Armstrong the Robot Arm

After many failures, breaking wood, melting wires, and other disasters, I finally have a somewhat working robot arm. Built from balsa wood like his brother Woodrow, Armstrong uses 6 servo motors providing 4 degrees of freedom. He has a shoulder, elbow, wrist, and claws. Many of my failures were due to making his arm too long for the shoulder servo to support the weight and also using thin wood that cracked too easily. Even now, this working model feels like it could give up on me at any moment. I think the shoulder servo just isn't strong enough to properly support the weight of 4 other servos using the lengths of wood I used. But, nonetheless, he is working for now and it's been a long time since I've made an update here so I decided it's time for a video. In the future, I may consider rebuilding him, making his arms even shorter and providing more room to hide the electrical components so he doesn't look so messy.

**UPDATE**
I have uploaded the code for those who are interested in this project. The usual disclaimer is applied here, all of my arduino code is quite messy :)
Download link

Woodrow, In Control

I hooked up the Wii nunchuck to Woodrow so I can control him now. He can move forward or backward, and can turn in place left or right. I'm still in the process of tuning his walk. During my testing, the poor guy broke a leg and I had to patch him up. I may consider adding some sensors to him and make him autonomous. I'm also considering starting a new project, a robotic arm built with balsa wood and servos. Not sure what will come next quite yet.

Woodrow Making Strides

After some testing and code tweaking, I was able to get Woodrow to walk forward without falling over. He still needs some work to walk straighter, but progress has been made. Since this video, I've also added control with the Wii nunchuck and started working on turning and backing up. More videos to come once that's all worked out.

Woodrow's First Steps

Growing bored of working with wheels, I decided my next robot project should be a biped. This is much more challenging, but also much cooler. I started looking at different robot kits online and quickly came to the conclusion that they're all really expensive, like hundreds of dollars of expensive.. The one I liked most as a starter project was Lynxmotion's BRAT Jr.

They no longer sell the Jr though, and the regular BRAT costs a little over $300 bucks for the full kit, and still $200 just for the motors and hardware without the microcontroller and board. It comes with 6 servos that go for around $12 bucks each, so if you were to remove the costs of the servos, that's still over $100 bucks just for the metal and screws! I just feel like that's a rip off and didn't feel like buying the kit (at least not for now..). I decided that I would try to build my own replica of the BRAT Jr. using my arduino for the brains and cheapo balsa wood and hot glue. Not only is it a lot cheaper, but it looks pretty cool to have a wooden robot.  Here are some pics of the building process, keep in mind this is my first time ever doing anything like this..

It's definitely far from perfect, but it's a good start.  I built a basic walking program from scratch and after a little tweaking, I am able to get him to move forward successfully, though quite awkwardly.  It's ok, he's just learning how to walk and will hopefully improve with time and practice (and me fixing the code and adjusting the body).

Donuts the Drone

I decided to use a different base for the robot when I saw Walmart had cheap RC cars for about $10. I bought one of those, ripped the plastic top off of it, unhooked the motor wires, placed my Arduino and breadboard on top of it, and hooked the motor wires up to the H-bridge. This worked very well, all I had to do was change some code because now instead of using differential drive with 2 wheels, I was using rack and pinion steering with 4 wheels. This body is sturdier with better weight distribution, and with 4 wheels, it drives much better. A body, 4 wheels, and 2 motors for $10 bucks, not bad! Besides this reworking, I also fitted a servo motor with a wireless cam fastened on top. Using VLC, I am able to stream the live video feed from the camera onto my network. Using the VideoView control from the Android SDK, I am able to view this feed from my Droid while controlling the robot. Unfortunately, there's about a 5 second latency on the video stream on the Droid that I haven't been able to solve as of yet. I've been unable to find a solution to the problem, though others have experienced this grief as well. Anyhow, these major cosmetic changes to the robot warrant a new name for it. This new robot is named "Donuts", again thanks to Erin =)

**UPDATE** Since so many people have asked me for the code, I am sharing the Arduino and Android code here. The Arduino code is based on some older code that wasn't cleaned up so it's messy. Also, this was a good resource for me to learn how to get my Android app communicating with my Arduino via bluetooth. Thanks to all who have left comments, good luck on your projects!

Lemons v1.3, now Bluetooth enabled and with a horn!

