Current & future projects

Google Groups
1

Thought i’d put up a quick list of stuff i’m currently working on, see if
anyone else is interested! (they’re mainly robots)

Current:
Micromouse Maze Solving Robot
This is a robot designed to solve a 16x16 maze, running from a corner to the
center as fast as possible. i’ve been into micromouse for a long time now,
but never quite gotten to a competitive level, so this mouse will hopefully
get me there :slight_smile:

Quadruped Walking Robot
I bought a pile of servos years ago to make a hexapod with 2 degrees of
freedom per leg. I’ve now decided to change to a quadruped with 3dof per
leg, as it means it can move in any direction easily! This will be arduino
controlled, since i bought one to play with.

LED Mood lighting
Using some RGB LEDs, and an AVR-based lighting controller, make some nice
computer controllable lighting for my lounge.

USB Rotary Keyboard
This is going to be a controller for a jukebox PC, it uses a quadrature
encoder hooked up to an attiny45, using v-usb software USB stack to send
left / right / return keys. The hardware of the prototype is finished, just
gotta get the software up to scratch

Future:
Antweight fighting Robot
never really been into fighting robots (they’re rc cars with weapons, not
REAL robots), but fell in love with these after a demo at the UK MicroMouse
competition.

Quadrocopter
A remote control helecopter with 4 blades, probably arduino based, using the
software and designs from http://aeroquad.info

Big scary robot
hellz yeah!

CNC Lathe
I have a mini lathe, and want to convert to computer controlled and use it
with EMC2 from http://linuxcnc.org

CNC Mill
A mill, either home made or converted, for making robot parts. Also
controlled by EMC2

Arcade Cabinet
MAME Machine to play all those old videogames as they were meant to be
played :slight_smile:

Jukebox
Using a touchscreen, an itx motherboard, and a sonic-t mini amp, make a
plug-in touchscreen jukebox for playing my music throughout the house.
Maybe including multi-room audio.

Jees, thats a big list. Anyone else interested? Want to list your own
projects?

2

Thought i’d put up a quick list of stuff i’m currently working on, see if
anyone else is interested! (they’re mainly robots)

Current:
Micromouse Maze Solving Robot
This is a robot designed to solve a 16x16 maze, running from a corner to
the center as fast as possible. i’ve been into micromouse for a long time
now, but never quite gotten to a competitive level, so this mouse will
hopefully get me there :slight_smile:

Interesting, what strategy are you employing ? … Is it a right-hand wall
follower, or can it learn mazes ?

Quadruped Walking Robot
I bought a pile of servos years ago to make a hexapod with 2 degrees of
freedom per leg. I’ve now decided to change to a quadruped with 3dof per
leg, as it means it can move in any direction easily! This will be arduino
controlled, since i bought one to play with.

LED Mood lighting
Using some RGB LEDs, and an AVR-based lighting controller, make some nice
computer controllable lighting for my lounge

Always good :slight_smile:

.

USB Rotary Keyboard
This is going to be a controller for a jukebox PC, it uses a quadrature
encoder hooked up to an attiny45, using v-usb software USB stack to send
left / right / return keys. The hardware of the prototype is finished, just
gotta get the software up to scratch

Future:
Antweight fighting Robot
never really been into fighting robots (they’re rc cars with weapons, not
REAL robots), but fell in love with these after a demo at the UK MicroMouse
competition.

What are these things? (will google MicroMouse)

Quadrocopter
A remote control helecopter with 4 blades, probably arduino based, using
the software and designs from http://aeroquad.info

That sounds awesome…

Big scary robot
hellz yeah!

CNC Lathe
I have a mini lathe, and want to convert to computer controlled and use it
with EMC2 from http://linuxcnc.org

CNC Mill
A mill, either home made or converted, for making robot parts. Also
controlled by EMC2

Arcade Cabinet
MAME Machine to play all those old videogames as they were meant to be
played :slight_smile:

Someone at the meeting had one of these cabinets ‘lying about’ … might be
good to do one of these and either auction it or give it away for charity,
good publicity or to brighten up the space ? :wink:

Jukebox
Using a touchscreen, an itx motherboard, and a sonic-t mini amp, make a
plug-in touchscreen jukebox for playing my music throughout the house.
Maybe including multi-room audio.

I"m quite interested in this, my house is quite automated (but
heath-robinson-esque, using ethernet over power, wireless, upnp, dlna,
mythtv [you get the picture]) so I’m always looking for wys to tie things
together.

