Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Robot Pics

I finished up my first robot and I took a couple pictures.












My robot is a photophobe (it doesn't like light), and it has two photocells on the front of its nose. This thing is made out of stuff that I just had around the house already (I am a geek. I have a lot of electronics lying around). Although the base looks like crap and uses a plastic bottle as a caster it actually is very sturdy. All the wiring is done with a Arduino microcontroller and a breadboard. I used the breadboard because the arduino doesn't have any sort of power bus and IMO doesn't have very sturdy wire connections. All of the earlier versions of the board look like they have headers (which would be perfect) but the one I have just has these wire inputs like you would find on a breadboard. They just don't hold wires very well. The code took some time to get right, but after about two hours I got it all working. The robot works well, considering the shodiness of the photocells that I used (I did mention that I found everything in my house right?). It was very exciting to see it work for the first time. If one of the sensors has more light then the other it will turn away from the greater light source. This code could be changed so that the robot goes after the greater light source. Actually that was originally the way the code was supposed to be, but I got the commands backwards when I was coding and once I started testing it I decided I liked it. All in all I am really proud of my little bot. I plan on building another more sophisticated bot soon that has a lot more room to expand and has more advanced sensors (and hopefully it will actually serve a purpose ;)

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Robots

So I started making a robot today. I was able to get two servos modified for continuous motion, I built two photocell sensors and I have most of the body of the robot built. I will try to get pictures up soon.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Compressor Finished

I finished up the compressor I was working on. I got the IC plugged in put it all in a housing and fired it up. Worked first time right out of the gate. Oh and speaking of gate, I still haven't gotten the trim pot adjusted perfectly on it so the sound is still kinda gated especially when you really try to wail on the guitar. Oh well I will fix it soon.




Saturday, July 5, 2008

Guitar FX Compressor

So I started working on a compressor for my pedalboard today. The design I'm using is based off of the MXR Dynacomp. The PCB I used is from the wonderful people at General Guitar Gadgets. They have great service and support so if you are looking for a PCB they are a great place to start.

The PCB came in today so I fired up the soldering iron and got to work populating the board. I will let the pictures do most of the talking.



The board with all of the resistors and jumpers soldered in.


Next the Film Caps.


The board fully populated (sans the IC). All I have to do now is do all of the offboard wiring and stick it in a box. I hope I can get that done tomorrow, because right now I'm tired of smelling burning solder.

Obligatory First Post

Here we go. My plan is to post updates on projects and designs that I am working on here. Ok done with that crap.