PWM Fan Controller

Used Adafruit’s M0 feather proto board and their OLED feather wing to build a quick PWM fan contoller.  The M0 version was needed for the faster CPU to be able to drive the required PWM frequencies.  To be fair you can probably find a cheaper solution already built on the internet, but where’s the fun…read more

Hawk DIY Chassis v0.5

This project is do-it-yourself 3D printable chassis.  It is built around standard 2020 frame construction used in DIY 3D printers and CNCs.  The design files are available online at Thingaverse, thing:4297391.   Note, this is a derivative work, the 2020 beams are based on other designs.  The new parts were the brackets and panels.  Where possible…read more

Digital Scoreboard, Revisited

After almost a year sitting on the bench, we did some more work on the digital scoreboard.  After some paint, a bit of mechanical hacks and software bug fixes we have a working scoreboard.  It can be controlled from smartphone or even smartwatch using BluetoothLE.  It runs off 4 D-cell batteries, DC adapter or USB…read more

Water Meter 1.1

There was an Arduino Yun sitting around that needed a home so we adapted our water meter to this powerful little network board.  It’s unfortunatel that the Yun is discontinued as it’s really a good fit for this type of project.  It can be powered from ethernet, PoE.  And being able to get to the…read more

Cubic Revisited

WORK IN PROGRESS Cubic is a robot project that is making slow progress.  It’s been an experiment putting some different projects together.  It has two robot arms built with a mix of Dynamixel AX-12A and XL-320 servos and controlled with a OpenCM board.  The base is a Sainsmart robot tracks kit.  The motors are currently…read more

Pocket PiGRRL

We made one of the Adafruit’s Pocket PiGRRL kits.  It’s a really rewarding project, however it does involve a significant  amount of soldering.  When done you are treated to having an awesome handheld game platform. For more information see Adafruit’s website. Pocket PiGRRL (https://learn.adafruit.com/pocket-pigrrl/overview)  

AIY Vision Kit

Had a good unboxing experience with Google’s AIY Vision Kit. https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/ The project uses a board with the Movius artificial intelligence coprocessor connected to a Raspberry Pi Zero W. The camera images are processor using their TensorFlow framework to recognize the emotions on faces. Very simple kit to get going with a lot of amazing…read more

Wall-E Display

Used Adafruit’s Feather TFT to create a replica WALL-E display module.  

Labnation’s Smartscope

Doing some I2C debug on an Arduino and OpenCM9.04c boards. Loving Labnation’s smartscope that plugs into a PC/tablet https://www.lab-nation.com/  

Digital Scoreboard

This is a prototype of a digital scoreboard. It’s uses several 8×5 NeoPixel matrixes from Adafruit.  The Arduino Uno is used to provide a game time and scores which is controlled by phone via Bluetooth.  It’s definitely an early version which needs polish and cost reduction, but good for the backyard basketball hoop.    

Sumo Bots

We built three robots for the upcoming Sumo Bot contest.  Two were the Pololu Zumo kit and one from Parallax.  Other than wheels and a paint job there haven’t been many mods that have stuck. We experimented using an Intel Edison board to control the Pololu Zumo but library compatibility problems with the sensors had…read more

Improved Nunchuck Control

I tweaked the way the Wii nunchuck controls the Poppy Jr.  The motion is now smoother.  The motor selection now includes changing the right-left control between the bottom motor and the elbow motor.  The trick was rather than mapping the position of the Wii joystick to a position of the servo, the servo was moved…read more

Poppy Ergo Sr – Revisited

Poppy Ergo Sr got cleaned up a bit.  It’ all red now and the wiring is more compact.  The display shows the status of the Wii nunchuck, the servo selected and the calculated coordinates. The movements are smoother although it doesn’t have all the improvements we are making on it’s little sibling.  

Little Screens

We’ve been playing with some small OLED displays from the folks at Adafruit.  The color screen has a built-in microSD card for reading bitmaps.  The 128×32 monochrome screen uses the SSD1306 which has a great clear screen function allowing simple animations, like flying toasters.  It probably looks better on the 128×64 version but it seems…read more

Poppy Ergo Sr.

The AX-12A robot arm just wasn’t going as well as desired, so I decided to start over.  Using the servos  and frames designs from Robotis’ Bioloid we assembled an arm configured similar to the Poppy Ergo Jr project.  The controller is a OpenCM9.04C, with a 16×2 character LCD for data output and a Wii nunchuck…read more

Lynxmotion Viper Sumo Robot with 2.8″ TFT Touchscreen

Finally put together Lynxmotion’s Viper kit.  The chassis and wheel provide a nice starting point.  For our outfit used  Adafruit motor shield on a Arduino Uno.  We originally started with a Arduino 101 but ran into some library incompatibilities and switched to Uno.  Lynxmotion has some line detectors that fit nice in the chassis and…read more

AX-12A Robot ARM w/ LCD and Nunchuck

Made some tweaks to the AX-12A robot arm.  First, was swapping out the CM-700 for a OpenCM9.04c controller board.  This allow programming through the Arduino IDE.  Next a 16×2 LCD display was added to provide some information of the arm in operation.  Finally a Wii nunchuck as add to control the arm. With the Arduino IDE…read more

Dancing Jr’s

Refreshed from the previous post about the STEM expo project.  It took them a better part of the afternoon to get the robot assembled.  The following weekend they programmed up a series of poses. It was great to watch their reaction when their creation first moved. The code was simplified further so it was really…read more

Poppy Ergo Jr with OpenCM9.04

Created a simplified version of the OpenCM program to run a Poppy Ergo Jr -based robotic arm.  This is being used by our 1st grade daughter and friend at the school STEM expo.  There is just three lines of code they need to change to create new robotics poses.  It’s a great educational tool to…read more

Robot Sumo Contest and Demonstration

Robot Sumo Contest and Demonstration April 24, 1-3pm Los Altos Library community room Address: 13 S San Antonio Rd, Los Altos, CA 94022 Phone:(650) 948-7683   More details will be posted on the Contest webpage: https://primorobots.com/robot-sumo-contest/     Examples of kits available https://www.pololu.com/product/2510: $99 assembled / ~$80 for kit https://www.parallax.com/product/27400: $129 assembled required / $229 full kit…read more