Category Archives: ROBOTICS

Making a “Beest” Leg Linkage System

Posted by on June 12, 2013 2 comments

First of all, thanks to Theo Jansen, then Dominique Studer as they have done much of the “kinematics” work needed for the contraption that I intend to make, a four-legged walking ‘beest.  Regardless, what I am working on is a definite departure from either of these machines.  As I’ve been discovering, making something like this in real life is a definite challenge, whether or not you have some interesting examples to help inspire and guide you.  Here’s a video of me doing an early test of one of the legs:

Obviously it still needs some work. If you think it’s easy to even get to this point, be sure to check out the time-lapse video and pictures of the manufacturing process after the “read more.”

What I built was most directly based Read more »

Introducing The Cigar Box Creepster

Posted by on May 30, 2013 1 comment

Something you may have seen previewed on my Youtube page was this “automated cigar box” that I haven’t quite figured out a good name for.  Several interesting names, such as the “CopBox,” “RedVSBlue,” and “Red Chomper” have been suggested, but if you feel you have a better name, be sure to let me know in the comments.

Even though I say “red” and “blue” at first to cause it to open, what really drives this device Read more »

Getting Started with the ATtiny85 Chip

Posted by on February 18, 2013 4 comments

ATtiny-programmed-Arduino-Uno Those of you that read this blog know that my talents (and education) skews to the mechanical side of “hacking” or “making.”  Given that the IO for many of my projects is fairly simple, the ATtiny could be an ideal programming platform.  This little chip is available from Sparkfun, for under $3.00, or for less if purchased in bulk (Ebay has some).  Although it only has 5 (or possibly 6) IO pins, this little chip is incredibly small, and with such a low cost can easily be left on a project.

Once I got it, I intended to use an Arduino Uno (my review) that I had available to program this board.  To test it out, the “blink” sketch was used as shown in this MIT tutorial.  This is also shown via video in this tutorial by Make’s Matt Richardson.  The information should be the same in each, but when I tried this, it gave me some sort of “USB not found error.”

The trick to fixing this was actually pretty simple.  I’m not sure if it’s because I’m running Ubuntu Linux,** Read more »

Servo Pan-Tilt Assembly and First Use

Posted by on January 9, 2013 5 comments

I’ve been working on something interesting involving a laser, the pyMCU, and this pan-tilt assembly from Servocity.  Here’s the basic assembly in action – certainly an improvement over my “Python-head man” contraption.

The servos are controlled using a pyMCU board, which I’ve been experimenting with quite a bit.  In this trial, I used the code directly from the “Python-head” experiment, which basically just makes a styrofoam “head” nod in different directions.  As for how the pan-tilt assembly goes together (in glorious time-lapse), check out the video below of everything being assembled: Read more »

pyMCU + Servos and Foam = Python Head Man!

Posted by on December 19, 2012 4 comments

python-head-onWhat do you get when you cross the glowing LED box with a RC helicopter and the pyMCU microcontroller?  A Python controlled glowing head of course!

This “Python Head Man” is capable of looking up and down in two directions, and lighting up “eyes” and a “mouth.”  This is possibly better explained in the video below.  The ‘bot uses the two servos originally meant to adjust the rc helicopter blades that this frame had on it.  I originally wrote about controlling these servos here, but this setup also has two sets of LEDS that can be independently switched on and off.  Control of the ‘bot is also enhanced with a simple GUI using the Tkinter Python library.  Diffusion of these LEDs is done with a foam cube, similar to the “Solar LED cube” that I made a few months ago.

If you would like to try something like this yourself, Read more »