Author Archives: engineerzero

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About engineerzero

Once and future engineer.

Grisbot Bill of Materials

How much do the materials of the robot cost? Costs not included: laser cutting service, switch, labor for servo conversion and pre-soldering (if any), hardware (ie bolts and nuts).

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Mini gris servo calibration mode

The robot ‘brain’ (aka ATMega328) needs to know how long the servos must rotate in order to properly execute moves and turns. Hence there must be a servo timing calibration mode, and a way to initiate the mode. I’ve toyed … Continue reading

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Moon Mission 2

A company called Golden Spike is planning to offer manned missions to the Moon by the end of this decade. Here is their graphic: Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration Here is a video essay … Continue reading

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More surgery on a servo

No, it didn’t crash. I had to disassemble mini grisbot in order to perform surgery on the right servo, whose centering had drifted so much that the wheel could not turn forward. To keep the potentiometer shaft from twisting (thereby … Continue reading

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Mini Grisbot in action

Preliminary test of my robot.

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Mini grisbot test status

I have completed screen-to-photocell calibration and control code transfer. Mini grisbot passes both with flying (or at least hopping and skipping) colors. The remaining test phase is to calibrate the servo timings to execute the path as shown on the … Continue reading

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2013: Year of the Raspberry Robot

My interest in the Raspberry Pi concerns its use as robot brains. I made the above chart to help me better understand where the Raspberry Robotics development process is heading. I’ll need an IDE on my laptop/desktop which can transfer … Continue reading

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Robot Sentry Duty

Obviously, there’s going to be course error buildup. I don’t think encoders would help that much. I’m thinking of navigation beacons, like so: (Maybe infrared? Hmm . . . . )

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Naked ATMega circuit layout

This is related to the previous entry and shows the circuit diagram and breadboard layout for an ATMega removed from the Arduino prototyping platform after being programmed. The wiring layout on the right isn’t mandatory, of course, but it does … Continue reading

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The Naked ATMega

Why take the ATMega328 chip off its happy home on the Arduino to sit naked on a breadboard? Because Arduinos cost $22 while the ATMega328 with Arduino bootloader runs about $1-2 plus a dollar for the support components and a … Continue reading

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