I am ShadowLord» Projects

Mini Vox Robot Hacking

May 9th 2010

2 comments
Yes, I went to Radio Shack today. And, yes, I will still call it Radio Shack. And, yes, sometimes you need a quick electronics fix. I get most of my stuff online these days.

Radio Shack had the Erector Spykee Mini Vox robot on sale for $10. The Mini Vox takes voice commands and makes the robot move, talk, dance, and even fire a “laser.” The box says, “Ages 7+” – I fit that category. The box also says, “Some assembly required.” It should have said, “Some de-assembly required.”

Mini Vox Voice Controlled Robot

While playing with the demo model at the store, I realized that I could reuse the voice commands to set inputs on a microcontroller.

The voice commands go something like this:

“Mini Vox”

Robot beeps

“Forward”

Robot moves forward

Here are all of the commands and their response:
1. “Forward” – DC motors get positive voltage
2. “Backup” – DC motors get negative voltage
3. “Turn Left” – One DC motor gets positive voltage and the other negative
4. “Turn Right” – One DC motor gets positive voltage and the other negative
5. “Laser War” – LEDs flash and RGB LED flashes different colors
6. “Yo Man” – Says “Yo Man” back at you and RGB LED flashes different colors
7. “Electro Dance” – Makes sounds, LEDs flash, RGB LED flashes different colors, and DC motors pulse on and off
8. “Destroy Target” – Says, “This is my favorite,” makes sounds, flashes LEDs, and RGB LED flashes colors
When I got Mini Vox home, I ripped it apart. I was quite surprised how responsive the voice commands are and how many parts are inside this little robot. Most of the parts are reusable.

Here’s what you get for your $10 investment:
- Orange LED (x2)
- RGB LED
- DC Motor (x2)
- Motor Driver Circuit Boards (x2)
- 8 ohm Speaker
- Microphone
- Slider Switch
- Momentary Push Button
- Lots of screws
The forward and the back up voice commands are the easiest to tap into. You can disconnect the DC motors and connect them to a digital input of a microcontroller and now you can use voice commands to set the state of 2 digital inputs and act on them.

If I come up with something clever, I will let you know. But, the first piece of my Iron Man suit has fallen into place.
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Hardware, Projects, Tweaks

Iron Man, Mini Vox, Projects, robot, Toy Hacks, voice control
$10 Mont Blanc Rollerball Hack

Apr 17th 2010

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My dad gave me a Mont Blanc pen as a gift awhile back. I love the pen – it writes amazingly smooth, it’s rather expensive, and I also don’t want to lose it.

On the site Instructables.com, I found a pen hack tutorial. Someone figured out that the refill for the Mont Blanc rollerball pen is the same as the refill for the Pilot G2 pen. The Mont Blanc is so nice because of the tip and the refill has the nib right on it. I picked up some office supplies and recreated the project. I bought a Pilot G2 for $3 and a Mont Blanc rollerball refill for $7 at Staples. My Pilot G2 / Mont Blanc rollerball pen turned out great. I feel much more comfortable carrying the hacked version around.

Here are some tips:
- You can get blue or black Mont Blanc refills.
- The Pilot G2 is the “0.7 Fine Point” version of the pen.
- The Mont Blanc rollerball refill is slightly larger than the ink cartridge of the Pilot G2.
All you have to do is trim down the Mont Blanc refill and match the size. I took some sand paper and smoothed down the plastic endcap to match the size of the Pilot G2 rollerball cartridge.

Here are the tutorial and video I watched to create my own $10 Mont Blanc Rollerball:
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Projects, Tweaks

hack, mont blanc, pen, Projects, rollerball
TouchShield Slide Two-way Communications

Mar 21st 2010

30 comments
Over last summer, I got the GamePack from Liquidware which includes a touch screen display, joystick, microcontroller, and battery pack. With this kit you can make a GameBoy from scratch. With some blood, sweat, and tears, I was able to re-create some games like Asteroids and Tetris.

The touch screen is called the TouchShield Slide which is a 320×240 OLED and resistive touch screen. The screen also has a microcontroller that is Arduino compatible and expands your program space. Since the screen is really a microcontroller in disguise, it can be used for many types of projects. Overall I am very happy with the screen, but I realized I didn’t know how to use it very well. I set out to learn and develop a protocol / reusable library that allows the screen to talk to a microcontroller and vice-verse. So I wanted to take a moment and explain what I learned – maybe you can get going faster than I did.

The Goal

My goal is to be able to display data on the screen that has been received from another device. The data requested would be initiated by a touch on the screen. The protocol has to be consistent and reliable, while being flexible enough to be the basis for future projects.

Touch -> TouchShield Slide -> Arduino -> TouchShield Slide

Programming Tips and Tricks

I found quite a few libraries and resources on liquidware.com. I also discovered quite a few important things through my trial and error. My biggest frustration was with programming and figuring out the IDE. Here are some tips.
- To program the screen use the Antipasto Arduino / Aardvark IDE
- Program the screen and Arduino separately - make sure the IDE has the proper device selected
- To put the screen in program mode, press the switch beside the power connector – it’s in program mode when the LED on the backside is red
TouchShield Slide Serial

Serial data sent and received by the TouchShield Slide uses the hardware serial lines.

