GSM Controlled Car Without Needing A Microcontroller

July 12, 2012 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

Nope, no microcontroller here, just a full-blown cellphone used as the brains of this little robot. The secret behind how it works is in the sounds the phone makes. The touch tones, known as DTMF, are monitored by the circuit mounted on the front half of the chassis and are responsible for driving the motors.

[Achu Wilson] built the circuit around an MT8870 chip which decodes the DTMF sounds and uses the BCD output to feed some logic chips. A 4 line to 16 line decoder and an inverter chip format the signals for use as inputs to the L293D motor driver. The video after the break shows him driving the rover directly by pressing number on the phone (like a tethered remote control). But he mentions that it’s possible to call the phone and press the numbers remotely. We assume you need to connect the call manually as we see no way to automatically answer calls.

This is certainly a fun way to play around with the DTMF protocol.

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Cool Master Advanced Beer Delivery System

July 9, 2012 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

The Cool Master is a beer delivery system which Innovation Thirst built as their qualifying entry for this year’s Red Bull Creation contest. It’s one of the best beer delivery concepts we’ve ever seen. Instead of tossing you a beer directly from the fridge, this offering brings the cold beverages directly to you. It even manages to de-cap the bottles before serving.

Mobility is provided by a six-wheeled base which allows for a zero-turn radius. The cooler acts as the body of the robot, and hides a hopper which carries a stock of bottles on their sides. When you want a beer, the bot approaches you, tilts the next bottle to the upright position, removes the cap, then raises the vessel on a beer elevator until it pushes its way through the rubber orifice in the cooler’s lid. Right now the device is operated using an RC controller, but there’s always room for adding autonomy and the ability to restock from a refrigerator. Don’t miss the demo video after the break.

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Arduino Rover Evolves To A Trike Design

July 5, 2012 by Mike Szczys No comments

[Eduard Ros] wrote in to show off the latest version of his Arduino powered autonomous rover (translated). You may remember seeing the first version of the build back in June. It started with a remote control truck body, adding an Arduino and some ultrasonic sensors for obstacle avoidance.

The two big wheels and the pair of sensors look familiar, but most of the other components are a different from that version. The biggest change is the transition from four wheels to just three. This let him drop the servo motor which controlled steering. At first glance we though this thing was going to pop some mad wheelies, but the direction of travel actually drags the third wheel being the larger two. The motors themselves are different, this time depending on gear-reduced DC motors. The motor H-bridge is the same, but [Eduard] used a simple transistor-based inverter to reduce the number of pins needed to activate it from two down to just one. He also moved from an Arduino Uno to a Nano to reduce the footprint of the controller.

[Dino] Upgrades His Robot Chassis

July 3, 2012 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

This is the fourth iteration that [Dino] has produced for his all-terrain robot. Just before this it was more of a turtle, with an aluminum pan shell. We think his upgrade to MicroRAX frame parts makes it look a lot better, and lightens the load so it can get around better as well.

It’s hard to tell from the picture, but many of the components are from a Roomba robot. The four motors, and the mainboard are all from units he picked up on eBay. To drive the motors he tapped into the H-bridge signals on the control board using a Seeeduino. His write-up (linked above) shares some of the details regarding the electronics, but the video after the break shows the development and assembly of the new chassis. It’s made from extruded aluminum bars which easily connect to each other with the system’s brackets. To interface with the non-standard parts he makes his own brackets from some aluminum sheet stock. It’s similar to other modular building materials, but the MicroRAX is a great size/weight for a small design like this one.

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Automated System Hopes To Make Manual Road Patching A Thing Of The Past

July 3, 2012 by Mike Nathan 23 Comments

automated-road-repair

You don’t necessarily have to live in a cold climate to experience how roads start to deteriorate once cracks begin forming in the asphalt surface. Even more frustrating than the potholes, dips, and road erosion is the snarled traffic that results from closing lanes to repair them. Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute have developed a way to detect and quickly fix these cracks with minimal human interaction, making the process a bit less painful than before.

The automatic road patcher resides on a trailer which is towed behind a service vehicle at 5 km/h. Cameras mounted near the front of the device detect cracks down to 3mm in width using an array of LED lights to guide the way. Once a fault has been detected, nozzles mounted under the trailer blast the road with liquid tar to seal the crack before it becomes a real problem.

The system seems to work reasonably well in the tests we’ve seen, and researchers are tweaking the processing software to make the rig even more effective before rolling it out on a wider scale.

[via Gizmodo]

Adding A Bomb Bay To A Quadcopter

July 2, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

The Fourth of July is fast approaching, and what better way to celebrate the independence of your country than by blowing up a small piece of it? [Anzel360] decided to take that line of thought to a whole new level by adding a bomb bay to his quadrocopter.

[Anzel360] recently upgraded his transmitter to a Spektrum DX8, giving him two extra channels on his four-channel quadrotor. After adding a small servo to the quad, it was a simple matter of taping a box to the undercarriage and filling it full of fireworks.

The ammo [Anzel] is using is just a handful of Snappin’ Pops – otherwise known as the lamest firework ever created. We won’t hold that against him, though; a remote ignition system for a few Black Cats mounted on a fancy quadrocopter is just asking for trouble. We do recall a throwable cap gun bomb from our youth, though, that would allow for year-round ammo replenishment…

Robot Dares You To Snatch The Pebble From This Flower

June 29, 2012 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

This pleasant-looking plant may try to take your hand off if you’re not careful. The robot flower (translated) includes sensors that cause the petals to move in reaction to external stimuli.

You can just make out the distance sensors as black rectangles on two of the petals. These let the flower track an object by rotating the flower stem. But if they determine the object is getting a bit too close for comfort, the servo motor on the back of each petal will cause the flower to suddenly clamp shut.

The video after the break starts off with an in-depth look at the hardware that went into the project. An Arduino clone called the GRoboduino makes this project a lot easier since it has a bunch of extras on the board aimed at things like sensors and servo motors. The mounting technique for the petal-powering-servos is quite attractive, and we enjoy the Snapple lid (probably not the actual brand but you get the picture) which has been coated with yellow felt for the center of the bloom. The final look is normal enough to fit in with home decor, but it still has enough geek in it to melt our hacker hearts.

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