Warranty-Voider

3D Printing

2011-05-24T21:24:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a project involving numerous small PCBs being deployed in high-traffic industrial areas. I really need enclosures for these devices that can be robust enough to handle some bumps and bruises. Unfortunately, custom enclosures are very Expensive, so I talked my Boss into buying a Thing-O-Matic from Makerbot.com !! YAY!This is a 3D printer. Basically that means it has a CNC platform that moves around while molten plastic is extruded in a pre-defined path. Kind of like at the beach when you dripping wet sand from your fist to make a tower. This technique allows you to make a drawing in some free modeling software like Google's Sketchup and then print the actual object out in real life. In the image above, the printer appears to have just finished printing out a baby rabbit. How cute.

Anywho.

I received the printer a few weeks ago and have been working furiously at assembling the thing, learning how it works, and making some test objects. Here's a video of the Printer cranking out some custom enclosures.

When I say "Cranking out", I really mean "piddling along at a snail's pace," because that's what these 3D printers do. Fortunately, however, there's a conveyor belt on the printer, so you can just set it to print 50 units and then walk away for a couple of hours. When you come back, you'll have a neat little pile of them sitting in front of the printer.

The tech is similar to stereolithography, which is an incredibly expensive process involving a vat of photoactive chemicals and lasers and stuff. The Thing-O-Matic is only about $1300, though, plus there's this really cool community called Thingiverse where you can download designs for all kinds of stuff you might want to make, like the Gothic Cathedral Playset.

Unfortunately, after a couple of weeks of printing, one of the stepper drivers blew out. This appears to be a very un-common problem, but Makerbot was kind enough to replace the device for me, and I should be back up and running any time now.

Here's my Thingiverse page:

http://www.thingiverse.com/Tunell

You can see the auger I designed and printed for pushing cat food through a pipe.

BRICKSHIELD EXTRAVAGANZA!!!!

2011-05-24T20:54:00.000-07:00

So we're calling it the BrickShield now. Don't want to get an angry phone call from the lawyers at Lego, or even worse, some kind of cease and desist.

But it's done! I actually got the PCB back from batchPCB a while back, but have been a little too busy to post about it. Here it is, Start slobbering.

Power select jumpers on the right

You can see it has the Mindsensors NXT port I posted about earlier. This is connected to the TWI pins for "easy" communication with standard NXT devices.

Yellow wire coming from the V+ line

One of the big things I wanted was MORE OUTPUTS, so now we've got simultaneously:

-4 Amplified Digital outs (total of 4 pins on left)

-4 Amplified Motor Outs (total of 8 amplified pins on right)

-4 Servo Ports (below the NXT port)

-Digital lines 0 and 1 available for communication with PC or Radio

-Header for BlueSmirf at top

-Passthrough headers for mounting another shield on top

-Integrated V+ port for higher voltage in drivers

-5V/V+ selection for each via jumper (Servos, Digitals, Motors)

-Optional ICSP pass through for powering additional boards with the 5V line

-Offset header slot on the digital side to allow use with standard perf-board

-Extra 5V an 0V lines by the analog inputs for easy sensor powering

Anybody recognize the LED board on the right?

Below you can see what it looks like with the Libelium Xbee Shield (which I use frequently for RC Projects). If you so choose, you can forget the communication shield on top and just control the Arduino and Brickshield straight from your PC using Arduino Animator.

So I'll be sending these off to a couple of distributors to see if they're interested in selling them. Probably will start with Sparkfun, Makershed or Mindsensors and see if they are interested.

If you'd like to see this as a product you can buy, leave a comment.

New Cabinets = New Workshop

2011-05-24T18:18:00.001-07:00

So we're having my friend Josh build custom cabinets for us. All we've got left is the doors to wait for. As soon as he's done, we'll be putting in wood floors, but so far I think things are looking good.

Anywaaaaay.

The real point here is that we had a bunch of old ugly cabinets waiting to be thrown out. But I decided to do what any self-respecting maker would do:

GARAGE WORKSHOP UPGRADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LegoShield Fabrication

2011-02-28T14:22:00.001-08:00

Woo-Hoo!

I sent off the newest version of the LegoShield PCB to BatchPCB this weekend, so We'll be getting the first few pieces back in a couple of weeks. At that point, I'll assemble them and see if any distributors are interested in taking part.

I decided to use the official NXT RJ12 (modified phone jack) for the NXT connections, so now you can either plug in a mindsensors multiplexer or plug the device in directly to the shield.

As before, the shield is compatible with the Xbee shield for double-stacking.

Also, there's a blueSMIRF port now, so you can use sparkfun's bluetooth module instead of xbee if you so choose...