3

Current:
Micromouse Maze Solving Robot
This is a robot designed to solve a 16x16 maze, running from a corner to the
center as fast as possible. i’ve been into micromouse for a long time now,
but never quite gotten to a competitive level, so this mouse will hopefully
get me there :slight_smile:

Quadruped Walking Robot
I bought a pile of servos years ago to make a hexapod with 2 degrees of
freedom per leg. I’ve now decided to change to a quadruped with 3dof per
leg, as it means it can move in any direction easily! This will be arduino
controlled, since i bought one to play with.

Robots are cool!

LED Mood lighting
Using some RGB LEDs, and an AVR-based lighting controller, make some nice
computer controllable lighting for my lounge.

I worked for a company who used Microchip PICs, and LED room lights
was going to be the project I used to learn PIC programming. Then I
was made redundant :frowning:

USB Rotary Keyboard
This is going to be a controller for a jukebox PC, it uses a quadrature
encoder hooked up to an attiny45, using v-usb software USB stack to send
left / right / return keys. The hardware of the prototype is finished, just
gotta get the software up to scratch

Don’t quite understand, but sounds interesting.

Future:
Antweight fighting Robot
never really been into fighting robots (they’re rc cars with weapons, not
REAL robots), but fell in love with these after a demo at the UK MicroMouse
competition.

Quadrocopter
A remote control helecopter with 4 blades, probably arduino based, using the
software and designs fromhttp://aeroquad.info

Big scary robot
hellz yeah!

CNC Lathe
I have a mini lathe, and want to convert to computer controlled and use it
with EMC2 fromhttp://linuxcnc.org

CNC Mill
A mill, either home made or converted, for making robot parts. Also
controlled by EMC2

Making tools is good.

Arcade Cabinet
MAME Machine to play all those old videogames as they were meant to be
played :slight_smile:

Heh. I’ve done this.
I also have 2 other cabinets - one is completely empty, and the other
is a Jamma cabinet with a fighting game in it (possibly Mortal
Kombat), but the screen doesn’t work. I did say I’d donate one to ‘the
cause’. It would probably be the Jamma cabinet. I’d happily have both
of them for people to play about with. I’m not sure about the ‘giving
away’ suggestion - bear in mind that I’m currently out of work and
flogging things on eBay for my own benefit is a very appealing option!
But I could use the space so if someone could do something with one of
them, then that’d be fine, and if we needed to sell the result for
funds, then I guess that’s better than sitting in my flat not working.

Jukebox
Using a touchscreen, an itx motherboard, and a sonic-t mini amp, make a
plug-in touchscreen jukebox for playing my music throughout the house.
Maybe including multi-room audio.

Jees, thats a big list. Anyone else interested? Want to list your own
projects?

Well…

---------- Current

Digital 3D Camera

I’m obsessed with 3D, and have been taking 3D photos for about 20
years using various methods. I recently made a digital 3D camera by
linking two separate cameras together physically and electrically, so
they take two pictures simultaneously (one for each eye) which I
combine in Photoshop. My next stage is to combine the innards of the
two cameras into a single case, and then the stage after that is to
try and work out how to combine the two images in-camera.

Music Stand Light

A little hack - I’m currently making a light for a music stand by
hacking a solar powered LED torch

Telephone pulse to tone converter

I’m trying to convert an old American dial phone to work in the UK by
ripping the insides out, replacing them with the insides from a cheap
modern UK phone and then creating a board to count the pulses from the
dial and emit the required tones. Since I have no experience with
Arduinos, this will probably be the project I use to learn about them.

MAME Cabinet #2

As I mentioned above, I have an empty cabinet, and a spare 22"
monitor, and an old PC. I say this is a current project, but I’ve not
touched it for over a year!

---------- Future

Scanning Gigapixel Camera

Some guy online made a Gigapixel camera out of an old scanner and an
SLR lens. I have both of these things, and would love a Gigapixel
camera!

Retro Computing Projects

I have a large collection of retro computers, and am always interested
in related projects - especially Sinclair stuff. There are people on
the net who’ve made SD card readers for ZX Spectrums and Twitter
clients for C64’s and so on. All cool stuff.

These are just the main things - I have loads of other more nebulous
ideas. :slight_smile:
Oh, and blowing stuff up. I like that.

4

Current:
Micromouse Maze Solving Robot
This is a robot designed to solve a 16x16 maze, running from a corner to the
center as fast as possible. i’ve been into micromouse for a long time now,
but never quite gotten to a competitive level, so this mouse will hopefully
get me there :slight_smile:
I find this very interesting but never had a chance to look at it in
depth. Are the challenges mainly algorithmics or does propulsion and
grip factor into it? I’d like to sit down and have a chat with you
about this sometime.

