Day 10: Thing 10 — Wheel Watchers for Hacked Tamaya Mouses.

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(Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/10/day-10-thing-10-wheel-watchers-for-hacked-tamaya-mouses/) My son aidan and I have been working on a pair of arduino based robots. Today I had him look at the boards from the check reader pile and reverse engineer the emitter detector pairs that tell the reader when the check is present. After poking around at the circuit board he… Read more »

Day 9: Thing 9 — My Sorry Bot Version 2

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(Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/09/day-9-thing-9-my-sorry-bot-version-2/) I have a bot I hacked together out of an overgrown sorry piece that I found. This year I plan to make it into a production maze solver. In order to do that I built a perfboard prototype to work out the placement and details.

Day 8: Thing 8 — Place Holder for Rotation Sensors

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(Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/08/day-8-thing-8-place-holder-for-rotation-sensors/ ) Today I made 2 new pieces of things but not the new thing that I had intended as todays thing today. So for now the the y axis that I built for a future drawing machine, and the limit switches that I added to the etcha sketch mechanism will have to… Read more »

Day 7: Thing 7: TA8080K Motor Board

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(Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/07/day-7-thing-7-ta8080k-motor-board/) I have long been annoyed with how the l293s require 3 pins per motor to drive them and traded a couple of on hand mega8s for a bag of these toshiba parts. They are 1 amp motor drivers and perfect for some of the things I am working on for thing a… Read more »

Day 6: Thing 6 — Motorized Etch-A-Sketch(r) mechanism

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(Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/06/day-6-thing-6-motorized-etch-a-sketchr-mechanism/) Several years ago I took apart an Etch-A-Sketch and took notes on the “complicated pully system” inside. have wanted to build one of these since then. With this  and several other projects in mind I bought a small pile of Tamaya pully sets. (this project ate most of 3 of them) This… Read more »

Day 5: Thing 5 — Frame for internal Combustion

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(Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/05/day-5-thing-5-frame-for-internal-combustion/) I have a painting that I did almost 10 years ago called internal combustion. It was done on blueprints fixed to foamcore. The piece is about 40″ in diameter and has been moved 8 times. It has clearly seen better days. I wanted to build a frame for it. As it is… Read more »

Day 4, Thing 4 Aduino (adaboot) Programmer.

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(Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/04/day-4-thing-4-aduino-adaboot-programmer/) I was using the programming half of a a bulky prototype that I have been working on to program one of the mice from Day 1 and I looked at the pile hanging precariously off of the coffe table and thought to myself. “I need to just build one of these. “… Read more »

Thing 3 (tiny45 emulation using the Arduino)

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(Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/03/thing-3-tiny45-emulation-using-the-arduino/) A while ago I started working on a flapping wing mechanism using voice coils taken our of hard drives. To drive them I built a set of boards based on the Atmel tiny45. After getting the basic motion down I wanted to use a light sensor to detect motion so that they… Read more »

Day 2 (IKEA inspired stackable box)

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(Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/02/day-2-ikea-inspired-stackable-box/) Today we only broke 1 tool. As preparation for moving out of my storage space I went to IKEA with my g/f and spent 100 that I didn’t really have. I got the idea that I could make them cheaper. I went to the hardware store and got an 8 foot section… Read more »