Should be interesting!

LegoShield Updates

2011-02-07T11:36:00.000-08:00

Sean and I are currently working on improving our Lego Compatible Shield.

Here's an early look at the PCB.

This version will sport:

Voltage jumpers rather than switches. I noticed the switches I used on the last version were way underrrated.
Can type Capacitor for battery stabilization
NXT Header for connecting to the mindSensors NXT host cable. This will make it easy for anyone to connect their arduino to the NXT Sensors.
Reset Button Brought to top
5V and 0V Rails next to the Analog In bank
BlueSmirf Header for Bluetooth Connectivity (not shown in photo)
Pulldown Resistor on the Enable Line
VRaw will be connected to external power (don't reverse the leads, folks!)
adjustments to the Lego Hole Sizes

Hopefully we'll be ready to send them off for fabrication soon!

Meccano is Great

2011-01-25T09:01:00.000-08:00

Meccano/Erector is a great prototyping and one-off construction tool.

Here's a device sitting on my desk that I use almost every day.

The mount is resizeable so that any ipod case can slide in and out and be held in place only by friction. This allows me to quickly insert/remove the Ipod before I head home from work.

The back also has a vertical slider so that the viewing angle can be changed.

I enjoy the look of the newer, more industrial looking meccano pieces.

Lego RC with Xbee

2010-02-24T11:59:00.000-08:00

I've had a conundrum for a while. How to control my RC projects with a ready-made, swappable controller and power board. Many of my recent projects are Lego based, but some are not. My objectives were:

CONTROLLER:

Dual Analog

Dials

Buttons

Toggle

Extra outputs to allow expansion (serial to LCD screen)

Vibration

9V Powered

MOTOR SHIELD:

More outputs than other motor shields

Use XBee devices.

No tunneling

Hot swappable without reconfiguration

Make as an Arduino shield (to avoid reprogramming)

Servo Outputs

PWM (analog motor) outputs

Digital Outputs

Outputs should be amplified

Integrated trimpots and switches for easy configuration

Technics (Lego) hole compatibility

I set off designing the controller board first. I ordered some components from Sparkfun and got the rest from my local electronics store (Elliot Electronics for those of you in Tucson). Some of the components are from DigiKey as well

I based this design on the atmega 328 surface mount board. I built it from the ground up as a non-shield design, but it's basically an arduino without the USB interface.

Normally I use BatchPCB available through Sparkfun.com to make my PCBs, but this time I tried PCB-Pool. That's why the board looks different.

The output from this board (over XBee) will always be the same. Short packets sent out in API mode to whatever remote device is attached to the other Xbee unit. For convenience sake, I used the Xbee API mode library located here : http://code.google.com/p/xbee-arduino/

Thanks Andrew!!!!

After I got the code working all Peachy-like. I started on the other end of the project. The motor shield

I figured by using some clever programming, i could leverage the existing servo and PWM outputs into a ton more. Using a shift register and some switch logic, I expanded the outputs enough to get:

4 PWM Motor Ports

4 Digital Output Ports

4 Servo Ports

TX and RX unaffected on pins 0 and 1

an enable port (pin 13) to avoid startup jittering

So far I haven't had a chance to mount it into an actual project, but I've got a couple projects at the house waiting to be powered up. As you can see in the video, though. The outputs work great, and using the Power Functions Kit and some Servo brackets (mindsensors.com). I can get more devices attached than by using NXT!

FreePoint SMT Video

2009-11-08T10:51:00.000-08:00

I took a video of the surface mounting of a Freepoint Micro board. It's amazing how fast I work...

Several of the pads are for unnecessary components, which is why they're not filled in.

Rocket Chute Deployment

2009-08-02T16:35:00.001-07:00

I have a friend who does model rockets as a hobby. He was looking at getting an off-the-shelf deployment module for adding a parachute to his project. I mentioned that we could do it with an arduino and some sensors.
I had him check digikey.com for a cheap altimeter, and we found one for $7, but the lead time was too long. He's moving pretty soon, so we needed an immediate solution. I decided that we could use an accelerometer, and when it reads 0-Gs on the vertical axis, we'd know it was free-falling. (or had ended acceleration)

We set up a timer that would deploy the parachute a given time after the acceleration ends.

The red and blue wires arm the device. These get twisted together after you get the rocket set up. so it won't go off unexpectedly. The device also monitors the nichrome ignition wires. If one of the wires gets broken, you can tell from the LED indicators on the bottom.

Here's the underside of the board. I drew it up in EAGLE and etched it in the shop at work. You can see it's a little on the hablich side, needs a dose of alcohol and it could also use a small redesign. I noticed after I got the software running that a couple of the outputs were configured wrong in the hardware. If I ever make a V2.0, it'll be a little more attractive.

