Robot Air Hockey Championship As A Final Project

May 18, 2013 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

clemson-air-hockey-robots

My final project is build a robot that plays air hockey? Where do I sign up? Apparently you get yourself a seat in ECE496 at Clemson University. They have been using the concept as a final project for at least a couple of years. [Abe Froman] was on the winning design team this year and he’s showing off his robot and some winning games it played.

His robot is in the foreground. It uses a right-angle PVC joint to hold the paddle. The fitting is attached to a rack and pinion that drives it forward and back. The entire assembly is mounted on a rotating rig. Take a look at some of its opponents that use more of a plotter-type arm. Those offerings have too much play in the joints which at times causes the thing to miss.

Chances are good that once you get a job you won’t be asked to do things for the company unless they are money makers. Sure, there are a few notable exceptions, but since you’re playing to go to school we really appreciate the professors making the learning as enjoyable as possible before you have to get serious (and maybe even wear a tie!).

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Just Put Your Lips Together To Turn On A Lamp

May 18, 2013 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

whistler-lamp-control

The inlaid image is a controller board which [Limpkin] developed to add whistle control as a home automation option. It has an effective range of around fifteen feet and does a good job of detecting whistles from many different people. Here is one of the test subjects (captured with a hidden camera) whistling to the white LED lamp in order to switch it on.

The board is quite small. [Limpkin] holds it up in the beginning of his test video, which gives a good sense of scale. One end has a barrel jack through which the board gets power. The other end has a two conductor screw terminal which is used for switch your devices. An N-channel MOSFET protects the circuit when a heavy external load is connected. It is capable of driving a respectable 90 watts. If you’re looking to switch mains rated devices you’ll need to bring your own relay to the party.

Audio processing is handled by the Freescale ARM Cortex M4 chip at the center of the board. The Serial Wire Debug (SWD) clock and data pins are both broken out to solder pads so the thing is hackable. [Limpkin] posted the schematic, gerbers, and a code template. But he didn’t release the algorithms he uses for processing so if you want to make this at home you’ll need to figure that out for yourself. If you need help you should check out this whistle-based remote control.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eIxAMKNphw

North Street Labs Try To Spice Up A Game Of Tic-Tac-Toe

May 18, 2013 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

tic-tac-toe-stomp-box

The team at North Street Labs really went all out with this Tic-Tack-Toe stomp box. At its most basic it’s a blinky version of the simple two-player game. But there’s always some added appeal when you make large manifestations of normally small items; the 10x Arduino is a good example of this.

The project is NSL’s qualifying entry for this year’s Red Bull Creation Contest (has it already been a year since the last contest?). A special Arduino shield was produced once again, this time it features hardware necessary to control LED strips… a lot of them. That led to the creation of this box, which houses a ton of strip sections inside to light the grid based on tapping one of the red buttons with your foot. We’d image the game would be seldom used at your hackerspace, but they take it to show off at the local children’s museum and it’s a huge hit with the kids!

LED Retrofit For Vintage Edge-lit Numeric Display Modules

May 17, 2013 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

edge-lit-led-retrofit

This single digit display is an old edge-lit module that [Ty_Eeberfest] has been working with. The modules were built for General Radio Company and have a really huge PCB to control just one digit. [Ty’s] modules didn’t come with that driver board, so he was left with the task of controlling an incandescent bulb for each digit. After a bit of thought he figured it would be much easier to just replace the edge-light bulbs with a set of LEDs.

We’ve seen these exact modules before, referenced in a project that created an edge-lit Nixie tube from scratch. Each digit in the display is made from a piece of acrylic with tiny drill holes which trace out the numerals. The acrylic is bent so that the edge exits out the back of the module where it picks up light from the bulb. [Ty] laid out his circuit board so that each LED was in the same position as the bulb it was replacing. As you can see, his retrofit works like a charm.

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Android Pen Plotter Snaps, Processes, And Prints Pictures

May 17, 2013 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

android-pen-plotter

Here’s an Android powered pen plotter that does it all. It was built by [Ytai Ben-Tsvi] to take with him to Maker Faire. He’s the creator of IOIO, a hardware interface module designed to communicate with an Android device via USB (host or OTG are both supported).

The physical hardware is simple enough. He draws on a pad of white paper using a felt-tipped marker. Located at the top of the easel are two wheels with stars etched on them. They are reels which spool and dole-out string to control the pen’s movements. The pen tip can be lifted by a ball bearing mounted just below it.

But the project really takes off when you watch [Ytai’s] demonstration. The Android tablet controlling the device captures a picture of an object — in this case it’s a toy truck. The app then processes it using edge detection to establish how to plot the image.

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Flocking Behavior Using Mindstorm Robots

May 17, 2013 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

flock-behavior-with-mindstorm

Do you ever wonder why geese always fly together in a V-shape? We’re not asking about the fact that it makes the work load much less for all but the lead goose. We mean how is it that all geese know to form up like this? It’s is the act of flocking, and it’s long been a subject of fascination when it comes to robotics. [Scott Snowden] researched the topic while working on his degree a few years ago. Above you can see the demonstration of the behavior using LEGO Mindstorm robots. That’s certainly interesting and you’ll want to check out the video after the break. But his offering doesn’t end with the demo. He also posted a huge article about his work that will provide days of fascinating reading.

We can’t begin to scratch the surface of all that he covers, but we can give you a quick primer on his Mindstorm (NXT) setup. He uses these three bots along with a central brick (the computer part of the NXT hardware) which communicates with them. This lets him use a wide range of powerful tools like MatLab and Processing to recognize each robot with a top-down camera, passing it data based on info harvested with computer vision. From there it’s a wild ride of modeling the behavior as a set of algorithms.

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Magnetic CNC Marble Maze

May 16, 2013 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

magnetic-cnc-marble-maze

[Martin Raynsford] figured out a way to sneak some learning into a fun package. He did such a good job the test subjects didn’t even know they were teaching themselves just a tiny bit of CNC programming.

The apparatus above is a marble maze, but instead of building walls [Martin] simply etched a pattern on the playing field. The marble is a ball bearing which moves through the maze using a magnetic CNC gantry hidden underneath. Where does one get ball bearings of this size? If you’re [Martin] you scavenge them from your laser-cut Donkey Kong game.

He showed off the rig at the Maker Faire. It takes simple commands as cardinal directions and units of movement. The ‘player’ (remember, they’re secretly learning something, not just playing a game) inputs a series of movements such as “N10,E10” which are then pushed through a serial connection to the Arduino. It follows these commands, moving the hidden magnet which drags the ball bearing along with it. It’s simple, but watch the clip after the break and we think you’ll agree the sound of the stepper motors and the movement of the ball will be like crack for young minds.

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