To setup the serial connection, place this line in your setup code block:

Serial.begin(9600);

Now you can read and write to and from the serial buffer. To read in a whole string, use a byte array to store bytes from the serial buffer when serial data is available. To write to the serial buffer, simply use serial print.

char charIn = 0;
byte i = 0;
char stringIn[32] = "";

while(Serial.available()) {
charIn = Serial.read();
stringIn[i] = charIn;
i += 1;
}

Serial.print("A");

Arduino Serial

On the Arduino side, you have to use some form of Software Serial that sends and receives data on Pins 2/3. I have found that the Adafruit SoftSerial Library, “AFSoftSerial.h”, works the best. It seems to be reliable and produce consistent results when talking to the TouchShield Slide. Reading and writing from a software serial buffer is about the same as a hardware one with this library.

To use software serial, follow these steps:
- Include the “AFSoftSerial.h” library in your Arduino code header space
- Define the RX and TX pins
- Instantiate the software serial
- Initiate the software serial line
#include <AFSoftSerial.h>

#define RX_PIN 3
#define TX_PIN 2

AFSoftSerial touchSerial = AFSoftSerial(RX_PIN, TX_PIN);

void setup() {
touchSerial.begin(9600);
}

Demo Project

I took a moment to put together all of the things that I learned into a quick demo project. This project displays a random number on the screen. The random number is being generated by an Arduino, sent via serial, and requested by a touch of the TouchShield Slide.

Visit Liquidware’s App Store to download the source code and library for this demo project.

Random Number from Arduino Displayed after Detecting a Touch
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TouchShield Slide

app, arduino, liquidware, Projects, serial
iTurn – iPhone and iPod Touch Hack

Dec 26th 2008

5 comments

Since my toaster has been on the Internet Twittering my toasting habits, I have been flooded with email asking what I was going to do next. To be fair, most of the email suggested that I had too much time on my hands. My mom got me an iPod Touch for Christmas (she gave it to me a few days early). I have not had the thing out of my sight since she surprised me with a wonderful gift. She also gave me Batman which I transfered to the iPod. I turned the screen about 44 times a minute while watching The Joker and The Dark Knight try to out smart each other. This got me thinking, “Could I control a motor with the movement of the iPod?” I had my next hack.

The iPhone or iPod Touch has an accelerometer that detects how the device is oriented. As the devices moves off axis (from straight up and down) the screen rotates. I want to use that feedback to control the position of a motor or servo or cause specific events to happen depending on the device’s position.

Taking the ioBridge IO-204 module, I connected the servo controller and a servo to one of the channels. On the servo I taped a Best Western hotel pen to show the movement of the servo. I found from hours of testing that the Best Western worked the “Best” and Hampton Inn worked slightly worse.

On the ioBridge website, I created 3 widgets that corresponded with the orientation of the iPod. “Left” for when tilted towards the left, “Right” when I turned right, and “Forward” when I was holding the iPod normally (straight up and down).

Warning: The next part involves some light programming. I made a quick HTML file with some JavaScript that detected the orientation of the iPod and called the appropriate widget. The orientation code is below for those of you that are interested in trying this for yourself:

function updateOrientation() {
switch(window.orientation){
case 0: widgetExecute("Upright Widget ID");
break;

case -90: widgetExecute("Right Widget ID");
break;

case 90: widgetExecute("Left Widget ID");
break;

}

}

Load up the completed HTML file on your iPhone or iPod Touch and now you can control a servo with the turning of your iPhone. I call it “iTurn” (didn’t see that one coming, did you?).

Here is a YouTube video of the iTurn project:

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iPhone

hack, iobridge, iphone, ipod touch, Projects, servo
Social Networking for My Toaster

Dec 8th 2008

23 comments

My Toaster Twitters

That statement sounds odd. Well, let me explain. My friends would describe me as the kind of person that has a lot of time on their hands. They would be right. That time is never put to productive use, but over Thanksgiving I got the gumption to start a new project. Sometimes, I start little servo, robotic, web-based projects for my own gratification, but I get fed up with all of the time I invest just so I can impress my 3 friends that also have nothing do to over the holidays.

My friend Jason Winters has been working on an module that simplifies the connecting of projects to the internet. He sent me one of his ioBridge modules to beta test and my mind started spinning. My goal this Thanksgiving was to think of a crazy project that would be the most senseless thing someone has ever heard of before.

Again, My Toaster Twitters…

Twitter is a social networking site that allows you to tell the world your current status – kind of like a microscopic blog that gets to the point. You can write, “Hans is going to lunch” or “Hans is tired”, etc. It’s fun to follow people and see what they can do creatively with just a few characters of updates.

I use my toaster when I am home and I thought that the world may want to know when I’m toasting.

twitter.com/mytoaster

How do you make a toaster twitter?

I grabbed my old bagel / toast toaster and glued a switch to the outside, so when the slider gets pressed down it triggers the switch and when it pops up, the switch opens (couldn’t be any more binary then that).

The ioBridge module has a digital input that I can hook the switch up to and monitor that state of toasting or not. Using a terminal board, a pull up resistor (1k), and some alligator clips, I hooked up the resistor from the digital input to the +5v source from the module, and clipped my clips on the resistor and the ground. A few pictures are worth more than my description.

Here is the whole system hooked together:

The Web Stuff

Using the ioBridge website, I created an event widget that monitors the input state of that particular digital input. And when the input is “high”, the site sends an email to any address of my liking. And the same for the “low” state. I chose my Twitter Mail address, but really could of hit any social network, email by blog, or even UberNote.

Follow My Toaster on Twitter at twitter.com/mytoaster. I think I proved empirically that I have too much time on my hands.

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MyToaster

i/o, input/output, iobridge, my toaster, Projects, social networking, twitter, ubernote
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