Building A Brushless Motor Controller

May 24, 2011 by Mike Nathan 12 Comments

brushless_motor_controller

Brushless motors and the way in which they are controlled can be a bit of an enigma to those just starting out in hobby electronics. [Andrew] from spingarage thought it would be helpful to put together a quick tutorial showing how he built a simple brushless motor controller in about a day’s time. He constructs everything on protoboard from components he acquired at RadioShack in order to demonstrate the ease of sourcing parts and building a brushless motor driver.

While he skips most of the theory behind brushless motor control itself, he does touch on the signaling these motors require for movement as well as how motor position is determined. Specifically, he expands on how half-bridges can be used to create the sine wave signaling required by a single motor input, as well as how three of these can be combined to drive a brushless motor.

The post is the first in a series of posts about brushless motors, so we should see some code examples and some practical applications in the near future.

Sound Localization And A Treaded Rover

May 23, 2011 by Mike Nathan 3 Comments

soundlocalization_and_a_robot

[Jad] recently wrote in to share a pair of projects that have been keeping him busy as of late.

The first is a sound localization system not unlike one we showed you a few weeks ago. The difference is that his system displays the sound source via a set of LEDs rather than by motion, making it far less prone to interference by things like servo noise. His system uses four identical circuits, each of which are wired to a separate analog input on the Arduino. Each channel is adjustable, making it easy to tweak how the system responds to a particular sound.

His second project is a sizable robot built on the Motoruino platform. His contraption features several stacked control boards that handle the bots locomotion as well as camera control. It connects to his computer via a Bluetooth module that boasts a 1 mile range, allowing him to control everything from his PC. [Jad] is using the robot as a prototype for a much larger scale creation, and he says that his current focus is getting the robot to track and follow objects automatically using the on-board camera.

Continue reading to see a small preview of his bot’s progress so far.

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An Odd Little Box

May 23, 2011 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

Here’s an odd little box that might get those creative juices flowing for the upcoming Halloween season. [Jeremy’s] creepy glowing box has a pair of ping-pong ball eyes which diffuse the red light from a pair of LEDs. Both the lid and they eyes move, and the whole thing is set up for wireless control.

The majority of the parts came from a toy RC helicopter that [Jeremy] had sitting in his junk bin. After close inspection he found that the electronics included to motor drivers for the two rotors, as well as two servo motors which worked to steer the aircraft. One of those servos has been repurposed to aim the gaze of they eyes left and right, the other servo is used to lift and close the lid of the box. This leaves the two motor controllers, one of which switches the LEDs on and off. The other doesn’t really have a purpose yet. He tried adding one wheel to the box, but turning that on just makes the whole thing crash to the floor. Check out what he’s done so far in the clip after the fold.

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BAMF2011: Bloxes, A Building Kit With A Nifty Pedigree

May 21, 2011 by Phil Burgess 17 Comments

Not every cool hack needs to involve microcontrollers, LEDs or other bling. We were initially drawn to the Bloxes display simply because we love a good multipurpose construction set, whether it be Lego, 80/20 aluminum, or in this case, a system of interlocking cubes formed from six identical pieces of corrugated cardboard, cut and scored in such a manner as to form a surprisingly sturdy little building block. They can become simple furniture, groovy Logan’s Run-style room decor, or the all-important kids’ forts…then later dismantled and made into something else.

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Destroying An Arduino’s EEPROM

May 16, 2011 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

We’ve seen projects test the lifespan of an EEPROM before, but these projects have only tested discrete EEPROM chips. [John] at tronixstuff had a different idea and set out to test the internal EEPROM of an ATmega328.

[John]’s build is just an Arduino and LCD shield that writes the number 170 to memory on one pass, and the number 85 on the next pass. Because these numbers are 10101010 and 01010101 in binary, each bit is flipped flipped once each run. We think this might be better than writing 0xFF for every run – hackaday readers are welcomed to comment on this implementation. The Arduino was plugged into a wall wart and sat, “behind a couch for a couple of months.” The EEPROM saw it’s first write error after 47 days and 1,230,163 cycles. This is an order of magnitude better than the spec on the atmel datasheet, but similar to the results of similar experiments.

We covered a similar project, the Flash Destroyer, last year, but that tested an external EEPROM, and not the internal memory of a microcontroller.

Check out the hugely abridged video of the EEPROM Killer after the break.

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USB Geiger Counter Hack

May 13, 2011 by Mike Nathan 17 Comments

usb_geiger

[Vic] bought a Kvarts DRSB-01 Geiger counter a few years ago, and recently dug it out of his electronics stash. The counter is a run of the mil no-frills unit. It lacks any kind of LCD display and it cannot be calibrated, so Sievert exposure ratings are out of the question. The unit essentially monitors background radiation and alerts the user to the presence of gamma and high-energy beta rays via audible clicks.

[Vic] wanted to make it a bit more useful, so he decided to interface it with his computer in order to take long-term radiation measurements. He dug up a schematic online and deadbugged a small circuit using an ATtiny44. The circuit allows him to enumerate the electrical pulses generated by ionizing particles striking the Geiger tube, passing them along to his PC over USB.

The counter seems to interface with the PC just fine, but [Vic] does say that he’s getting some odd readings. He thinks that he might have damaged the tube while messing around, but he’s all ears if you have any insight on the matter.

Bringing The Game Of Tag Into The Digital Age

May 12, 2011 by Mike Nathan 8 Comments

tagurit

How long has it been since you’ve played a game of tag?

[Sylvia Cheng, Kibum Kim, and Roel Vertegaal] from Queen’s University’s human media lab have concocted a fun twist on the classic game that just might compel you to start playing again.

Their game, called TagURIt, arms two players with Lumalive LED t-shirts which sport embedded touch sensors. A third player, known as the “chaser” attempts to touch either of the other players in order to capture the token displayed on the player’s chest-based LED matrix. The game is score-based, awarding points to the chaser for capturing tokens, while giving the other players points for avoiding capture.

If both players wearing the LED shirts are near to one another, the token will jump to the other player in an attempt to thwart the chaser. In this game, each player is a location-tagged URI, and proximity is determined by either tracking the users with cameras indoors, or via RF sensors if the game is played outside.

It is definitely an interesting way of playing tag, and we imagine it could be quite fun in large groups.

Continue reading to see a video demonstration of the TagURIt game being played.

[via Adafruit blog]

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