Tutorials

How to use the AS5147 magnetic absolute rotation sensor

The AS5147 magnetic absolute rotation sensor is perfect for measuring robot joint angles. The key here is absolute! A relative rotation sensor like an encoder is very cheap but when you need to always totally unquestionably need to know where your thing is at then you need absolute sensing. In this post I’m going to show you my test setup, wiring, and code so you can get started easy peasy.

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Tutorials

Where to Start with Robotics

In this post I’m going to talk about what I consider a robot (and not a robot), cover some of the basics to start with robotics, and give some examples from a successful class I have been leading at a local makerspace.
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Tutorials

Build your own falling block game like Tetris

I’ve shown you how to use shift registers to drive an LED grid, including how to draw pictures on the screen from memory. Now we’re going to use those tools to make a game similar to the classic Tetris.  I’ll show you the circuit, how to draw pieces, how to create animations, respond to user input, and more.  Learning how to build complex behavior from simple parts is a great start to thinking about how robots behave.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BRMLTCeAd7y

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Tutorials

Shift registers and seven segment displays in Arduino

In previous tutorials I showed how to use seven segment displays, how to use shift registers and how to daisy chain shift registers, and talked a bit about persistence of vision.  In this tutorial we’re going to combine shift registers and seven segment displays to make an Arduino control two four-character seven-segment displays, a task that (at first glance) might not seem possible.

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