I made an LED blink!

[zourtney]

Only half of it was intentional. But yeah. So what are you going to make?

[Nick]

Space robots. Or maybe just a RC car with too much logic on board for its own good. Then start adding telemetry until you can navigate it from your phone.

[zourtney]

Space Robot 5
Is he alive?
So very alone
So far from home

I couldn't resist.

Have any old junk laying around that needs automated? I keep trying to think of useful things, but I am not coming up with much (except super high-level stuff I have no hopes of being capable of building myself).

[Nick]

Using servos and stepper motors, making complex things are easier then you might think.

[zourtney]

I know. School has tainted me into thinking I am unable to do something which I am actually capable of doing. Much like the much-unused Calculus classes can halt a programmer's schooling, electrical theory halted my interest in hardware. Or perhaps it merely suspended my interest.

It's a skill I'd like to have, but and not sure I want to go through all the schooling

[Nick]

You can do allot with only a superficial knowledge of whats actually going on. Some of the servos and what not have a kinda complicated interface, but nothing more complicated then making the LED change brightness like I did. Its all done using pulses of different widths. Or with stepper motors, pulses at different intervals (I think) Just keep count and you know (roughly) what position the motor is in. The servo will always be where you tell it to be. And they have motors that will 'tell' you what position they are in. So much cool stuff. All I can think of though is ways to make it pan/tilt cameras.  

[zourtney]

Apparently this topic died. Maybe we were posting about random electronics projects elsewhere...anyway, sometimes I want to play with some lower level stuff.

Do any of those boards come with USB controllers? Or built in Bluetooth? I think I'd be "fun" to make a Wiimote controlled something. I keep thinking about picking up one of these, a Bluetooth dongle. Not that I'll have time to play with it...

[Nick]

The project is not dead! I just got the last few little resistors and such that I was missing and have been assembling a few things on beadboards. I just have little time that I am not at work, not busy and not wanting to sleep.

If you want a USB host controller then it gets a little more costly. Same with bluetooth. You need a bit of processing power to start controlling any USB devices it seems.... BUT, it has been done. You can make things as USB/bluetooth guest devices easily enough. The USB route is easiest and many of the development boards come with a USB port on them.

The usb port is just a serial port as far as the MC is concerned, and you can use it to send it commands. Same with bluetooth, its just a serial port. But there is allot of potential for sending commands to the controller this way.

Also, it is relatively easy to get a micro-controller onto Ethernet. But WiFi is a little more costly. Unless you go the used WiFi router option.

Annnnnd, there is now a board (a slightly beefy one in terms of these things) that you can program with C#. But its all run time interpreted. And the parts are a little more complex then the others. Making it difficult to build a finished project that does not include the $30 dev board.

Part of why I have been looking at the mini x86 and arm things is because of their USB host powers. Cameras, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, temp sensors and so much more can easily be attached to then, for little cost, if you have that nice little universal serial bus.  But the simple (and crazy cheap ones) cant interface with any of that. The more complex (and still very reasonably priced) ones that can interface with those get rather out of my league fairly quickly.

So for simple devices that need to act upon the input from a sensor or serial commands, AtMel and PIC have got you covered. For more complex devices that you want to attach inexspensive USB devices to, you have to go with more costly boards (talking $100 rather then $25 -$30.)

But... there is always the post-consumer waste method of doing things. Using mildly dated WiFi routers that happen to posses USB host ports (think wireless printer sharing and network storage.) These are built to be as slim on the components as possible, but can be had for cheap. People have compiled drivers for webcams, printers, usb mass storage and other things. A small amount of research had told me that a USB GPS should be doable as its just a USB to serial device anyway. And if your USB device had drivers for the 2.4 kernel then you should be able to get it to work on any router that is supported by DD-WRT and has USB host ports on it (not the USB guest ports that allow it to act as a modem.)

To long? Didn't read? Want a summary?

• Cheap controller - Serial input and simple sensors. Can do digital to analog. Can to pulse width modulation. Good for adding extra functionality to the middle ground option.
• Expensive controllers (powerd by linux! or Windows of some sort) - Cost a little more, but you can do literally anything with them that you can find hardware for.
• Middle ground - High powered WiFi routers (more linux!) - Can do anything you can find drivers for. Good way to control the cheaper controllers over the network. Have to add your own serial ports.

[zourtney]

Overwhelmingly awesome! What should we make?

[Nick]

Something with cameras and motors. Solar charging camera rover with some kind of WiFi? Either need an ethernet camera for that, specialized video processing cips or a heavier duty system with some real memory to handle the imaging. With real CPU and memory we could even try some computer vision/navigation as opposed to just a remote controlled unit. Not that there is anything wrong with a remote controlled unit. After all, the Mars rovers were mostly remote controlled (for movement.) I have a pile of small solar cells!

Or something that does a simple task in an overly complex manner! A good example of that is the Ethernet attached hydration monitor for house plants

Fighting robots made of old printer parts?

Table top version of Snake made with an LED matrix?

Super universal remote? Control your TV from your computer? 

Here are a bunch.

My problem is finding applications for things. Like, it would be easy to build a simple little unit to launch a bunch of rockets all at once, but I have no use for that after making it. Unless I have an aircraft to launch them off.....

[zourtney]

I think we should all spend the weekend watching 80s movies for inspiration!

Yeah, I keep trying to think of useful things I could create, but don't come up with much. I still like the idea of camera-driven tone generation though...I don't know why!

[Nick]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IqMbgHpAv4&NR=1

Bullet counter! That is one useful project that would use micro controllers.

[zourtney]

Is that the accelerometer-based one I saw a link to on the gawkers the other day? I'm not exactly in the best video watching place. It's an interesting idea, though not very necessary. Which reminds me, we still haven't laid the smackdown on those targets, like we were talking about a few months ago. We should!

[Nick]

Defiantly should!

I don't know if it was a Gawker or not, I saw it on Reddit. It looks simple enough to construct, just a (very small) micro controller and some sensors/buttons.

[zourtney]

Could double as a pedometer, now that I think of it. Which would be interesting...if I walked more than 100 paces a day

Eve and I are going to try and sight in her scope this afternoon, if the weather holds out. Come along! (if you're not working)