Hopefully we'll be able to test it out next week after I get back from Mexico.

Agitation

2009-05-29T19:20:00.000-07:00

I've been etching numerous PCBs at work for various little projects, and one of the annoying parts of etching is the actual etch process. The copper clad board is immersed in Ferrocloric acid in order to etch away the exposed portions of the board. During the etch, the liquid should be agitated in order to achieve maximum saturation. I got tired of jiggling the tupperware around for 20 minutes, so I built an agitator!

You can see that this project uses the make controller as well as an erector set. I used a HiTec 645MG servo for the agitation.

Here's the video. Rated PG-13 for intense battle sequences and some scary images:

I didn't have anything to etch at the moment, so the video shows the tub with Mountain Dew in it instead. Maybe that would be good for etching designs in teeth...

As you can see, the servo oscillates above and below the horizontal. This ensures that the acid flows both ways.

I made a circuit board for a device we're calling FreePoint. This is the prototype design that's made to plug in as an arduino shield. The final version will be standalone.

Dr. Claw First Run

2009-01-26T22:50:00.000-08:00

Well, I got the claw hooked up to my software. Here's the video. I also uploaded it onto youtube, where the quality really sucks, btw.

Now I've got to write some extra-custom software that will allow me to navigate to coordinates and manipulate objects. I also plan to integrate the Wii remote after that using the C# library. Shouldn't be too tough.

You'll notice that the shoulder joint isn't running yet. I'll be adding a geared stepper motor to the base (which already has the gears integrated as shown in a previous blog). I'll also need to make the shoulder a bit sturdier and add a servo reverser before that joint works.

The music is a new song I'm working on with Fuzil.

Dr. Claw: Hand of Destruction

2009-01-24T22:56:00.001-08:00

I wanted to build something really cool using purely Meccano/Erector components. It's tough to integrate electronics with Meccano, but i wanted to get something robotic. I wanted to make sure also that it was only Meccano. I also wanted it to look really good. Not just stuck together with bubble gum and duct tape. So here's what you get:

... I mean even better looking than this...

So here's what I made:

It's a robotic arm. I modeled it off an industrial robotic arm with 5 degrees of motion. It has base rotation, shoulder, elbow, and wrist rotate as well as wrist tilt. Also has a sweet lookin' claw attached to the end.

Here's a shot of the claw in full vertical extension. You can see that I'm using dual servos at each joint. This will allow me to have plenty of strength to move the (heavy) metal Meccano pieces as well as whatever's in the claw at the time.

Here's a horizontal extension:

Build Details:
The above picture is the rotational base. It is purely Meccano, and rotates quite well. I set it up so that I'll be able to drive it with a stepper motor later on via the gear on the left. The stepper will allow me to drive it to a specific angle for precise movement. I really had to put on my thinking cap to come up with the design above.
Here's the stepper I'll be using:

In order to actuate the arm, I had to attach the servo horns somehow. I made servo links from some steel wire i picked up at ACE. Holy crap that stuff was hard to bend. And I wore out a pair of Diagonal Cutters too. My hand is going to be sore tomorrow.

Getting the wire to couple with the erector set was a challenge too. but i found a way to wrap the wire into some stock meccano "ring terminals." I had to crimp the terminals down and wrap the wire around the post for stability, but it turned out great. I also used some hefty HS-645MG metal gear servos from Hi-Tec. These servos have phenomenal torque.

Probably the most difficult part in designing the arm was figuring out how I'd get the wrist to actuate. The shoulder and elbow were tough, but nothing comparted to the wrist. I must have built 10 different claw configurations, and each one wouldn't work for a different reason. Some weren't stable enough, some couldn't hook up to the servos, some were too heavy, too weak, etc. Finally I came up with the design you see here. I think it's perfect, and it balances well with the rear end of the wrist.

You can see that I used the stock Meccano rubber pads for gripping on the claw.

It's important when working with hobby servos, not to stress the servo horn radially. This can damage the axle of the servo, particularly with the wimpy HS-325HB servos I would be using at the wrist. These servos have "karbonite" inner gears. These gears are tougher than plastic, but don't have the durablilty to withstand much abuse. They're kind of like a nylon material. I decided I'd mount the wrist tilt using dual servos facing inward toward the wrist. This would ensure that there was only a low radial load.

