s1axter posted on Tue. May 22nd 2007 at 10:29 PM PST
Geeksinside.com loves contests; we’ve posted a bunch before, mostly for design competitions. The latest contest I came across was posted yesterday by ArsGeek ( http://www.arsgeek.com/ ). They are giving away a Flip Video Camcorder in a comment contest ( http://www.theflip.com/http://www.theflip.com/ ). All you need to do is post a comment on the site and you are entered. If you have blog, post an article (Kinda like this one :-P) and you get another two entries. I like ArsGeek so figured what the hell.
The specs on the camcorder are 1 Gb flash memory for 60 minutes of video, MPEG-4, 640x480, 30 FPS, built in USB 2.0 connector, built-in mic, and TV out for when you visit your parents who don’t have a computer on the TV. Not too bad for $99 at Best Buy, even better if you win it free!
s1axter posted on Sat. May 19th 2007 at 08:18 PM PST
Well Maker Faire 2007 ( http://makerfaire.com ) for Firewire and I is done and what a show it was! There were tons of phenomenal projects and hacks on display. I really like old school computers and hacks, and there were a bunch of them! One of my favorites was the “Retro gaming hacks” booth with the guys who hacked the Atari 2600 into a windows driven arcade emulator. They had their Atari case mod along with an Atari Flashback 2 modded to accept old Atari game cartridges and Ultra SCSIcide, a homebrew game for the 2600 written back in 2001. There is a really large base of homebrew console hackers out there, if you want some more information check out http://www.atariage.com/index.html . Another retro DIY project on display was the Magic-1 Homebrew CPU computer. This computer is made from over 200 mostly wire-wrapped 74LS and 74F TTL chips! Not only is the computer system TTL but the CPU is all TTL, no 8080 or 8088 I was blown away! http://homebrewcpu.com has info on the Magic-1 and if you feel like playing with a TTL computer, when Magic-1 gets home you can telnet into http://magic-1.org and play games directly on it!
Along with personal projects, a bunch of companies had booths at the Faire. Of course Microsoft was there showing people how easy VB is (wo-hoo!). One company we ran into was SparkFun electronics http://www.sparkfun.com . For my senior design lab at school we used the SparkFun BlueSMiRF serial Bluetooth adapter to add wireless serial to a mobile robot retriever. I highly recommend the BlueSMiRF if you want a quick replacement for serial for Bluetooth. Anyway, SparkFun had a really cool NES controller, it was about 5ft long and 3ft wide and required two people to play. It was really entertaining watching people coordinate playing Mario 3 :-P. Along with some pics of the controller and wall mounted Tetris game, we got some free shirts, w00t loot!
Firewire and I also got some cool loot from an area computer recycling group who had tons of cables and electronic machines in a “U-Pull-It” pile. There’s nothing like dozens of people sifting through a pile-o-junk looking for a useable cable/part. Firewire also got to see the steam powered RC tank he was going on about in the last post.
The biggest surprise of the Faire was the talk by Steve Wozniak. I’ve always held Woz in the highest regard, and it was great hearing his talk. A brilliant computer engineer Woz designed the original Apple computer and was one of the main keys to Apple’s initial success. Check out Woz’s Wikipedia entry for more on this amazing engineer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak
I have pictures from the Faire however they are stranded on my camera until I get home tomorrow so look for an update!
firewire posted on Wed. May 16th 2007 at 09:15 PM PST
So s1axter and I are going to Maker Fair this weekend. We are driving 500+ miles up to San Mateo Fairgrounds Friday the 18th and then driving home Sunday to go back to work on Monday. Yah its gonna be one hell of a weekend. Build, craft, hack, play, MAKE; that's the Maker spirit and I am sure we will see a lot of it.
There are going to be things like this sick freakin steam turbine RC tank. I mean seriously thats ridiculously crazy. You have gotta check this thing out. We will let you know more when we get back. If you're bored you definitely should check it out.
s1axter posted on Tue. May 15th 2007 at 07:31 PM PST
Yet another product of going to the Robotics meetings in Fullerton is buying cool stuff from the many electronics and robotics stores in the area. Last weekend I swung by the Orvac Electronics and Tin Man Robotics ( http://www.orvac.com/ & http://www.tinmanrobotics.com/ ) stores and dropped some cash for parts. The loot included a twin DC motor gearbox, wheels, some SN754410E h-bridges, some cap and resistor refills along with other misc stuff that has slowly been depleted. The resulting monstrosity from the purchases is a little bot named ‘Hookbot’.