Future:
Antweight fighting Robot
never really been into fighting robots (they’re rc cars with weapons, not
REAL robots), but fell in love with these after a demo at the UK MicroMouse
competition.
Oof! I used to build fighting robots and got quite used to people
saying they weren’t “real” robots :slight_smile: The challenge in the heavier
robots is mostly mechanical and electrical (not much electronic)
engineering so we get a lot stick from people who go for the AI side
of robotics. I found it really interesting because there weren’t any
standard parts or designs, we used whatever we could find and everyone
had a unique approach to it. I’ve given that up now, because I was
never very good at it, but I’ve still got my heavyweight (100kg) robot
if anyone wants to take a look. Antweights have very different but
still interesting challenges and they are a bit more practical.

CNC Lathe
CNC Mill
I’ve become really interested in fabricators recently - CNC mills and
stuff like RepRap. It’d be interesting to see what you can do with a
CNC mill if you get it going. Anyone else interested in building a
clanking replicator? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Clanking_replicator)

Stuff I’m working on at the moment:

  • Computer boot switches
    Fairly simple - rig up a set of switches on the front panel of a
    computer to select startup options like grub choices and initial
    applications. I’ve got the hardware for this done, I just need to get
    a custom grub build working that with recognise them.

  • Analogue instrumentation
    I have a massive old ammeter at work which is connected to an
    interface board to show the load average of my computer. I’m trying to
    work out how to use old pressure gauges and aircraft gauges, such as
    an altimeter to show free memory and things like that.

Other stuff I’d like to have a look at:

  • Long range RFID
    People have reported being able to read RFID tags in passports from
    several metres away - some people find that scary but I want to use it
    to my advantage. The RFID kits I’ve seen so far can only read at a few
    centimetres. I want to be able to put RFID tags in my keys, mobile
    phone, mp3 player and spanners and be able to tell where they are in
    my house just by wandering around with a detector.

  • Laser projectors
    I want to make some really fast, controllable mirrors, shine a laser
    at them and have a vector display appear on a wall. I’ve been thinking
    about hard disc voice coils for this, haven’t gone any further with it
    yet though.

5

Ahh plenty of stuff to get stuck into already here. I’m very much into
retro tech and the pulse to touch tone phone thing is very
interesting. I have an old BT mold rotary pulse phone in my home
office- Tis lovely - Although frustrating when you get a “Press one
now” set of options, so using this as an excuse to learn more about
arduino’s sounds good.

I have a MAME machine in my living room but no cabinet so a little
assistance in building one for my own selfish home use would be grand,
would definitely be up for building more though.

Home automation and jukebox style stuff is also very interesting to
me, I did have a mythTV based setup but it was just for messing around
(it only controlled one lamp :S )

Looking forward to the next meeting!On 8 July, 22:50, Tallscreen madstu...@googlemail.com wrote:

Current:
Micromouse Maze Solving Robot
This is a robot designed to solve a 16x16 maze, running from a corner to the
center as fast as possible. i’ve been into micromouse for a long time now,
but never quite gotten to a competitive level, so this mouse will hopefully
get me there :slight_smile:

Quadruped Walking Robot
I bought a pile of servos years ago to make a hexapod with 2 degrees of
freedom per leg. I’ve now decided to change to a quadruped with 3dof per
leg, as it means it can move in any direction easily! This will be arduino
controlled, since i bought one to play with.

Robots are cool!

LED Mood lighting
Using some RGB LEDs, and an AVR-based lighting controller, make some nice
computer controllable lighting for my lounge.

I worked for a company who used Microchip PICs, and LED room lights
was going to be the project I used to learn PIC programming. Then I
was made redundant :frowning:

USB Rotary Keyboard
This is going to be a controller for a jukebox PC, it uses a quadrature
encoder hooked up to an attiny45, using v-usb software USB stack to send
left / right / return keys. The hardware of the prototype is finished, just
gotta get the software up to scratch

Don’t quite understand, but sounds interesting.

Future:
Antweight fighting Robot
never really been into fighting robots (they’re rc cars with weapons, not
REAL robots), but fell in love with these after a demo at the UK MicroMouse
competition.

Quadrocopter
A remote control helecopter with 4 blades, probably arduino based, using the
software and designs fromhttp://aeroquad.info

Big scary robot
hellz yeah!
CNC Lathe
I have a mini lathe, and want to convert to computer controlled and use it
with EMC2 fromhttp://linuxcnc.org

CNC Mill
A mill, either home made or converted, for making robot parts. Also
controlled by EMC2

Making tools is good.