I decided to bump up the version number by 0.2. 0.1 for adding remote control via Bluetooth, and 0.1 for having a kick ass horn! I added a Bluetooth serial modem to Lemons that can be purchased at SparkFun. Getting it to pair with my laptop was no problem, and I was quickly able to add code to Lemons that can listen for commands via serial. This resulted in a simple but fun start to remote control where I would type a key like 'w', and Lemons would move forward for one second. My goal was to have something more responsive however, and I wanted to have it on my Droid. So, I wrote my first Android application. I found this link to be quite helpful in setting Bluetooth up on the Android side. I wanted to have a touch screen interface that reminded me of the old remote controls I used to use for my RC cars when I was a kid. My plan was to simulate those vertical and horizontal joysticks using sliding seekbars, one horizontal and one vertical. Unfortunately, the Android SDK does not come with a vertical seekbar, but I found one on Google Groups that worked nicely. I also added buttons to toggle the lights on and off and to beep the newly added piezo buzzer I mounted towards the front of Lemons. My next step is to add a camera to Lemons and have the video feed back to my Droid.

Lemons v1.1, now with photocells

Erin has named the robot "Lemons". I think it is a fine name for him. For version 1.1, I moved the 4 AA batteries up to the front and placed them horizontally. This looks much nicer and puts some much needed weight on the tires to give them more traction (thanks for the idea Ed!). It was still veering to the right, so the only solution I could come up with for now was to simply give a bit more power to the right motor to compensate. I have also added two photocell antennae to the front. A photocell is a resistor that changes its resistance based on the amount of light it is receiving. So now, Lemons is able to sense light. Using this new found sense, I created an "autonomous mode" for him. If the Wii nunchuck is disconnected for a certain number of seconds, Lemons will switch to autonomous mode and read in the current light levels of his surroundings. He will then move forward until the light levels change. If it gets significantly darker or brighter, he will back up and turn left or right based on which of his antennae sensed the light change.

My First Robot, v1.0!

I read up on H-bridge ICs and controlling DC motors all last week and finally decided it was time to order the parts for my first robot. It's one of those things where I was nervous the whole time thinking "did I forget something?". Cus if I did, it would mean I would have to make a second order, pay a second shipping fee, and wait a second time for the parts. I didn't want to just buy a kit and build it. I really wanted to build something I feel I could call my own. Not that it's original at all, but it's my first and it works!

The robot uses a twin motor gear box to achieve differential drive, using an H-bridge IC to control the motors from an Arduino. The first version is controlled with the Wii nunchuck, since I've already interfaced with it previously and makes a handy controller. The cool thing is, I can use this robot as a base to continue building more advanced and interesting ones. My next project is an autonomous bot that will either run from darkness or run from light.

Here are some pics of the development process:

Here I'm testing the wiring for the H-bridge IC.

Here's the twin motor gearbox, disassembled.  Instructions in Japanese!

And here's the assembled gearbox.

After some programming, I got it running fairly well.  The biggest problem I see with it is that its alignment is off, veering to the right, and the friction for the wheels ain't so great.  Overall a success however!



As a reference for myself and for anyone else interested in building something similar, here's the parts list I ordered (I ended up not using the diodes since I didn't have room for them on my board and the H-bridge has them internally already anyways):

From SparkFun

Battery Holder - 4xAA Cube $1.95 1 $1.95
H-Bridge Motor Driver 1A $2.35 3 $7.05
Capacitor Ceramic 0.1uF $0.23 10 $2.30
Diode Rectifier - 1A 50V $0.14 20 $2.80
Toy Tires - Off Road $3.95 1 $3.95
Universal Plate Set $6.95 1 $6.95
Electrolytic Decoupling Capacitors - 10uF/25V $0.45 5 $2.25
Dual Motor GearBox $10.95 1 $10.95
Mini Photocell $1.50 4 $6.00
Ball Caster Metal - 3/8" $2.95 1 $2.95

My First Arduino Projects

I decided to take a break from working on the game to mix things up and learn some about microcontrollers, electronics, robotics, and the like. My ultimate goal is to create some kind of robot I can control with my Droid phone remotely using touch screen controls. I just think that'd be cool. But I'm totally new to this hobby, and as always it's baby steps first, so here are a series of little projects I've already done to learn some of the basics.

The neatest and hardest one is the Wii nunchuck mouse.



Before I got there, I had the Wii nunchuck controlling a servo motor and some LEDs.



This is a simple one using an RFID reader. This is the technology used when you see people hold a card or key fob up to a door to open it or when you tap your credit card on a sensor to make a purchase.



This project uses a photocell to sense how much light there is. The darker it is, the brighter the LED will be.



Pretty lights!

New blog

I decided to start over on this blog and focus on whatever hobbies/projects I got going on at the time. It's basically an online journal for me to document and share what I've learned and the progress I've made. I've got another similar joint blog I share with my friend Chris for the project we've been working on; a 2d side scroller xbox indie game I am developing in XNA and Chris is making the art for. That's over at fishhookcity.blogspot.com.