Day12: Thing12 — Helmet Taillights

by on Thing A Day 2008

(Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/12/day12-thing12-helmet-taillights/)

One of our local dorkbots put an arduino in a bucket the other day and I got inspired to put one in my head bucket.

I lined the two largest holes in the back of the helmet with foil tape (for ducts) and then built two boards with leds and mounted in the area with my head. I glued a 4 pack of rechargable AA batteries on the top and plan to mount the 5000 mcd led in the front in the next day or so. While I am testing it the arduino run time board is taped to the outside but I plan to mount a really bare bones arduino under the battery when It is done.

Day 11: Thing 11 — led arrays

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(Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/11/day-11-thing-11-led-arrays/)

Today I got 2000 little leds in the mail.

They are really bright. So of course I had to play around with them. I made 2 8×8 arrays one is made of magnet wire with no supporting background. I will figure out if I am going to mount this on somehting later. In the mean time I built one on a perf board. Both took for EVER to make. The one on the perfboard is wired to a maxim 7219 led driver to be driven by an arduino.

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 came up with this diagram. Which we distilled into this circuit.

I was making a set of paper encoders to attach to the wheels but aidan thought it would be better just to use the holes in the gears After a trip to the hardware store for some epoxy putty to sheild the phototranister, I put two pair in each of the Tamaya Wall Following Mouse based robots and bench tested them with an arduino.


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/ )

limit switchesToday 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 do. The etch a sketch mechanism along with 3 of the other robots need rotation sensors. I plan to build them out of the ir emitter detector pairs that all of the check readers have.

Rotation Sensors

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/)

Etchy Sketchy.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 turned out to be a bit more complicated that I origionally thought. I wanted to use the check reader motor mechanism that I have a pile of them but mounting them turned out to be less than straight forward. once I got through that I had to repully and thread each axis 4 or for times. My first attempt at the pivot point was a small disaster as well. However we persevered and there it is.  Tomorrow my thing will probably be a motor driver board to use with this.

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/)

Seen Better DaysI 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 a radial engine like in an airplane I thought a cowling would be an appropriate shape. I dumpsterdove some pipe insulation and cut a circle in some foamcore. My head is still a little messed up from the contact cement but it is done.

Frame

Arduino (adaboot) Programmer.

by on Dorkbot

My Bulky PrototypeI was using the programming half of a a bulky prototype that I have been working on to program one of the mice from “Thing-a-day” Day 1 and I looked at the pile hanging precariously off of the coffee table and thought to myself.

“I need to just build one of these. “

The finished product
Modifying Sparkfun Board. to fit in the box the input side
flea assembly blinkin lights in place
test run Translucence done

So I did.

The programmer is based on the Auto-Reset Hack and the AdaBoot bootloader. The reset is pulled by putting a capacitor on the DTR line of the serial interface which is also the bootloader interface. Most people put the cap on the Arduino but I put it on the programmer (where it belongs). This programmer was built using the ftdi ft232rl breakout board sold by sparkfun. I had to trim it down to get it to fit in the pretty blue box i bought at Tap Plastics. The chip out of the box presents two of its 4 gpio (general pourpose i/o) pins to indicate when serial is being sent and recieved. I wired a pair of very bright leds that I had to them and then tried to pipe the light to the corners using some translucent plastic tubes and hot glue. It looks pretty cool!

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. “

The finished productModifying Sparkfun Board.to fit in the boxthe input sideflea assemblyblinkin lightsin placetest runTranslucencedone

So I did.

The programmer is based on the Auto-Reset Hack and the AdaBoot bootloader. The reset is pulled by putting a capacitor on the DTR line of the serial interface which is also the bootloader interface. Most people put the cap on the Arduino but I put it on the programmer (where it belongs). This programmer was built using the ftdi ft232rl breakout board sold by sparkfun. I had to trim it down to get it to fit in the pretty blue box i bought at Tap Plastics. The chip out of the box presents two of its 4 gpio (general pourpose i/o) pins to indicate when serial is being sent and recieved. I wired a pair of very bright leds that I had to them and then tried to pipe the light to the corners using some translucent plastic tubes and hot glue. It looks pretty cool!