Category Archives: Uncategorized

Introducing Foambot

In my continuing quest to drive down the cost of grisbot, I’ve had to reconsider using acrylic. The material costs $3, and then on a good day the local hackerspace charges $18 to cut it. And then depending on the … Continue reading

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Test vs. Reality

On the right hand side of the photo is the ‘test bed’ that I use for robot programming. It consists of an Arduino and a couple of breadboards. The support platform is ‘Getting Started with Processing’ but any book of … Continue reading

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Five Things To Remember (Pun!) About Arduino EEPROM

EEPROM stands for Electronic Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory and is the place in chip memory where data can be stored in the Arduino/ATMega328 even after power down. This can be useful! The Arduino site has specifics on the EEPROM … Continue reading

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Grisbot Scratch Interface for Free-Form Mode

The idea behind free-form mode is that a user can design her own path, say on a sheet of paper, and then program the robot accordingly. Consequently, the programming page simply shows the waypoint icons lined up in rows and … Continue reading

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Grisbot Scratch Interface for Udrive

Here is the graphical user interface for U-drive (not U-turn as I said yesterday). To put the robot in U-drive mode, click on the U icon, and then go directly to the communications page. Do not bother with the scales … Continue reading

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Grisbot: U-Turn Mode

The idea is to once again program the robot by holding it up to the computer screen — but this time by analog rather than digital communications. (I call this U-Turn Mode because of the U on the screen, but … Continue reading

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Engineer Zero and the Lost Temple of Consumerism

A local mall had a flood a few years ago, and has never quite recovered. There’s a lot of empty space, which for me evokes a certain atmosphere of mystery and even a little adventure. Come, let us depart from … Continue reading

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LEDs and Resistors: A Cautionary Tale

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Grisbot Udrive

I’ve been encountering problems with implementing a hand-wave programming mode for grisbot, but along the way I came up with the following idea: how about a mode where the user holds the robot up to the screen and programs the … Continue reading

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Left and Right Blink Proximity Demo

Moore’s Law has been trumped, in that I have doubled the resolution of blink proximity in a single week. So what, you ask? Well, it means that the robot can now turn toward or away from obstacles. Or, even more … Continue reading

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