This 3D-Printed Robotic Vacuum Sucks

February 24, 2018 by Tom Nardi 11 Comments

After you’ve taken a moment to ponder the turn of phrase used in the title, take a look at this scratch-built robotic vacuum created by [theking3737]. The entire body of the vacuum was 3D printed, and all of the internal electronics are off-the-shelf modular components. We can’t say how well it stacks up against the commercial equivalents from iRobot and the like, but it doesn’t look like it would be too hard to build one yourself to find out.

The body of this rather concerned-looking robot was printed on a DMS DP5 printer, which is a neat trick as it only has a build platform of 200 mm x 200 mm. Once all the pieces were printed, a 3D pen was used to “weld” the sections together. The final result looks a bit rough, but should give a bond that’s just as strong as the printed parts themselves.

The robot has four sets of ultrasonic range finders to detect walls and obstacles, though probably not in the positions you would expect. The right side of the robot has two sets of sensors, while the left side only gets one. We aren’t sure the reasoning behind the asymmetrical layout, but presumably the machine prefers making right turns.

Control is provided by an Arduino Mega and the ever-reliable HC-05 Bluetooth module. A companion Android application was written which allows configuring the robot without having to plug into the Arduino every time you want to tweak a setting.

We can’t say we’ve seen that many DIY robotic vacuums here at Hackaday, but we’ve certainly featured our fair share of hacks for the commercially available models.

Robotic Laser Keeps Cat Entertained While You Hack

February 23, 2018 by Steven Dufresne 14 Comments

Whether it’s our own cat or a neighbor’s, many of us have experienced the friendly feline keeping us company while we work, often contributing on the keyboard, sticking its head where our hands are for a closer look, or sitting on needed parts. So how to keep the crafty kitty busy elsewhere? This roboticized laser on a pan-tilt mechanism from the [circuit.io team] should do the trick.

The laser is a 650 nm laser diode mounted on a 3D printed pan-tilt system which they found on Thingiverse and modified for attaching the diode’s housing. It’s all pretty lightweight so two 9G Micro Servos do the grunt work just fine. The brain is an Arduino UNO running an open-source VarSpeedServo library for smooth movements. Also included are an HC-05 Bluetooth receiver and an Android app for controlling the laser from your phone. Set it to Autoplay or take a break and use the buttons to direct the laser yourself. See the video below for build instructions and of course their cat, [Pepper], looking like a Flamenco dancer chasing the light.

Continue reading “Robotic Laser Keeps Cat Entertained While You Hack” →

Arduino Watchdog Has Bite And Doesn’t Need Treats

February 23, 2018 by Richard Baguley 17 Comments

My dog Jasper isn’t much of a watchdog: he’s too interested in sleeping and chasing my cats to keep an eye on things. Fortunately, [Vadim] has come up with a more reliable alternative with this simple Arduino watchdog. It’s designed to work with crypto coin mining rigs, but it could be easily adapted for other high-uptime uses, such as file servers or doomsday weapons.

Continue reading “Arduino Watchdog Has Bite And Doesn’t Need Treats” →

This Radio Gets Pour Reception

February 22, 2018 by James Hobson 17 Comments

When was the last time you poured water onto your radio to turn it on?

Designed collaboratively by [Tore Knudsen], [Simone Okholm Hansen] and [Victor Permild], Pour Reception seeks to challenge what constitutes an interface, and how elements of play can create a new experience for a relatively everyday object.

Lacking buttons or knobs of any kind, Pour Reception appears an inert acrylic box with two glasses resting on top. A detachable instruction card cues the need for water, and pouring some into the glasses wakes the radio.