Adding the wrist rotation was even more difficult. I wanted to get at least 520 degrees of rotation for manipulating small objects, but servos only have about 190 degrees at most. I used some stock Meccano gearing and built a servo bracket to mount a drive gear vertically: The smaller gear at the bottom is on a shaft that the claw is bracketed to, making the shaft and claw rotate perfectly. (Sounds easy when it's right in front of you, but this took days to figure out)

Below a shot of the pinchers i tried to use. (Grabber attempt #7). I used Shapelock, which is a great product for prototyping. Unfortunately they turned out to be too flexible for my liking. Plus they went against my goal of a pure meccano build.

Shapelock is a low temperature thermoplastic that can be reheated and reshaped endlessly. It's like modeling clay, but better! Given the correct thickness, they would have been less flexible, but I didn't want to worry about the weight etc.

I stayed pretty true to my goal of using only erector set components, in fact, the only non-meccano parts in my build were:

Linkage Rods.

Servos

Home-made Servo Brackets

6 brass collars

Plexiglass Base (seen in indoor shots above)

make controller

So there it is: DR CLAW. A pure meccano build that's sturdy, functional, and fairly attractive.

Feast your eyes.

I also built an external power supply for driving all these crazy servos. The next step will be to hook this sucker up to my make controller and write the software to control it. Fortunately, thought, i think that will be the easy part. I'll try to take some videos during testing.

Electronics and Meccano (Erector)

2009-01-18T21:51:00.000-08:00

Since the dawn of time, mankind has been searching. Searching for the answer to a question that has plaigued us all these years. The burning question that has tormented us since before history will now be answered. The time for answers has come.

How do i get my electronics junk to fit with my erector set???

I've had a love affair with the worlf of Meccano(Erector) for several years now, but the festering issue that has plaigued our relationship is the fact that NO electronics items are designed to jive with the 1/2" hole spacing scheme that meccano is known for.

For rapid prototyping, Meccano just can't be beat. You can build virtually anything with all the little premade mechanical parts, brackets, gears, and hardware included in the sets. I love building the models that come with the kits, but it is always more satisfying to build something yourself. From scratch. And why would you build anything unless it moved on its own. This necessitates servos, sensors, microcontrollers, motors etc. The problem is that none of these devices is hole-compatible with Meccano. The other problem is that there are relatively few places where you can find brackets for these devices, and NOBODY makes these brackets for Meccano. After scouring the internet for solutions, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

The biggest culprit in the war for hole-compatibility is the dreaded servomechanism. Hobby servos are designed with an unusual spacing that makes them practically unusable with your meccano set. Therefore I decided that I would make my own using plexiglass and my router.

(I also have a relationship with that particular tool.) You can see the results below

By creating my own bracket, i was able to get perfect hole compatibility with the servo, and thereby mount it on my project.

Next step: Arduino and Make Controller.

Most microcontroller kits have exposed circuitry on the bottom, which can be risky. So the microcontroller bracket serves a dual purpose. First providing necessary shielding from touching metal, and second, providing slick mounting holes.

Arduino and Lithium Backpack from http://www.liquidware.com/.

Now to try out the Servos on this beast:

You can see that by using a combination of bracketry and meccano spacers, i've got a sweet little setup here. The servos fit in perfectly and leave the drive arms exposed at just the right position.

But just what is this that I'm attaching the servos to?

Stay tuned.

Optical Interruptor

2008-12-10T12:19:00.000-08:00

Heres an example of how to make an optical interruptor for detecting position. This example uses a simple superbright LED and a light sensor. A black flag passes between these and the light change is detected by the microcontroller.

This is a component of the Harness Roller which was designed using C# and make controller for interfacing.

Disruptor Donor

2008-11-10T18:53:00.000-08:00

So for all of you who know about the bike project, here's the donor bike. I'm totally stoked.
We got a restored 1977 Harley Shovelhead lowrider.
I am stoked!!!

Finalized RC Car Photos

2008-10-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is, I've got everything assembled and thought I'd throw up some photos of the finished product!

I have to make some adjustments to the guns still, but outside of that, it's all done. I'd still like to add a camera and laser, but the camera is a bit expensive, so I think the project will be shelved for awhile until some extra cash falls from the sky.

EV Rally

2008-09-14T19:50:00.000-07:00

I wen't to the Electric Vehicle rally in Palo Alto, CA. I had a good time and got some important questions answered. Here are some photos:

Portal

2008-09-02T19:25:00.001-07:00

So I just beat Portal for the first time. I have to say that all the hype was well deserved. This is the best game i've played since mario galaxy. I just wish it could have been a bit longer...

I think the best part of the game was the constant commentary/narration from the robot.
Great game, pick it up.

Music Updates

2008-08-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

Made some updates to some of my tunes a few days ago, also added some new ones. I put the dates next to them.

My friend Jorge did the guitars on most of these songs. He plays drums for FUZIL.
Their band site is at:
http://www.myspace.com/fuzilguaymas

Music!

