Amazing Arduino robot
http://letsmakerobots.com/node/112
I need to make this when i have enough skills… Awesome.
Don’t mind me…
…i’m just a testpost.
| Groep | Dag | Locatie | Tijd | Leeftijd |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 jaar klas | Woensdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 15.00-15.45 | (bijna) 5 |
| 5 jaar klas | Donderdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 16.00-16.45 | (bijna) 5 |
| 1e jaars | Maandag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 16.00-17.30 | 6-8, 8-10, 10-11 |
| 1e jaars | Dinsdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 16.00-17.30 | 6-9, 9-11 |
| 1e jaars | Woensdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 17.30-19.00 | 6-9, 9-11 |
| 1e jaars | Donderdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 16.00-17.30 | 6-9, 9-11 |
| 2e jaars | Dinsdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 17.30-19.00 | 7-9, 10-12 |
| 2e jaars | Woensdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 16.00-17.30 | 7-9, 10-12 |
| 2e jaars | Donderdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 17.30-19.00 | 7-9, 10-12 |
Of statisch:
| Groep | Dag | Locatie | Tijd | Leeftijd |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 jaar klas | Woensdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 15.00-15.45 | (bijna) 5 |
| 5 jaar klas | Donderdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 16.00-16.45 | (bijna) 5 |
| 1e jaars | Maandag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 16.00-17.30 | 6-8, 8-10, 10-11 |
| 1e jaars | Dinsdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 16.00-17.30 | 6-9, 9-11 |
| 1e jaars | Woensdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 17.30-19.00 | 6-9, 9-11 |
| 1e jaars | Donderdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 16.00-17.30 | 6-9, 9-11 |
| 2e jaars | Dinsdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 17.30-19.00 | 7-9, 10-12 |
| 2e jaars | Woensdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 16.00-17.30 | 7-9, 10-12 |
| 2e jaars | Donderdag | Glasbak, Almere-Stad | 17.30-19.00 | 7-9, 10-12 |
Helping a friend out with WordPress
So, one of my friends has just taken over a local theaterschool and wanted to overhaul the website completely.
Problem was, she didn’t know much about websites and my knowledge dates back to the previous century (literally literally). Enter WordPress. I made some simple WordPress sites before, but that was more like running an installer nad choosing a theme. She actually wanted, like, stuff. So i had a good excuse to dive into the world of WordPress.
To make a long story shorter, i eventually bought a premium theme from Themeforest.com called “Mingle” that would give us the freedom to create basically any layout we could ever need ourselves and installed a bunch of plugins that takes care of everything she needs.
Point is, it is actually really fun to do and with a little bit of effort almost anyone can build amazing things with WordPress. Even stuff like eCommerce and Facebook-like community functionality is suprisingly easy to implement.
Just keep in mind that you don’t delete the Admin user account and then click ‘yes’ without reading the confirmation text. I almost accidenly deleted all of the custommade pages we had designed… After which i immediately installed a website and database backup plugin.
The website in quesion:
www.theaterschoolalmere.nl/site
The elements are worth more than the whole sometimes.
Around christmas i ordered a cheap radio controlled ‘stuntcar’ for around 10 bucks. The description made it sound like a horrible thing and luckily it was. Blinking blue/red leds, a loud loop playing over a small speaker and hard to control since the front wheels tilted instead of turning.
So, after having played with it for about half an hour, scaring my baby niece and our cats, it had to face its inevitable faith. I always bought it with the intent to destroy it and the fact that it was such an extraordinary ugly toy from hell, made it so much easier.
I ended up with a lot of reusable parts: one rechargable batterypack, another 12 volt connector, two servo motors, four bicolor led lights, a little speaker, four wheels and some other parts. Initially i even had two servos controllable through radio remote, but after n00bishly circuit bending parts that i shoudn’t have connected (and some smoke and weird burning noises later) that stopped working.
So in the end, i have no idea what to do with all seperate parts, and the circuit bending which i looked forward to turned out to be a bit of a disappointment with this toy. But i did manage to get a lot of seperate electrical components and i will definitely try this experiment again soon! A small battery operated casio keyboard is high on my wishlist, but so is a midi shield for the Arduino.
This is the ugly bastard before i ripped it to pieces...
Arduino Codec Shield
Anton (http://www.woldhek.eu/anton) referred me to this link:
http://www.openmusiclabs.com/2011/08/arduino-audio-codec-shield/
An audio codec shield for the Arduino. Looks (sounds) awesome, might have to buy that one one day! Too bad i plundered my bank account last christmas, so for now it’ll have to wait for a bit 
Killzone 3 sound- and music award!
http://twitter.com/#!/gameinthecity/status/139799363198255104
We won an award for best sound design and music for Killzone 3 at the Dutch Game Awards!
Left to right: Joris de Man (composer), Lucas van Tol (sound), Anton Woldhek (sound). Not pictured above: Mario Lavin, former sound director. Photo by Roderick van der Steen.