Continue reading “This Radio Gets Pour Reception” →

DIY Peristaltic Pump Keeps The Booze Flowing

February 20, 2018 by Kristina Panos 30 Comments

A few months ago we showed you a bar bot built by [GreatScott] that uses peristaltic pumps to food-safely move the various spirits and mixers around behind the curtain. The bar bot uses three of them, and at $30 each for pumps with decent flow rate, they added a lot to the parts bill. These pumps are pretty much the ideal choice for a bar bot, so what do you do? [GreatScott] decided to see if it was worth it to make them instead.

Peristaltic pumps are simple devices that pump liquids without touching them. A motor turns a set of rollers that push a flexible tube against a wall. As the motor turns, the rollers move liquid through the tube by squeezing it flat from the outside in turns. Typically, the more you pay for an off-the-shelf peristaltic, the higher the flow rate.

[GreatScott] figured it was cheaper to buy the motor and the control circuitry. He chose a NEMA-17 for their reputation and ubiquity and a DRV8825 controller to go with it. The pump is driven by an Arduino Nano and a pot controls the RPM. After trying to design the mechanical assembly from scratch, he found [Ralf]’s pump model on Thingiverse and modified it to fit a NEMA-17.

The verdict? DIY all the way, assuming you can print the parts. [GreatScott] was trying to beat the purchased pumps’ flow rate of 100mL/minute and ended up with 200mL/minute from his DIY pump. Squeeze past the break for the build video and demonstration.

Is there a bar bot build on your list? No? Is it because you’re more of a single-malt scotch guy? Build a peristaltic pachyderm to pour your potion.

Continue reading “DIY Peristaltic Pump Keeps The Booze Flowing” →

Underwater Logging For Science

February 16, 2018 by Al Williams 8 Comments

Logging data with an Arduino is old-hat for most Hackaday readers. However, [Patricia Beddows] and [Edward Mallon] had some pretty daunting requirements. Their sensors were going underground and underwater as part of an effort to study conditions underwater and in caves. They needed to be accessible, yet rugged. They didn’t want to use batteries that would be difficult to take on airplanes, but also wanted more than a year of run time. You can buy all that, of course, if you are willing to pay the price.

Instead, they used off-the-shelf Arduino boards connected together inside PVC housings. Three alkaline AA batteries are compact and give them more than a year of run time. They wrote a journal paper to help other scientists use the same techniques for the Sensors journal published by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.

Continue reading “Underwater Logging For Science” →

Building An Arduino Smart IC Tester For $25

February 15, 2018 by Tom Nardi 32 Comments

There’s no question that you can get a lot done with the classic multimeter; it’s arguably the single most capable tool on your bench. But the farther down the rabbit hole of hacking and reverse engineering you go, the more extravagant your testing and diagnostic gear tends to get. For some of us that’s just an annoying reality of the game. For others it’s an excuse to buy, and maybe even build, some highly specialized equipment. We’ll give you one guess as to which group we fall into here at Hackaday.

[Akshay Baweja] is clearly a member of the second group. He’s recently published a guide on building a very slick intelligent Integrated Circuit tester with a total cost of under $25 USD. Whether you’re trying to identify an unknown chip or verifying your latest parts off the slow-boat from China actually work before installing them in your finished product, this $25 tool could end up saving you a lot of time and aggravation.

[Akshay] walks readers through the components and assembly of his IC tester, which takes the form of a Shield for the Arduino Mega 2560. The custom PCB he designed and had manufactured holds the 20 Pin ZIF Socket as well as the 2.4 inch TFT touch screen. The screen features an integrated micro SD slot which is important as you need the SD card to hold the chip database.

With an IC to test inserted into the ZIF socket, the user can have the tester attempt to automatically ID the chip or can manually enter in a part number to lookup. The source code for the Arduino as well as the chip ID database is up on GitHub for anyone looking to add some more hardware to the device’s testing repertoire.

The importance of good test equipment simply cannot be overstated. Between highly specialized gear like this IC tester to classic instruments such as the oscilloscope, your bench is going to be full of weird and wonderful pieces of equipment before too long.

Continue reading “Building An Arduino Smart IC Tester For $25” →