Author Archives: engineerzero

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About engineerzero

Once and future engineer.

Custom slider controls in Scratch

To acquire user input for the Scratch version of Grisbot’s computer interface, I’m using slider controls. In the above example, I’ve made a ‘slider icon’ in the form of a red ‘I.’ Position the mouse over the icon and hold … Continue reading

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Making a GUI for a program in Scratch

The above screen shot shows the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for Scratch. On the left, the Scratch IDE displays a palette of programming blocks. In the middle are the programming blocks I attached to the sprite I created for incrementing … Continue reading

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Grisbot in Scratch Challenge Screen

The first thing you have to do when creating a program is draw the user interface. This is actually pretty simple in Scratch, because you can simply draw an interface in a painting program and then load the graphics file … Continue reading

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Having a Product

One day Steve Jobs was given a presentation by Apple engineers on the status of a major project. He listened, frowned, and replied, “We still don’t have a product.” That’s the issue that has been haunting me the past couple … Continue reading

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Programming ATMega328 with Arduino platform

In theory, it’s possible to program the ATMega328 while it’s off the Arduino platform. Simply connect the Rx, Tx, GND, 5V and reset pins, and you’re in business. Well, it didn’t work for me and in the process I realized … Continue reading

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Rewiring the robot

BEFORE: AFTER: The robot simply stopped working. I had to strip everything down to the breadboard, then build back up again. Now it seems to be working once more.

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Assembly line for robots

We hear all the time about robots on the assembly line. Well, here is an assembly line for robots. As my experience as a temp taught me, every assembly line begins with bins full of parts. In this case, the … Continue reading

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Amazon ships me a 99.6% empty box

Wow, Amazon sure shipped me a big box today! Funny, I don’t remember ordering anything that big. Let’s take a look inside . . . . Well, there appears to be a lot of filler material. So I’ll take that … Continue reading

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Using LEDs as Test Servos

I fully intended that I would complete all software testing before I removed the ATMega chip from the Arduino even once. However, as I test the software, I’ve had to swap out the ATMega chip from the robot back to … Continue reading

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Programming the servo calibration procedure

Sub program, sub routine, function, procedure — it seems like every programming language has a different name for ‘blocks of code.’ Well, now I need to write a block of code for the servo calibration procedure. So first I drafted … Continue reading

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