This is pretty much my first foray into mobile platforms; not counting senior lab or failed attempts in the basement years ago. The bot is controlled from a PIC16F872 using the SN754410 quad half-h drivers for power to the drive system. The gearbox is one of those Chinese imports made from plastic with a hex-bar axle, geared down to 203:1. I really do miss having a garage or basement with tools to make a drive system, but hey, a simple one for like $10 who can complain? The name hookbot is because I used the hook from a coathanger as the front skid. (Hey, use what you have right ;-) )
The code for the PIC was written in assembly using MPLAB from Microchip. I have to say MPLAB is a cool program with lots of tools for debugging the code on PC rather than on MCU. If you are looking to get into PIC programming take a look at it, and also at Bob Blick’s parallel programmer http://www.bobblick.com/techref/projects/picprog/picprog.html .
Right now the code just runs the bot in a demo pattern so I could start tweaking out the motors. I uploaded the source for anyone who wants to take a look at PIC assembly, http://geeksinside.com/files/hookbot.asm and also have some pics below.
Enjoy, I know I will making it roam around the apartment.
s1axter posted on Mon. May 14th 2007 at 10:18 PM PST
Saturday I went to the May meeting of the Robotics Society of Southern California. One of the presentations was of a really awesome piece of software RoboRealm http://www.roborealm.com . This application is amazing! The RoboRealm website explains it as:
“RoboRealm® is a powerful robotic vision software application for use in computer vision, image processing, and robot vision tasks. Using an easy to use point and click interface complex image analysis and robot control becomes easy!”
The presentation was done by one of the main developers of the application, Steven. This app does it all, edge detection, RGB filtering, object tracking, VB scripting, image stabilization, peripheral control, speech recognition using Microsoft Speech API and more. RoboRealm runs on numerous versions of Windows and has API hooks and sockets for cross platform applications.
As a demonstration of the power of the application, Steven used a USB foam missile launcher one member had, and a single line of VB script to make a tracking missile system! The download from the site is only 1.5megs, runs right from the directory and is easy to use. I was blown away by this software, and best of all….it’s free, as in beer.
s1axter posted on Mon. May 14th 2007 at 09:37 AM PST
Just a quick update about the site. Nothing has been posted since last Wednesday and I really apologize for that. After the quick one night style modification I started to work on the code base for GI, make it more efficient, get comments working again, etc. Since I started that I kinda forgot to post. However, have no fear, I plan on posting some cool stuff tonight and tomorrow; a really awesome robotics tool and a personal bot project I concocted Sunday, so check back!
doomerz posted on Wed. May 9th 2007 at 03:23 PM PST
Spring Final Projects should be due now! Which means a ton of projects to show!
One that I just came across is called Air Jam from Cornell's ECE 476 Microcontroller Design class:
The Air Jam is a wearable apparatus that lets you play the guitar without one. They were limited to one SDK-500 Dev. board and several FreeScale sensor boards. This project cost them $40.75.
ArsGeek Video Recorder Comment Contest
S1axter's Tech Log of Crazy Stuff
Geeksinside.com loves contests; we’ve posted a bunch before, mostly for design competitions. The latest contest I came across was posted yesterday by ArsGeek ( http://www.arsgeek.com/ ). They are giving away a Flip Video Camcorder in a comment contest ( http://www.theflip.com/http://www.theflip.com/ ). All you need to do is post a comment on the site and you are entered. If you have blog, post an article (Kinda like this one :-P) and you get another two entries. I like ArsGeek so figured what the hell.
As promised here are some pics from this weekend at Maker Faire. Enjoy.
Well Maker Faire 2007 ( 
Saturday I went to the May meeting of the Robotics Society of Southern California. One of the presentations was of a really awesome piece of software RoboRealm 
Just a quick update about the site. Nothing has been posted since last Wednesday and I really apologize for that. After the quick one night style modification I started to work on the code base for GI, make it more efficient, get comments working again, etc. Since I started that I kinda forgot to post. However, have no fear, I plan on posting some cool stuff tonight and tomorrow; a really awesome robotics tool and a personal bot project I concocted Sunday, so check back!
Spring Final Projects should be due now! Which means a ton of projects to show! 
