Solar Cup

Solar Cup is a seven-month program that begins in the fall, in which high school teams totaling about 800 students build and race solar-powered boats at Lake Skinner, in Temecula Valley, learning about conservation of natural resources, electrical and mechanical engineering.... read more.

Arduino Theme Songs

The Arduino library came with many themes songs built in. I will post a video soon of them all.

Attempt of Motor Control

The chassis and gear box belonged to an old RC car that didn't work. Right now it has no input devices and can only run a simple forward backward, left right program.

TV BE GONE

So this device turns off all TV's around it. It works great! Ive managed to turn a lot of different TV's off and i haven't encountered one i cant.  This is called a TV B Gone. There is a tutorial in adafruit's website: http://www.ladyada.net/make/tvbgone/solder.html

Though they do sell a kit, I suggest buying the pcb and the IC only and using your own components if you have them. But if you don't have these parts, I think that the kit is the best way to go.

Motor Control with a SN754410NE

Thanks to the people at ArduinoFun, http://arduinofun.com/blog/2009/10/25/duel-motor-driver/, I was able to make the motor driver work. Here are a few pictures.

IR Camera Control

I used the C code on http://www.bemasher.net/archives/114 to trigger my Nikon camera remotely from my computer. I could work on this code to make something cool. Thank BeMasher!

New 4 Note Laser Harp

This is a new prototype of my laser harp. I let the beams shine through a colloid.

Laser Harp Video

Laser Harp With 3 "strings"

This is my laser harp. Just a prototype of a prototype.

Video will be added soon.

Laser Trip Wire With Speakers

The same thing but now when the laser is broken, an alarm goes off. 

Laser Trip Wire

So I made a laser trip wire for the Arduino.
I got the idea today since I went to the 99 Cents store and picked up 3 lasers.

Here are the pictures. When the laser sight is broken the LED turns on.

Work Bench Jealousy

This is the work room of a member of the arduino forums. Wow, this is epic. The work bench is huge, and the shelf seems to have everything! Must have taken months to collect all that.

Arduino Piano

My next project for the arduino will  be a small piano like device. I'm still a little fuzzy on how to do it, but probably in 2 weeks  I'll have a prototype.

Sentinel Video

This is the video of my robot.

Robot 2.1.2

This is my fully functional robot with its new circular base. It avoids walls and obstacles like a pro!

This robot just gets better and better.  Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

I also added an LED to the robot to show when it sees an obstacle. (not shown in picture)

New Base of Robot 2

This is what I'm up to in the next improved version of the robot. I'm making the base circular.

Version 2.1.1 New Steering

Well I decided to take off the front steering servo. I did this for power consumption and because it requires the 2 driving servos to push forward so it can function. The new way of turning is to have one of the wheels move in opposite direction of its partner. This is more efficient because no time is wasted going forward and it moves around faster.

With this new concept I can create a cylindrical shaped robot... R2-D2

Power Supply Problems

Well, With my Robot I ran into a few problems. This is actually very good news.
I can now improve my robot. The new robot will feature 4 battery packs. That will make it heavy but it will also improve speed, torque, and play time!
Currently I hooked up 2 of the driving servos to their own 4.8 volt battery packs. This helped a lot, but the steering servo and sonar are still using 5 volts each out of the Arduino which is only powered by a 9 volt battery.

Things don't function that well when the power source is low. I hope to improve the chassis by adding a better look and maybe make it enclosed. This will be V2.2.

I also improved the code that the robot runs on.

Robot Code Complete

Well this is what the V2.1 working robot looks like. Some added minor features have been added. The robot code is done and working. I just need an open space to let it out in the open. If you would like to see the code please contact me.

Robot V2 Completed

I finished the body of my robot. This is the new obstacle avoiding robot. It has turning, forward and backward movement and eyes! (The eyes are really ears.) Well, this is the cool new robot.
I know the front wheels are small, but there is a such thing as V3.