2008-08-13T11:01:00.001-07:00

I added a music player to the blog!

These songs are still in progress, but I've put a lot of work into them, so tell me what you think.

You can listen to them at the right by pushing the play button. They come up in a floating media player.

Enjoy!

Wii Custom Sensor Bar

2008-08-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

I have a little larger room now and was noticing that the Wii remotes werent really responding well on the sides. I decided I needed a higher powered sensor bar.

The sensor bar has IR LEDs inside of it. The wii knows the pointer location and roll by tracking these two LED points with an IR filtered camera inside the wii-remote.

Normal LEDs have a viewing angle of about 45 degress, meaing you can be right in front of them or up to 23 degress to the direct left or right. Outside of that range, the wii pointer will start to glitch. This is what I wanted to get rid of. I also wanted higher power so I could stand farther away. So the normal viewing angle is like this

And I wanted a wider viewing angle like this

So I decided to build my new sensor bar with multiple LEDs on each side, pointing out in different directions, thereby expanding the viewing angle of the wii remote camera.

Here's the simple schematic. I used a 5V wall adapter, but soon I'll be hooking it up so it will turn on wirelessly with the Wii. That step is pretty low on the priority list right now, though.

I used some little hobby PLCs from Radio Shack and colored them black with a marker. Then I used 2 sided mounting tape to attach them to the projector screen case. I wanted them at the top of the screen because I've noticed I get wrist cramps with them at the bottom.

I left the LEDs sticking out about 1/2" from the board, this way I could point them around to find the optimized angles for all the play positions in the room.

Finished Product!

New Home Theater Shelf

2008-08-01T08:49:00.000-07:00

So my friend Josh is a carpentry genius. He used to have a business doing cabinetry so I talked him into building an entertainment shelf for my home theater. I drew it up in google SketchUp. This is what I wanted:

I wanted to have my electronics next to the projector itself, so I could slide my DVD player and other stuff into the shelves.

He brought it by last night, and Here's how it looks all hooked up.

I also put a light underneath it for Vicki to do her cross-stitching without having to turn the overhead light on. You can also see that I put the subwoofer on top.
So here's the finished product:
It looks friggin awesome. I used wire anchors this time and routed the wires around the moulding so they wouldn't stick out or run across the floor.

This time I didn't actually have that many wires to route across the floor though, because now that the projector is next to the electronics, only the front 3 speakers needed longer wiring.

In fact, Josh made little shelves for the speakers as well. He even made a new shelf for my center speaker.

Tape Timer

2008-06-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned before, we built a special harness assembly board to teach new operators how to apply spiral tape to a harness. We wanted to be able to time them as well so we could see improvement etc.
They wanted a timer that would be activated when the operator picks up the tape, and deactivated when the operator puts it back.
So I used a make controller, and a sparkfun LCD screen to do the job. I built some firmware that would do the timing. I connected a light sensor so that when light was detected in the holder, the timer would start, and then stop when it went dark. See it in action below!

Live Floor

2008-06-04T16:35:00.000-07:00

So recently I had an idea about monitoring production in our plant using Xbee modules to collect data from the assembly boards. For example, i wanted to be able to know if an operator was at their station at any given time, also how long it takes to build each harness, total downtime of the board, how many pieces built, etc.

So my changito and I designed and built some Xbee boards. We used the xbee board from makingthings as a jumping off point, and then drew up some plans for what you see here:

thing of beauty

Then we added the Xbee module

Here is the make controller with the receiver Xbee in place, I may look into another option for receiving the packets, possibly one of the USB xbee adapters from Sparkfun, but for now, this works.

Anywho. We then mounted it onto a prototype Assembly board that we built.

It has the 2 holders for the harness connectors. So the way it works is that when the operator is there, the movement is picked up and also as each piece is approved, a message is sent back to the receiver that talks to the PC and database.

I wrote some software that would juggle the information around a bit and keep track of things. I'll write some more about that next time.

Spoiler Alert! Barbie makes a special guest appearance...

Tape Timer

2008-06-04T16:18:00.001-07:00

We're working on an assembly board for training operators on how to assemble harnesses. They wanted me to build a cheap timer that would output the time that a roll of tape spent away from its dock. In other words, time how long it took for the operator to use the tape. So i took some time and built this dock with an integrated sensor and indicator LED. I hooked er up to a make controller and set up the serial port to send out the time.

