News @ Suspect Devices

Tag: Arduino

  • Day 21: Thing 21 — Fred 644 (an attempt to port Arduino to another processor)

    (Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/21/day-21-thing-21-fred-644-an-attempt-to-port-arduino-to-another-processor/ )

    I wound up on the bus for much of the day so I took my laptop and ported the arduino “Core” to atmel’s Mega644 which has 4 times the memory of the new arduino as well as almost twice the number of pins avaliable. When I got to the bootloader I failed. This was a bit ambitious so I suppose I shouldnt be suprised. I will do another thing and post it here if I don’t get the bootloader working by the end of the month.

  • Day 20: Thing 20: Arduino on a (simm) Stick

    (Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/20/day-20-thing-20-arduino-on-a-simm-stick/)

    In response to a conversation I had with “lady ada” in which she asked me “what is an arduino?” I have been pushing the question “What isnt?”. I have a bunch of stuff that I have built around the simstick platform which I wanted to reclaim so I put a 168 on a dt107 (dontronics) board and adjusted the IDE to see it. (this is in preparation for bigger and better mods)

  • Day 17: Thing 17: Soldering Iron Timer Redux

    (Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/17/day-17-thing-17-soldering-iron-timer-redux/)

    Today I really made Space and time (The appartment was getting a bit difficult to get around in).

    So this is a make up entry.

    After oxydizing the first tip on my new weller I decided it was time to build a new soldering iron timer (and one for my glue gun as well). This is a bench junk project. It is mostly from scores at Wackey Willies (RIP 2007). I had a 4 channel Solid State Relay board with 3 channels populated and a small pile of outlets (I have plans for most of them :). The transformer for the digital power supply is from an old clock radio. At present the buttons turn on the Soldering Iron and Hot Glue Gun and it stays on for about 10 minutes (The arduino doesnt support the RTC crystal that all of the x8 family has attached to Timer 2).

    The big button on the right turns everything off. There is a front pannel which I will program to give some status (the leds on the board are two burried to really use for on off status at a glance). Also there is a set of buttons on the panel (currently unwired) to allow for timing adjustment and other future planned functions.

    I would also plan use this to adjust the temperature on the iron.

  • Day 16: Thing 16: Headbucket Headlights (more things that go blink in the night)

    (Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/16/day-16-thing-16-headbucket-headlights-more-things-that-go-blink-in-the-night/)
    I went to the hardware store to replace the tip on my new Weller soldering iron after discovering that Radio Shack did not have a suitable one. At radio shack I picked up two 1100 mcd leds. On the way back I went to the art supply store to see if they had copper small enough to work with the led arrays. They told me about a bead supply store downtown so I went I bought some silver coated copper wire and made anouther led pannel. (it looks like I have enough resin to make 4).

    Then I went to putting the leds on the front of my helmet. If they arent too police blue, I am finally legal.


  • Day 14: Thing 14: Remote Arduino Programmer.

    (Archive of : http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/14/day-14-thing-14-remote-arduino-programmer-failed/)

    I have been so happy with the programmer that I have been using that I wanted to add this capability to the xbee rf modules that I built a few months ago. I wired dio0 to both send and recieve boards and put the cap on the output side and wired up a reset.

    Then I figured out that the data passing would require updating the flash on both boards and that that required a windows based PC. (LARGE PILE OF EXPLICITIVES REMOVED HERE) I moved the passthrough to the rts/cts pairs which the old firmware is supposed to support met NOOOOO!

    If I built it but it doesn’t work yet did I make a thing?

    UPDATE: 25feb08 I found an old ob900 (I have like 15 old omnibooks in various states of running) that was running W2k and upgraded the firmware on both radios. I will test them out after I have had some sleep.

  • Day12: Thing12 — Helmet Taillights

    (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

    (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.

    (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 7: Thing 7: TA8080K Motor Board

    (Archive of: http://www.thing-a-day2.com/2008/02/07/day-7-thing-7-ta8080k-motor-board/)

    TA8080K

    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 day.

    Board

  • Day 4, Thing 4 Aduino (adaboot) Programmer.

    (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!