Total cost: worth it.

Now.... LET THE PROGRAM WRITING BEGIN!!

Forward Servo Control Robot

This is what the new robot I'm building will look like. It is a HUGE improvement from the old robot. 
As of this excact moment it only has forward movement, I am adding a sonar for obstacle avoidance.

The new robot will feature an Ultrasonic sensor and 2 more servos.

New Base of Robot

This is the new chassis of the robot I'm building. It is made from a material called Balsa. I bought it at a craft store. It is extremely light so it will be better than plastic.

Continueous Servos with Wheels

Well, today I bought 2 more servos. Even though they were 15 dollars, I think that it was a good deal. I modified them to be "full rotation" servos using this youtube video. I attached the tires from an old RC car. These will be the tires of my new and improved robot.

Motor Control

So far, my robot does not have any motor control. What I need is a H Bridge or a Motor Shield. That will allow me to regulate and inverse the power that goes to a DC motor. That means I can increase speed or change the direction of the motor rotations. So in theory, I can tell the robot "If there is an obstacle in front of you, reverse and change direction."

There is a link on amazon that shows a motor shield. Click here to see it.

Servo

This is the picture of the servo that I used. It is what controls the frontal steering of the robot car.

My First Robot

(updated image)

Hey. This is what my robot looks like. I built it on the car body I posted earlier. The robot moves forward using a DC motor and 3 AA batteries. The robot turns using a servo powered by the Arduino's on-board 5V power supply. The servo is told in which direction to turn by 2 LDR's (one on the right and one on the left).

The robot moves toward lights. As of right now it cannot avoid obstacles. The Ping ultrasonic sensor will be put in on Wednesday the 10th. 

Ping))) Ultra Sonic Distance Sensor

 This is the Ping))) Ultra Sonic Distance Sensor. I'm using it for my next build. It cost around 33 dollars at radio shack. The people there were actually very helpful. Some video tutorials on how to incorporate this sensor can be found in this video. 

Darkness Meter

This is a Darkness Meter. No, not the kind that that gauges the morality of an individual (LOST). But the kind that measures the amount of light in the ambiance. It works the same way as the "LDR and Arduino" project, but it has 3 LED's and 3 thresholds. I'm uploading a video of it in the next hour.


**Update. Click here for video. 

LDR and Arduino

This is a practical use for an LDR. The LED on the arduino turns on when there is low light and turns off when there is plenty. This could be useful as a night light.

Press "Read More " To copy the code:

RC Car Body

This is the body of a RC car. It cost about 6 dollars plus tax. It comes with 2 of these DC motors. Overall, I think the car was a great buy since the 2 motors already cost over 6 dollars. I plan to use the back wheels and motors of this car for an arduino project. I'm not sure when I'll get started on it, but I know it'll be after I get a hold of some servos.

Arduino Light Dependant Resistor

The image above shows a Light Dependant Resistor. It functions very simply. I used it with the Arduino to measure the ammount of light in my room. I didn't know until today that I had so many spare components lying around. I'm interested in the things a LDR can do, I think I'll try to create the robot featured on this website. Now all I need is to find an inexpensive servo. :]

Arduino Speakers

The image above shows my (messy) build of speakers. I used an old mp3 player speaker. The speaker plays music created by the Arduino. The first version of this can be seen in this youtube video. (The reason why the audio is low on the video is because I had a 10K resistor connected to the speaker.)

Arduino Button LED

The above picture depicts a button. The button is an addition to the LED program. When the button is pushed, the LED turns on and when it is released the LED turns off. The code can also be tweaked to make the button act like a light switch.

Arduino First Program LED

This is the Arduino Duemilanove. It is a micro controller. The image above is showing the Arduino lighting up a green LED. 

An Arduino can literally do anything if it is given the tools it needs. With enough know-how you can make it fly by giving it wings or you can make it talk by giving it a voice .