Arcade Cabinet
MAME Machine to play all those old videogames as they were meant to be
played :slight_smile:

Heh. I’ve done this.
I also have 2 other cabinets - one is completely empty, and the other
is a Jamma cabinet with a fighting game in it (possibly Mortal
Kombat), but the screen doesn’t work. I did say I’d donate one to ‘the
cause’. It would probably be the Jamma cabinet. I’d happily have both
of them for people to play about with. I’m not sure about the ‘giving
away’ suggestion - bear in mind that I’m currently out of work and
flogging things on eBay for my own benefit is a very appealing option!
But I could use the space so if someone could do something with one of
them, then that’d be fine, and if we needed to sell the result for
funds, then I guess that’s better than sitting in my flat not working.

Jukebox
Using a touchscreen, an itx motherboard, and a sonic-t mini amp, make a
plug-in touchscreen jukebox for playing my music throughout the house.
Maybe including multi-room audio.
Jees, thats a big list. Anyone else interested? Want to list your own
projects?

Well…

---------- Current

Digital 3D Camera

I’m obsessed with 3D, and have been taking 3D photos for about 20
years using various methods. I recently made a digital 3D camera by
linking two separate cameras together physically and electrically, so
they take two pictures simultaneously (one for each eye) which I
combine in Photoshop. My next stage is to combine the innards of the
two cameras into a single case, and then the stage after that is to
try and work out how to combine the two images in-camera.

Music Stand Light

A little hack - I’m currently making a light for a music stand by
hacking a solar powered LED torch

Telephone pulse to tone converter

I’m trying to convert an old American dial phone to work in the UK by
ripping the insides out, replacing them with the insides from a cheap
modern UK phone and then creating a board to count the pulses from the
dial and emit the required tones. Since I have no experience with
Arduinos, this will probably be the project I use to learn about them.

MAME Cabinet #2

As I mentioned above, I have an empty cabinet, and a spare 22"
monitor, and an old PC. I say this is a current project, but I’ve not
touched it for over a year!

---------- Future

Scanning Gigapixel Camera

Some guy online made a Gigapixel camera out of an old scanner and an
SLR lens. I have both of these things, and would love a Gigapixel
camera!

Retro Computing Projects

I have a large collection of retro computers, and am always interested
in related projects - especially Sinclair stuff. There are people on
the net who’ve made SD card readers for ZX Spectrums and Twitter
clients for C64’s and so on. All cool stuff.

These are just the main things - I have loads of other more nebulous
ideas. :slight_smile:
Oh, and blowing stuff up. I like that.

6

Interesting, what strategy are you employing ? … Is it a right-hand
wall follower, or can it learn mazes ?

Its designed to be a maze solver, mapping out the maze then running as
fast as possible from the start to the finish. Now the hardware is
pretty much there, I’m going to first program it as a non-contact left
hand wall follower (since thats far easier, and will help me get my PID
loops tuned and sensors properly calibrated.

Bob

7

Thought i’d put up a quick list of stuff i’m currently working on, see if
anyone else is interested! (they’re mainly robots)

Current:

**USB Rotary Keyboard
This is going to be a controller for a jukebox PC, it uses a quadrature
encoder hooked up to an attiny45, using v-usb software USB stack to send
left / right / return keys. The hardware of the prototype is finished, just
gotta get the software up to scratch

This looks really interesting, but I don’t entirely know what you mean - is
this taking an existing 105-key keyboard and setting the triggers for the
keys in a circle, some kind of chorded keyboard, or like a rotary telephone
style with multiple hits on the same trigger for a different key like with
pre-predictive text entry?

Future:
**

Jukebox
Using a touchscreen, an itx motherboard, and a sonic-t mini amp, make a
plug-in touchscreen jukebox for playing my music throughout the house.
Maybe including multi-room audio.

Would something like Squeezecentre or MythTV help with the jukebox? Will the
multi-room features use wifi or wired ethernet? Do you need touchscreen, or
would an LCD panel and buttons give you enough control? I’ve got an EEEPC
701 which I was going to make into a MythTV machine, but if I can do
something more useful with it, then that would be great.

Jees, thats a big list. Anyone else interested? Want to list your own

projects?

Giant robots notwithstanding, I really want to build a chorded keyboard -
possibly using the GKOS template? The FizzPop group are talking about
chorded keyboards at the moment, and I’ve passed on some information about
the GKOS system, and I’m really interested to see where they go with it.

Jon

8

Aha! Wondered what you were talking about. Had to look up “chorded
keyboard” on wikipedia.

I remember when the Microwriter first came out, and Judith Hann
demonstrated it on Tomorrow’s World, before dieing a death (the
device, not Judith).
I didn’t realise there’d been a resurgence of interest, although it
seems obvious now I think about it.