Robotic Arm And Claw Sculpted Entirely From ShapeLock

August 19, 2011 by Mike Nathan 24 Comments

shapelock_robotic_claw

[Alexey] wrote in to share a mechanical claw (Google Translation) he has been hard at work on for quite some time. While a lot of people will turn to some sort of 3D plastic printer such as the MakerBot if they need plastic parts built, [Alexey] didn’t have access to one. Instead, he carefully crafted the entire mechanism from polycaprolactone, or as it’s more commonly known, Shapelock.

Using a wide range of tools from hair dryers and knives to lighting fixtures, he manually sculpted the claw and its control arm out of plastic, piece by piece. We are particularly impressed by the gearing he was able to cut from the plastic, which can be finicky at times.

As you can see in the video below, The claw mimics each movement he makes with the control arm via a handful of Arduino-driven servos. Everything seems to work quite well, and despite the rough translation by Google, we think this is a great project. If you are looking to do something similar yourself, he has plenty of pictures on his site, which should give you a pretty good idea as to how things were put together.

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Building A Message Board With A Web Interface

August 19, 2011 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Sergio] is just getting into hardware hacking. He started by getting an HD44780 compatible LCD screen running with his Arduino. To take the project to the next level, he decided to add a web interface for changing the message displayed on the LCD.

He’s doing things on the cheap (a man after our own hearts), purchasing many of his components off of eBay. Unfortunately that decision came back to bite him when it was time to connect his Arduino to the network. The Ethernet Shield knock-off wasn’t the same as the official version. That one’s got a Wiznet W5100 ethernet chip with does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Instead, [Sergio] is using a board with an ENC28J60. It took a bit of searching, but eventually he came up with an example to help him get his Arduino serving web pages and listening for updates from them.

The ENC28J60 is actually not a bad piece of hardware. It’s cheap enough, and there are a few hardware/software demos out there that are worth taking a look at.

Bootloader Burning Basics

August 17, 2011 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

[Charles Gantt] and a few others were having trouble burning the Sanguino bootloader to an ATmega644 chip. With some help from the [Nils Vogil] via the RepRap IRC [Charles] got it worked out and wrote a guide for burning the bootloader using an Arduino as an ISP programmer.

We’re not familiar with the specifics of the Sanguino bootloader, but [Charles] mentioned that he was unable to flash it onto the AVR chip without a resonator. The resonator serves as an external clock source for the chip. We’d bet the programming process changes the fuse settings on the chip to use an external source. Without that source, you won’t be able to communicate with the chip afterwards.

The solution just adds the resonator to the programming circuit. This should be useful when burning any bootloader using an Arduino. But it does make us wonder if there isn’t an alternative method that would let you draw the clock signal from the Arduino itself?

Bobuino: Arduino Based On ATmega1284 + Goodies

August 17, 2011 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

[Erik] wrote in letting us know that he just completed development of the Bobuino, a Arduino based on an ATmega1284. That chip is nice and beefy, most notably for having 16 KB of SRAM but it also boasts 4 KB of EEPROM, and 128 KB of program memory.

But the upgraded chip isn’t the only thing that it brings to the table. It’s easy to spot the on-board SD card slot in the image above. Also of note is the battery-backed DS1307 real time clock with a jumper that will route the square wave output to one of two pins on the microcontroller.

This design is compatible with standard Arduino shields thanks to the familiar pair of pin sockets, and can still be programmed via the USB socket. Since the AVR chip has more IO than normal there’s also pin headers to break out the PORTC pins, for a JTAG connector, and for an RS232 port.

Restoring A Jukebox With An Arduino

August 17, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 37 Comments

[Jim] just finished restoring an old Seeburg USC1 jukebox for his father using an Arduino, replacing an electromechanical rats nest of wires. The stack of 45 records were replaced with an Arduino Mega 2560 with an Sparkfun MP3 player shield, and he jukebox lights are now controlled with 74595 shift registers. Because his jukebox isn’t taking in money, the dollar bill validator has been modified into a ‘skip song’ button, and when there are no songs in the jukebox queue, there are 500 additional songs on the SD card that will randomly play.

We’ve seen one of [Jim]’s builds before. Earlier this year he repaired a thirty year old Pachinko machine using the same Arduino + MP3 shield setup. It looks like [Jim] is pretty skilled at revitalizing bulky old electronics. The jukebox restoration is great and has a lot more class than the internet-connected touch screen monstrosities that we still pump money into.

Check out the video after the break for a walk through of this restoration.

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A Stackable Motor Driver Shield For The Arduino

August 17, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 30 Comments

The Arduino has been used for many purposes, and “shields” are available to make many common tasks easier. However, [Nick] wanted a stackable motor driver shield, so he build one himself!. There are many motor driver shields available for the Arduino, however, there aren’t any that allow one to drive as many motors as were needed for his project, and none that were stackable.

[Nick] had no experience designing and fabricating a custom board, but decided to try his hand at it anyway. Armed with a free version of [Eagle] PCB design software, he designed the board that he needed then sent it to [Seeed] to be manufactured. According to his article, a quantity of 10 Arduino-sized boards can be purchased for the price of $25. At that price point, some hobbyists may want to consider this option rather than manually creating their own circuit.

According to [Nick], he was able to manufacture his first board with no errors on his first run! Not bad for his first try at something like this.

Clicking And Counting With Push Wheel Switches

August 16, 2011 by Mike Nathan 16 Comments

getting_started_with_push_wheel_switches

Push-wheel switches are somewhat older technology, but [John Boxall] from the Little Bird Electronics blog shows us that they are still quite useful today.

In a quick but thorough demonstration, he discusses how this input technology works, showing off both single digit and multi digit inputs. The former is pretty straightforward, with each of the counter’s outputs tied to an I/O pin on his Arduino. Using multiple counter units is ever so slightly more complicated, but the job is made easier through the use of an NXP 74HC4066 bilateral switch. He shares a snippet of Arduino code that toggles through each of the switches, reading in their values one by one.

His walkthrough is a must-see for those who are just getting their feet wet with Arduinos and various input methods. These counters are great for 1-4 digit input needs, but if you require more digits [John] says that a 12-digit keypad would probably be a better way to go.

Stick around to see a short video demo of the switches doing their thing.

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