You can see the indicator LED goes on when the tape is removed

Right now I've got a serial cable running out from the controller that goes to the computer (which shows the time). Next week I'll be getting a little LCD screen that will show the time.
Here is the serial signal coming out of hyperterminal:

So, next i'll add this little gem here, when i get it, and we'll be rolling:

It was a pretty quick project, a little embedded light activated timer, but they wanted quick and cheap, and when we sent it of to get it quoted, the quote came back as $900 US dollars, but mine cost less than 300. Kind of a shame to use such a powerful board for such a dinky little project, it could do so much more, but maybe they'll ask for more next, who knows.

AirSoft Turrets

2008-05-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

We went on a trip up to Tucson this weekend, and I took the opportunity to pick up some goodies. I grabbed a couple of electric airsoft guns and a couple thousand pellets from Wal-Mart, and an erector set from Target. The total set me back probably about $60 bucks, but it's in the name of science, right? That's what I told my wife.
I liked this gun because it was fully automatic, and I could see the parts from the outside, this would allow me to disassemble and reassemble it far more easily. After I got home from Walmarticus, it became immediately apparent that I would need to play with this toy a bit before I took it apart. It was also apparent that i would need to shoot someone in order to determine how bad it actually hurt (how bad the gun hurt). Much like when, as kids, I asked my brother to shoot me point blank with a slingshot to find out how much THAT would hurt.
I briefly contemplated shooting my 2 year old son, but obviously he would not be able to give me a good pain scale reaction, and I'd be needing something a little more accurate than just straight crying and screaming. I then considered shooting my wife, but I thought better of that, as I would probably end up paying for it in ways I didn't want to.
I'd have to shoot myself.
I sat down and aimed for the fleshy part of the calf where I thought it would hurt the least, and
found that it was indeed quite painful, painful enough to leave a welt. Yessssssss..
I would definately need to share this experience with someone soon.
I stowed the toy guns in the back trunk where nosy border inspectors would be unlikely to find them and we headed back home to Mexico.

When assembly time came, I first grabbed the parts from the erector set and assembled a platform. I attached the platform to a servo motor so it would move up and down, this would allow me to point the guns up at someone. Perhaps into a poorly protected, yet keenly sensitive area.
I attached the servo to my microcontroller and found that i could control the vertical movement quite nicely using the right thumbstick.
Next I used a screwdriver to carefully open the guns up and spray their spring loaded contents into my face. I followed this excellent tutorial at InventGeek which amazingly uses the same model airgun I picked up myself.
http://www.inventgeek.com/Projects/Airsoft_Turret_v2/overview.aspx
I cut off the non-essential plastic areas where there was no gearing connected so as to leave only the firing mechanism and the barrel and the feed chamber attached.

Using the green diagonal brackets in the erector set as well as a dremel, I to cut holes and attached the remaining gun mechanism to the platform, being sure to leave the cool looking sights on for effect. Unfortunately Target doesn't sell laser pens anymore, and I forgot to pick one up at Wal-Marche, so I'll have to leave that off until I find one here in el campo. Which is maybe never

I hooked 'er up to the microcontroller directly for an initial test, and found that the servo could easily lift the weight of the guns, especially since the batteries were no longer part of the gun itself and would now be powered from the RC battery itself. So the next step will be to reassemble everything and see how it works, maybe shoot some pidgeons, maybe shoot my boss. Maybe 'accidentally' shoot my wife.

Learn to build a website

2008-04-26T20:06:00.000-07:00

I thought this rap was hi-larious

I challenge you, Sean

2008-04-22T22:04:00.000-07:00

Happy Microcontroller Birthday!

2008-04-19T16:37:00.000-07:00

This year for my birthday I asked for a make controller to carry out my dastardly little science experiments with.

A microcontroller is basically a tiny computer that you hook up to motors and sensors and stuff.

Anyway, this microcontroller can be fit with wireless modules called Xbees. That means you can hook sensors, switches, buttons, etcetera up to the wireless module, and have your movements get sent back to the controller so it takes action.

I decided that my first project would be hooking up my new microcontroller up to my RC car. That would allow me to get... not only normal car movements... but also I could hook up some James Bond type gadgets to the car and control them too.

I started off by "repurposing" an old USB wavebird joypad for my PC. I opened it up and tapped into all the button and control stick signals and fed them in to the Xbee module as shown below

So now all of my button presses get sent back to the microcontroller which is mounted on the car. The sweet thing about the Xbees is that they have a 1 mile range. So I can control the car from way far away.

The next step was to attach the microcontroller to the car and then program it. I had to write a program in C++ that would tell the car what to do for each button I pressed, whether it is to listen to a sensor, make the wheels go, turn lights on, etc. The program is basically the most important part, because it determines how your car will act, if it will be autonomous, or respond to user stimulus, etc.

