DIY Pipe Inspector Goes Where No Bot Has Gone Before

November 27, 2024 by Dan Maloney 7 Comments

If you think your job sucks, be grateful you’re not this homebrew sewer inspection robot.

Before anyone gets upset, yes we know what [Stargate System] built here isn’t a robot at all; it’s more of a remotely operated vehicle. That doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a very cool build, especially since it has to work in one of the least hospitable and most unpleasant environments possible. The backstory of this project is that the sewer on a 50-year-old house kept backing up, and efforts to clear it only temporarily solved the problem. The cast iron lateral line was reconfigured at some point in its history to include a 120-degree bend, which left a blind spot for the camera used by a sewer inspection service. What’s worse, the bend was close to a joint where a line that once allowed gutters and foundation drains access to the sewer.

To better visualize the problem, [Stargate] turned to his experience building bots to whip up something for the job. The bot had to be able to fit into the pipe and short enough to make the turn, plus it needed to be — erm, waterproof. It also needed to carry a camera and a light, and to be powered and controlled from the other end of the line. Most of the body of the bot, including the hull and the driving gear, was 3D printed from ABS, which allowed the seams to be sealed with acetone later. The drive tracks were only added after the original wheels didn’t perform well in testing. Controlling the gear motors and camera was up to a Raspberry Pi Zero, chosen mostly due to space constraints. An Ethernet shield provided connectivity to the surface over a Cat5 cable, and a homebrew PoE system provided power.

As interesting as the construction details were, the real treat is the down-hole footage. It’s not too graphic, but the blockage is pretty gnarly. We also greatly appreciated the field-expedient chain flail [Stargate] whipped up to bust up the big chunks of yuck and get the pipe back in shape. He did a little bit of robo-spelunking, too, as you do.

And no, this isn’t the only sewer bot we’ve ever featured.

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Pips Help Everyone Around The House

July 21, 2016 by Bryan Cockfield 10 Comments

Sometimes you start a project with every intention of using it in a specific way, or maybe your plan is to have a very well-defined set of features. Often, though, our projects go in a completely different direction than we might have intended. That seems to be the case with [Dave] and his Pips. These tiny devices were originally intended to be used by people with disabilities, but it turns out that they’re a perfect platform for this “Internet of Things” thing that we’ve been hearing so much about.

Built around the Bright Blue Bean microcontroller platform to take advantage of its low energy requirements, the Pips were originally intended to be placed around the house where they would light up to remind the user to perform some task. Once the button was pushed, the next Pip in the sequence would activate. While they are quite useful for people with cognitive or sensory impairments, they can also be used in a similar way to the Amazon Dash button or any other simple internet-enabled device. Especially when used in conjunction with a home automation setup, this device could be used in novel ways, such as automating your morning routine without having to add a weight sensor to your bed.

We are also pleased to see that all of the project files are available on GitHub for anyone looking to try this out. Its interesting when something that was originally intended to help out anyone with a disability finds a use somewhere else that it might not have originally been intended for. After all, though, the principle of using things in novel ways is kind of the entire basis of this community.

Two Dice, One 8-pin UC

September 27, 2011 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Mike Shegedin] makes full use of an 8-pin microcontroller with this ATtiny13-based dice project. With a maximum of six I/O pins (that includes using the reset pin as I/O) he needed a couple of tricks in order to drive 14 LEDs and use a momentary push button for user input. We’re certainly familiar with the concepts here, but it still took quite a while to figure out what is going on with the schematic that [Mike] posted.

You’ve probably already guessed that he’s using Charlieplexing to drive more LEDs than he has pins. But when we started looking at the layout we thought he had drawn the schematic wrong, because there are six pairs of LEDs where the two diodes in each pair a not reverse biased, but hooked up in parallel. That, plus the fact that his battery is hooked up backwards. After several minutes of study the light bulb finally clicked on. Dice add pips (the dots on each side of a die) in pairs with the exception of the center pip. That means that you only need to control four total lines for each die (three pairs plus the center pip). There’s two ways to handle this, you could use four rows and two columns with traditional multiplexing, or you can reverse bias the two sets of LEDs for each die and use Charlieplexing. The former is a bit easier to program, the latter saves you one I/O pin and meant that [Mike] didn’t need to use the reset pin as I/O.

This is a clever addition to the collection of dice projects we’ve seen like the battery-less die, and the ATtiny2313 powered dice.