, other than that it was just eyeballed. Two small screws hold the upright pieces (wood glue also). I used some paint I had from a robot project. Tripod screw threads right into the wood. I spent nothing upfront on this project...I'd estimate cost around $1 of material and maybe 30 minutes time went into it. It fits quite snu...