Another Android Controlled Roving Robot

August 3, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 3 Comments

[Sam] has been working on a cellphone controlled robot for a while now and with the launch of a few similar Kickstarter campaigns he thought it would be good to share his progress so far.

[Sam]’s robot is controlled by an Android device with the help of an IOIO dev board. This setup provides more than enough computational power to send a robot on its merry way, and has the bonus of allowing [Sam] to connect additional sensors.

The case is designed to put the headers on the IOIO board on the outside, just above a little shelf perfect for holding a breadboard or two. With the right hardware and software setup, [Sam]’s bot can rove around the neighborhood collecting data and sending it to a server in real time.

If you’re wondering why a tiny Android/IOIO powered sounds so familiar, it might be because of the Botiful robot we posted a few days ago. Unlike Botiful, [Sam] can only control his treaded Android bot through Bluetooth as the whole ‘programming a web interface’ is a bit over his head. Hopefully [Sam] will meet an enthusiastic coder when he brings his Arduino tank to Dorkbots Boston this evening.

You can check out a prototype of [Sam]’s bot in action after the break.

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NXT Android Telepresence Robot

August 2, 2012 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

Here is a telepresence robot that uses an Android device and LEGO NXT parts. [Wolfgang] had an extra phone on hand and decided to put it to good use. The Mindstorm parts make it really easy to produce a small robot, and adding the phone really ups the computing and connectivity options available to him.

The Android device is able to control the NXT bot via Bluetooth. [Wolfgang] didn’t go into detail on that part, but you can get some pointers on the topic from this other Android controlled Mindstorm project. [Wolfgang] wanted the ability to check in at home when he’s travelling. He uses nanohttpd on the Android device to serve up a simple web interface. It uses HTML5 to push a snapshot from the phone’s camera as user feedback, and provides a set of directional arrows which let him drive the bot around.

Obviously this thing is going to run out of juice if he’s away for too long. To combat that problem he included a battery which powers both the NXT parts and the phone. Now he just needs to build an inductive charging station and he’ll really be set.

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Android 4.0 On Raspberry Pi

August 1, 2012 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

The folks over at the Raspberry Pi foundation are showing off their latest wares. This time around it’s Android 4.0 running on the Raspberry Pi. Although this is a pre-release announcement, it sounds like the work is rather far along. Hardware acceleration for video playback is in place, but there are still some audio issues that need to be fixed before it will be ready.

We know the foundation isn’t the first one to pull this kind of thing off. Look around and you can see some other proof-of-concept videos which show Ice Cream Sandwich running on the board in one stage or another. But the demo from the video after the break gives us hope that rock solid support is just around the corner. After all, Netflix runs on Android and so does XBMC. Both running on the RPi brings the device one step closer to the holy grail of dirt cheap and mostly-open set top boxes. The one thing we haven’t seen yet is the killer control method for the device. If you’ve got one up your sleeve you should post some details and send us the link.

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OLinuXino Booting Android

August 1, 2012 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

We can’t say the name rolls off the tongue, but it is beginning to look like the OlinuXino is going to happen. Here you can see the prototype hardware booting Android. If this is the first time you’re seeing the hardware you can think of it in the same category as the Raspberry Pi. It’s a butt-kicking ARM platform that comes as a bare-board with which you can do what you please.

Olimex Ltd. put together the offering, which seems to be part of the name mash-up (Olimex + Linux + Arduino?). The board hosts an ARM Cortex-A8 processor which runs at 1 GHz. There’s a half a gigabyte of ram, four USB and one USB-OTG ports, and a big array of breakout pins. One eyebrow-raising choice was not to include an HDMI connector. Instead the board offers VGA and Audio outputs. There is a pin header meant for an LCD screen, as seen in the image above, so it could be that the intention here is for smaller or more portable applications. But like we said, the form factor really lets you do what you want.

Possibly the best part is the price. The target for the top-of-the-line board is 55 Euros (about $68) and that comes with WiFi and 4 GB of NAND storage on the board. There’s a bunch of posts on the project, including a look at the PCB routing work. This link to the A13 tag will give you the widest overview of the work so far.

[Thanks Acce]

Redesigning The RC Tank

July 21, 2012 by Jake W 6 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–YZHMqHzPw]

[Vincent] started building this tank (translation) with a regular hobby model: the Heng Long Tiger 1. However, after considering some goals for the project, he decided to nearly gut the tank and redesign it, basing it on the Arduino and a standard Motor Shield. The possibilities with this setup are nearly endless. In its current form, the ArduTiger detects obstacles in front of it by way of three servo-mounted infrared rangefinders. The tank’s trajectory can be adjusted automatically based on feedback from the servo positions. Two additional short-range rangefinders detect if there is ground for the tank to roll over, keeping it safe from cliffs and black holes. [Vincent] plans on updating this beast by adding a Raspberry Pi for live video and advanced control… and maybe even adding a Geiger counter!

Sensordrone Really Does Make Your Phone A Tricoder

July 18, 2012 by Mike Szczys 33 Comments

Sensordrone is a sensor-filled wireless dongle for use with a smart phone or other computer-like device. But perhaps this is better explained as the thing that makes your smart phone work exactly as the original Star Trek tricorders did. In one had you have the main unit that displays data, in the other you hold the sensor array which you can wave in front of things to take a reading.

This is really just a Bluetooth module, battery, a handful of sensors, and a breakout header all packaged in a nice case. But seeing it used in the video after the break does make us a little giddy. That breakout header gives you the option of connecting the Sensordrone to RS-232 or I2C devices. The first demonstration is a thermal printer being sent a print job from an Android phone. But the dongle isn’t just a pass-through. It comes with a range of sensors (those three windows in the case) for gas sensing, temperature, humidity, pressure, color sensing, and perhaps a few others.

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Android Oscilloscope Built From Parts Just Lying Around

July 14, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 36 Comments

So you need to debug a circuit and you don’t have an oscilloscope. That’s not a problem thanks to [retronics] $0 Android oscilloscope, made with parts he just happened to have lying around.

The heart of every modern oscilloscope is the ADC – the chip that takes analog input and outputs a digital signal. Every Android device has one of these converters connected to the microphone port. All [retronics] needed to do was solder up a 3mm headphone jack, wire in a few resistors, and attach a pair of alligator clips. After installing an oscilloscope app, [retronics] had a half decent ‘scope.

Yes, this is truly a poor man’s oscilloscope, and [retronics] probably won’t be debugging high frequency RF circuits with his Android microphone jack anytime soon. Low frequency stuff such as audio is where this ‘scope really excels; even more so if a small preamp is thrown into the mix.

You can check out [retronics]’ build after the break. Sure, it’s not something for precise and calibrated measurement, but sometimes you only need a tool that will do the job.

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