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Let’s put together an Adafruit Motor Shield

2012-11-15 Dan

I’m just back from a week at the all-inclusive Hacienda Hotel in Puerto Vallarta. So relaxing! Snorkling, 3 buffet meals a day… I must have put on a pound a day.

While I was gone HALO 4 came out. I thought I’d watch a bit of game play and see if it was any good. Then a light went off in my head. Why doesn’t anyone do this for Makers? So here’s my first attempt.

I had to solder 10 of these boards in a row and when I was done the solder fumes were giving me a headache. Apologies for the heavy breathing, my nose was half an inch from the camera.

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Antonio builds the largest Drawbot so far

2012-11-18 Dan

“I managed to get a huge drawbot working, with a serious rethinking of the hardware. In the end it was an Egg of Columbus, and I’m proud to have discovered it: you can avoid all the mess of the electrical wiring from motors to arduino and from arduino to PC, by simply let them all stay very close together and making only the fishing line go around the drawing area, driven by idler pulleys! … It is now very easy to draw on huge areas, and the hardware remains completely unchanged independently from the size of the drawing area! You only need to change the position of the idler pulleys.

I will be disclosing this tecnique during the Makers Italy Fair in Milan (only in italian, sorry). I wanted to share it with you as another mean of saying thanks for all the effort you put in the code. I will be advertising your firmware and your site during the 3 workshops I’ll be doing during the Fair.”

Antonio: Just how big is it? How long does it take to draw that picture?

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Maze solving robot, prototype II

2012-11-21 Dan


Tonight I’m going to try to laser cut a few more acrylic parts. Biggest problem right now is that the sensors are too far from the ground and it ruins the robot’s “eyesight”. I’m also planning to reuse the robot for a mini sumo robot kit.

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Laser cut motor mounts 70 times faster

2012-11-30 Dan

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Last night at the VHS Steven helped me laser cut a test of the next generation of motor mounts for the Makelangelo drawbot and the Skycam. The 3d printed prototypes took 70 minutes to produce – and that’s not count all the times the printer ruined the piece 10 minutes from the end. These take only a minute to cut on the Redsail laser, they flat pack, and the pieces glue together in about ten minutes. Next I will be using the laser cutter to solve pen up/down.

More immediately, I’m having trouble mass producing bobbins. I want to mill them on a lathe and the quotes I’m getting are crazy – one said 50 pieces would cost $30/ea. The next said $6/ea. I’m looking for $1/ea or less.

There’s a number of craft fairs coming up in Vancouver at which Makelangelo will be appearing to take your requests. Stay tuned for more details!

Do you have a blog or magazine that’s looking for content? I’d love to talk about my robots with you.