Even more updates Posted at: Tue, Jun 29th, 2010 | 6:16PM UTC By Josh Ashby

A few items of update. First off, TI has launched a new product, the MSP430 Launchpad.

The Launchpad is a $4.30 with free shipping dev board for TI’s MSP430 chip family. On the board there is USB which supplies power, and acts as the debugging emulator and the programmer for the chip, and then a nice 20 pin DIP socket for the MSP430 chips. The board breaks out all of the pins for the chip, and also has a spot for an external crystal. After a very frustrating, and long cursing at TI’s servers spurt, which lasted a good day as the Launchpad was so popular I finally got around to placing my order, however the backorder for the Board looks like I will have it around the end of July, start of August sadly. Hopefully I can find, and build a dev environment for the MSP430 on linux, seeing as there is a GCC port for it already all that is left is integrating it with Code::Blocks, and finding a way to upload the code to the MSP430.

Other goodies that I have received include Read more…

AVC ’10 Posted at: Sat, Apr 17th, 2010 | 6:48AM UTC By Josh Ashby

The Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition is TODAY! Read more…

BOB update Posted at: Wed, Mar 17th, 2010 | 4:55PM UTC By Josh Ashby

Half the time, something works, the other half of the time it doesn’t, and the other half of the time, it just goes up in smoke. As such was the case with my V1.5 Rev. 1 quad motor controller. Read more…

Revision 2 of Quad Low-side “Taco” Posted at: Wed, Mar 3rd, 2010 | 7:51PM UTC By Josh Ashby

So I finally got around to fixing a few things, and cleaning the board up, here is BOB’s newest working version of his motor controller board. Read more…

New Board, New Parts Posted at: Sat, Feb 27th, 2010 | 4:35PM UTC By Josh Ashby

So I finally got around to getting a board designed for Generation 3 electronics, but like everything else, being the first prototype board there were some things left out and other mistakes.

Also the Code has been updated, please check it out at: http://github.com/JoshAshby/Robotbob/tree/experimental

Read more…

Arduino and Code::Blocks Posted at: Sun, Dec 20th, 2009 | 2:41PM UTC By Josh Ashby

Been under the weather the past few days, so it’s been all coding while laying in bed.

First off, I’ve started to mess around with the Open Frameworks and I must say, it is amazing from the little I’ve touched. I’ve managed to make a simple GUI that has 4 buttons laid out in a d-pad style from a game pad. when you click on any circle it will light up, and when the corresponding key on the keyboard (a,s,d,w) is pressed that circle with light up also. Finally, when the circles light up, they write a byte to the serial port. This will probably later on become the new GUI for BOB.

Source Here

Along with this, the newer Arduino IDE’s do not support (or like to even play nice with) my avr iscp so I’ve had to resort to using avrdude, which isn’t bad by it’s self, but having to manually set up the project folders and copy the libraries and all that is a pain. Because I like the Code::Blocks IDE (which is what the Linux version of Open Frameworks uses also) I decided to make a project template for using the Arduino libraries. After many errors:

I finally got help from Reggie on freenode/#sparkfun and was able to get a working project that used the Arduino libraries in Code::Blocks:

I have a github repository for any templates I make for Code::Blocks.

Happy Holidays!

BOB Brochure Posted at: Sat, Oct 3rd, 2009 | 6:26PM UTC By Josh Ashby

Well, finally had some time off of school to get a new updated brochure for BOB, here it is: BOB Handout I hopefully to get some time to work on BOB soon, I got a single board P1 pc from my FIRST coach to mess around with and I hope to get it up and running with a linux system and on BOB.

I also got a logo for the Bouncing Off Bumpers project complete:

Robot Library Posted at: Fri, Aug 7th, 2009 | 1:47PM UTC By Josh Ashby

Well, I finally got around to writing my first library for C. The library’s for the arduino IDE, and it has the basic stuff to drive my robot around, go forward, go backward, stop, turn left, and turn right. You can find the code here: http://tinyurl.com/kmqem5 and BOB’s github repo. here: http://github.com/JoshAshby/Robotbob/tree/master.

Read more…

I2C Posted at: Tue, Jul 28th, 2009 | 1:41AM UTC By Josh Ashby

It’s the middle of the night and I just got my arduino i2c code to work, been working on it all day. All it does is the master reads the usb, then sends that data over the i2c bus, and the slave reads the data and if it is an ‘A’ then it lights up a led till more data comes through the lines. Enjoy: http://github.com/JoshAshby/i2c/tree/master

BOBv2 is finished Posted at: Mon, Jul 13th, 2009 | 6:57PM UTC By Josh Ashby

I finally got around to finishing BOB’s version 2 board, and the motor controllers, I’ll have a schematic of his whole board up after I make one, and I’ll see about making a video of him running soon. So heres what’s new on his board:

1. Thermal cut off: when the temp gets too high, as monitored by a thermistor, an op-amp (741) will trigger a transistor that the motor controllers data flows through, cutting off data to the mosfets and hopefully stopping him.
2. Improved mosfet control: the mosfets are being driven at the 10-12v range now, instead of the 5v on ver. 1, this means the mosfets (irf540N) will open more and allow more amps to flow to the motor and less heat be generated on the mosfets.
3. Flyback diode: i’ve added a flyback diode to each of the motor controllers to help with spikes from turning on and off the motor.

Read more…