So I have one Xbee hooked up to my new joypad, and also one hooked onto the microcontroller on the car, so the car will hear what my joypad is doing and take action.

I hooked up the steering and drive wheels to the servo outputs on the microcontroller (above right).

I then made some headlights out of superbright LEDs and mounted them like fog lights. I also decided that any self-respecting RC car needed a horn so that you could annoy people. Naturally I would have to add one.

So then I wrote my program up and after a few attempts, got the car to start responding. So now I've got to decide what else I'll put on the car. I think i'll put a little light sensor on and maybe some running lights that will turn on when it gets dark.

I'll probably also make a little airsoft cannon that i can aim with servos and hook that up too.
A wireless camera might be a nice addition.

Any other ideas?

I guess that engineering degree was good for something after all..

Assistant

2008-04-13T21:30:00.001-07:00

So i guess i didn't make it clear that this new assistant is NOT the original assistant I had. The first one was a spaz, and this guy is actually quite good.

Photo of Igor

2008-04-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

Here's my new Changito.

Harness Machine Update

2008-03-28T11:49:00.001-07:00

While we were working on the harness machine we found that the darn machine was acting up on the lengths. Obviously we have to have consistent lengths on a machine that cuts wire. otherwise it won't fit in the car. I'd been pulling my hair out trying to figure out where the problem was, and eventually I found it!
Yesterday we got the length variance down to about +- 5mm on the new harness machine. This is excellent because we HAVE to have reliable lengths.
This means that the machine should be ready for Show and Tell next week when the BigWigs come down from Canada to tour the plant.
Hope nothing catches fire between now and then!

Assistant Update

2008-03-28T11:42:00.000-07:00

My new assistant is excellent! He's learning real quick. He doesn't know much about programming, but he seems excited to learn.

The real tough question is what am I going to call him. His name is Jorge, but obviously I can't call him that.

I've been toying with the following possibilities:

Robin
Igor
Tonto
WonderWoman
Planeteer

It seems like the list is endless...
Man this is tough!

New Assistant

2008-03-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I was talking to my supervisor and I mentioned that I probably wouldn't be staying the rest of my life in Guaymas, and that we would probably like to get somebody taking over my projects.
So they hired me an intern who supposedly just graduated from computer science/engineering. I thought it was going to be awesome to have a programmer who i could teach electronics to and who could teach me how to program better.
welllll.........
the kid knew less than me about programming. In fact, he couldn't even answer the most basic programming questions, things that I learned in my introductory programming classes from UA. He didn't know what a case select was, a progress bar, a ternary operation, or even how to parse a string. These are things you learn in programming 101. and he was supposed to be a programmer.
needless to say, that show was cancelled before the first commercial break.
So I spent 3 days training this kid, and all that's flushed down the toilet now.

NEXT!

1.21 jigowatts

2008-03-17T21:27:00.000-07:00

Sewing Machine Jigsaw

2008-03-17T21:20:00.000-07:00

Man, i gotta make me one of these!

MC Animator

2008-03-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

This video is about the makingthings microcontroller. It's a pretty cool little device.
I wrote this program to take advantage of all its inputs and outputs.

If you decide to run this program, make sure you have the controller connected up through ethernet, and that you get ethernet response over mcHelper.

the program and source are available at http://www.makingthings.com/Members/tunell.

The microcontroller costs about $110 and is AWESOME. I've been using it in a lot of my projects, and it's great! Don' t know how I ever survived without it.

Visual Express + MController = Pure Awesome

2008-03-06T14:25:00.000-08:00

Since I moved to Mexico, I've started doing a lot of programming. Mostly for custom machines of my own design.
My new bestest friend is the microsoft Visual Studio Express Edition package. It's a group of free programs that will allow you to write your own software. FREE! Also any programs you make are your own, no royalties or licensing fees. Pretty suite...

This is a screenshot of the design interface for my Harness Machine

http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/ they even let you burn your own CD. FREE!

*Crescent Wrench Not Included

You can either download Visual Basic .Net, which is great for just learning, or you can get C++ or C#. Most of the programs I write are in C#. This started because for my interfaces, I use the makingthings microcontroller

More on this later http://www.makingthings.com/

this allows you to plug in a microcontroller into your computer and have it move stuff around. The "MC" make controller, has libraries that work in C#, so this means you can talk to it from your own programs. Anyway, I've really come a long way in my programming skills since i started using the Express Editions. If you've ever thought about learning how to make a basic windows program, you should download a copy and play around with it, it's actually quite fun! Did I mention FREE?

FLAT BLACK

2008-03-04T10:35:00.000-08:00

So for those of you who don't know, I work in Guaymas, Sonora. Which means I speak a lot of Spanish at work.
Here's some photos of my office:

The desk is kind of a mess, but at least there's tools.

