February 2012
9 posts
Roving Robot
So I kind of got my sensors working. They’re still a little unstable, but they worked long enough for the robot to take a little spin around The Mill this afternoon. Then one of the wheels came off and I had to call it a day.
Again, I was mostly running at half the maximum speed. In this case, it wasn’t because of limited space, but because when I tried to go the maximum speed on the...
Fun with Spreadsheets (no really!)
This whole project is about geeking out, and it wouldn’t be geeking out without spreadsheets! Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t need much of an excuse to use Excel.
In this case, I’ve been diagramming my custom circuits. With dozens of wires crisscrossing between the arduino, my tiny breadboard, a custom control circuit, and at least 7 other external components, I needed to...
GO-BOT
Hey, it’s a robot, kinda!
My main goal of Stage 1 has been achieved: We’re rollin’. One of the secondary goals was to have a quick vehicle, and hOH BOY was that achieved! The video shows the GO-BOT running at half speed. I don’t know if I can test full speed in my house. I wouldn’t be able to catch it before it smashed into something.
So, I’ll have some fun...
Not Drowning but Waving
The video in the next post may not seem like much, but what it represents is huge (to me, right now).
It’s been over a week since my motor shield meltdown. I decided to go with a simpler approach and use the Qik 2s9v1 Dual Motor Controller from Pololu. It’s designed to make 2 small motors go forward and backward and, unlike the Adafruit motor shield, do nothing else. Regardless, there...
CRISITUNITY
Well it seems I’ve trashed my motor shield in an attempt to troubleshoot my recent issues. In hindsight, maybe it was a bad idea to try unsoldering a 16-pin integrated circuit that had been soldered on less-than-professionally in the first place.
I don’t know whether I can recover the shield at this point. I don’t know that I care. I’m tempted to chalk it up as a...