Jury commentary (Dutch):
“Audio en zeker muziek spelen een enorme rol in de beleving van de speler. Soms pakt ze de hoofdrol, soms neemt ze genoegen met een plaats op de achterbank en soms grijpt ze haar kans en speelt ze een glansrol, precies op het moment dat het kan, zoals bij deze winnaar. De winnaar is een voorbeeld voor iedereen hoe audio en muziek je kunnen aangrijpen en midden in het spel plaatsen.”
First version of controllable Lemax train
It has been less than a month since i bought the Arduino and i’ve only been able to work with it about one afternoon per weekend, but i actually got my first real-world usable example on the road. Well, on the rails. It is still very buggy, but it’s doing something:
I can already control the speed of the train by hovering my hand over the breadboard. A LDR continously measures the light and the Arduino will then convert the value it receives to a speed value. The main problem at the moment is that it starts fine when you launch the patch, keeps running great (usually) and listens to the speed changes, but once it comes to a full stop it usually doesn’t restart until i give it a slight push.
I know that a motor requires more power to start than to keep running (5 to 6 times, something like that?), but then why does it start when i originally start the patch?
Since it seems to react differently every time i put it on the rails, i’m guessing it might have something to do with the connection between the rails and the road, which would mean it has nothing to do with either the code or the wires i connected. That would be a bummer since i don’t really know how to solve that.
Fritzing (Arduino app)
Yesterday i found out about a free piece of software called Fritzing, developed by an Interaction Design department of our German neighbours:
This application enables you to quickly make representations of your Arduino sketches, either literally a virtual version of how you hooked up stuff to your arduino (where you see all the pins, cables and devices) or in schematic form. Best thing about it is that you can also let it turn your prototype into a printed circuitboard or Arduino shield if you want to make it more permanent or want to mass-produce it.
I haven’t actually started using it, but i’m pretty sure it will come in handy in the near future.
Lemax train track hacking
So, after connecting the keypad yesterday, i decided it is time for me to start on a real hacking project. Last year we bought one of those Lemax Village trains and i decided to see if i could make the Arduino control it. I found out that the adaptor that Lemax uses to drive the train is a 4.5 specified one, which is good news because the Arduino outputs 5.0 volt. Close enough i thought, but i still measured the voltage the Lemax adaptor outputted and found out that it’s actually 5.08 volt. Excellent.
After opening up the controller-case of the Lemax train unit, i found a few components. The adaptor input, which had a black lead going straight to the rails (ground) and the red one going to a button. It was a simple on/off switch. The switch had its cable connected to a pot that was specified for 10 Ohns. That potmeter then had a blue wire going to the other ‘lane’ on the track. The train itself would make the connection that completes the circuit.
So i made some pictures and wrote down some information to make sure i would be able to hook it up back again and then disconnected the wires. I have one blue and one black wire going directly to the train-tracks and my Arduino running a sketch that outputs 5 volts. Since the potentiometer could at one extreme setting output a resistance of almost 0 Ohms, i figured that would be no problem.
But it doesn’t work yet. Not even a small protesting noise of a train trying to start. So i’m not sure what i’m doing wrong, except that i seem to be losing quite a bit of voltage between the Arduino and the tracks, i measure only about 3 volts on the train tracks. It could also be an ampere issue. There are probably a lot of oversights here, but i am still very new to electronic circuits and the Arduino, so it will probably take a while before i figure out why it doesn’t work.
EDIT:
So it is an ampere issue after all. My Arduino has a specified max ampere output of 40 mA at 5 volt, the train rails needs a lot more. I’m not sure how much exactly, but i suspect it to be within the 100 – 150 mA range. The solution therefore seems to be to buy one of those Motorshields, which can supply up to 2 ampere. Time for another order, since i also need a more serious breadboard (i have the mini now and it’s a tad on the small size).
About keypads
Still going strong on the Arduino experiments. Or, well, strong… still trying to make a way through all the available information and trying to wrap my head around all the different electronic components and which are least able to destroy the other ones when connected. Yesterday i tried connecting a keypad, much like this one:
The interesting thing about these things is that they have only seven connections (for twelve buttons). You are in fact not hooking up buttons, but rows and columns and then read them all out to determine where a row is making a connection with a column. The hardest part of doing this (since the code is available online) is determining which output of the keypad is connected to which row or column. Many of the tutorials online assume that you have a keypad similar to theirs and so just tell you what outpunt pin you need to connect to which input on your Arduino.
The solution can be found on the Arduino website:
http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/Keypad
In their commented code you can find what to connect to what:
byte rowPins[rows] = {5, 4, 3, 2}; //connect to the row pinouts of the keypad
byte colPins[cols] = {8, 7, 6}; //connect to the column pinouts of the keypad
In combination with the technical datasheet that should have been provided with your keypad when you bought it (mine is available here) you should be able to determine how to make it work.
In my case, only the button 5 worked, and not in a very predictable way either. It turns out that the connections between the keypads outputs and my cable pins aren’t very tight, so i have to bend them a little. After that, it worked fine, although i have a feeling i have to find a better solution for that in the future. “Please enter your password and push down all the pins” is too long to put in a sign. But at least it’s better than “Please enter your three-digit password. It is super secret. Make sure to only use the 5 button”.