Here's all my stuff that I get to play with

That spray bottle has WD-40 in it, keeps my drill bits sharper longer. Black&Decker 14.4V drill with quick change chuck, (and a compass and a stock and a thing which tells time) was a b-day present from Vicki. My Fave. You can't see my all time favorite tool which is my Dremel. It's carefully stowed in my tool box where no un-sterilized hand may touch. I use that baby almost every day. It's about the most useful tool evar. Yes i said "EVAR!"

There's also a couple of cans of flat-black spray paint. Dad taught me that a little flat black can make a piece of crap look like solid gold (black gold, that is).

And it's TRUE!. Even my crappiest, blobbiest, ugliest, most un-even welding jobs are no match for a little buffer action and a heavy treatment of flat black. Thank you, Dad. Those are the kind of lessons that every son should be so lucky to receive.

You may notice a lot of my projects use liberal amounts of flat black.... There's a reason for that.

Optical Tester

2008-03-03T08:30:00.001-08:00

So at St. Clair, we build wire harnesses for cars, RVs, trucks, etc. and some of our harnesses have fuse boxes on them.Our operators add the fuses/flashers/breakers etc into the fuse boxes, and until recently, we only had a visual check system. That means that another operator would look over it and see if everything was present and in the right place.

Well as you can imagine, we had lots of errors, because visual check systems just don't work out. If the quality checker has a few too many drinks before work, or gets bored, or whatever, you start getting errors, which come back and bite us in a big way.

SO.......

We needed a cheap check system for our fuse systems, so the old wheels started turning...

I set up basically a big, light controlled cavity on a build desk that the operators can stick the fuse assemblies into when they've been assembled.

A hole

There's a webcam mounted at the bottom of the hole that takes pictures of the fuse boxes

I used my dremel to rout out some acrylic masks to put over the fusebox so that the operators would be more inclined to put all the pieces in the right spot, then i painted them flat black.

I'm thinking about switching to the lucrative profession of hand-modeling
PS. I love my dremel

Before harness/fuses

Fuses in place

I mounted a high-resolution webcam at the bottom of the cavity that will take a photo of the fuse assembly. This photo will be compared to an original photo of a fuse assembly that is correcly assembled. So this means computer time.

I wrote a program in VB.net that will pull up the most current image from the camera, based on the harness number, and it will compare it to what it should look like. And then spit out an image of where the errors are in pink.

FALLA MEANS FAIL... BECAUSE THERES PINK

You can also zoom... WOW it's like You're in the future.

then it will either FAIL the harness with a screen saying where the error is, or it will PASS the harness and print out a beautiful little adhesive sticker like the one below, which tells the part number, date, image number, and stuff.

This ticket goes on a branch of the harness when it leaves the station.

The ticket makes it so that when our customer calls and complains because the fuses are screwed up, we can look at the photo saved on our PC and tell if it's true or not

So yes, i know the system looks pretty ug. But it only cost about $2k, including the PC. And I did it all by myself, so that counts for something right. Plus it works. Being ugly doesn't matter much when it works. Maybe version 2.0 will be more attractive.

Wii Remote IR mouse

2008-02-29T21:30:00.000-08:00

So I rigged up Johnny Lee's wii remote whiteboard at work much to the awe of all my co-workers. It's pretty amazing to see it in action with everything set up just right.

After everybody stood around and talked about it, my boss Ruben asked why he had to stand right at the board and touch it. I basically told him that was the idea behind a "touch-screen".
He said he'd rather have a pointer type mouse with click capability. He then basically described the same functionality as is used in the actual wii IR interface.

After perusing the internet for a bit and googling "Wii IR Mouse", i got nothing. A few posts about some tilt activated pointer stuff, but nothing i could really use.

Well, what Boss wants, Boss gets.
I cracked open the C# version of Johnny's whiteboard code and made some major mods to it. Using a single LED, (or a small array for long distance) i got a pretty sweet mouse simulation.
I mapped the A button to left click, B button to right click, and for ease of use, Minus is double click.
I would strongly recommend against this setup if you have parkinsons disease, however, as it takes some practice to get your hand steady. Otherwise you may be needing that new wii remote protector for when it goes flying across the room.

See 'er in action:

Showed it to "el Jefe", and he LIKEY.
Altho he immediately opened up power point and started using only the click functionality to scroll through slides....
Whatever, man.

I'll post the source and program later when i find somewhere to host it...

This is the Bluetooth adapter I use, note i did NOT use bluesoleil as the pack in software includes all the necessary drivers (under the bluesoleil branding i think)

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=150"