PlotBot: Building the Gondola

Next stage of the build is to work out how to hold the pen. Some people call this the gantry or holder, I’ll be calling mine the gondola.
I decided to use lollipop sticks for this, they have a similar length to whiteboard maker pens, reasonably light weight and at only 50p for a pack of 50 sticks and it was an obvious choice!

Clamping the Sticks for drilling

Having cut a few sticks down to size I then clamped them together to drill a thread hole through them using my trusty dremel.

Lining them up for gluing.

First one clamped down.

With the first side clamped in place and the wood glue drying things are starting to take shape.

Sides nearly finished.

And the finished gondola! look forward to a video of the first test draw in a couple of days . . . things are a bit shaky!

PlotBot: Building the Machine

With the research all done, I started thinking about how I wanted to build my PlotBot.
Having looked at the other designs, I found they were either mounted on a wooden frame and then a piece of paper is taped onto the wooden panel, or they draw directly onto a surface like glass or a wall. Given that the aim is just to make something that catches peoples eye, rather than making posters or drawings for people, I think the best course of action would be to use a whiteboard. I can get one reasonably cheaply, and the mounting is pretty much already sorted.

The whiteboard and mountings.

Once I had bought a whiteboard (600mm x 450mm) I started lining up the parts I had as to how I would mount them.
I had also bought 2 Pololu 1204 Stepper Motors and an Adafruit Motorshield v2 (AFMSv2). I did have a few concerns with these parts combined together, in that the motors only draw 600mA and the motorshield provides 1.2A per channel, therefore the motors might get a little hot if they start drawing more than they should – but we’ll see how it goes!

Roughly lining up the parts on a sheet of acrylic.

To mount the acrylic sheet to the whiteboard I used two of the mounts supplied with the whiteboard secured on the top of the sheet. These then hook onto the edge of the whiteboard, and the mounts on the side are adjustable to “lock in” the sheet to the sides of the board. Finally I decided to neatly mount the arduino and AFMSv2 in the center of the acrylic sheet.

     

     

I picked up two remote control car wheels at a local hobby store, along with 50m of fishing line, which would form the basis for my reels.

I found some nuts in the garage that fitted the inside of the wheel, and used Araldite (metal glue) to fill the gap around the stepper motor shaft hoping that this wouldn’t go wrong.

Araldite’s in, I was a little bit messy dripping it everywhere!

 With the luck of the gods, after leaving it 24 hours to cure I was able to punch the stepper motor shaft out of the nut, leaving a nice shaped hole. The advantage of this method being that I can very easily remove the reels and use the steppers in other projects.  

  

Now that I have the reels mounted on the steppers, I was able to complete the main build; mounting the steppers onto the acrylic sheet, and winding the fishing line onto the wheels – happy days!

  

 

 

 

Glass Circuits

So one day I was bored and had a few things lying around:

1.  Copper tape
2. A pane of glass from a scanner
3. 555 timer & passives
4. soldering iron

There was really only one logical thing to do to assist in my procrastination, put together an astable 555 circuit on the glass!

Through my time learning about electronics, I have come to realise that the 555 timer circuit, astable or monostable, is one of the first circuits anyone should make.

However for those who don’t know about it here is a short explanation of the astable circuit.

The 555 timer IC is a a circuit of over 40 components, including 25 transistors and 15 resistors, all printed on a silicone chip.

The circuit works by flipping the voltage states of different pins on the IC. Initially pin 7 is high and so the current flows though R1 & R2 to charge the capacitor. Pin 6 detects the high voltage build up on the capacitor and toggles pin 7 to be pulled low, this causes the capacitor to discharge through R2. While the capacitor is discharging, pin 3 is pulled low, turning off the output, however when pin 2 detects the low voltage on the capacitor, pin 7 is pulled high again, allowing the current to flow through R1 & R2 again.

And ofcourse there is some maths to work out the length of each high and low pulse for given component values, and thus the frequency as well.

f = 1 / ( ln(2) * C * ( R1 + 2R2 ) )

High = ln(2) * C * ( R1 + R2 )

Low = ln(2) * C * R2

And so with values of 1000Ω for R1 and 10KΩ for R2, and 100μF for C1, we get a high pulse of 0.76 seconds, and a low pulse of 0.69 seconds and a frequency of 0.69Hz (687 mHz).

In the Aftermath of the Mini Maker Faire

The dust is settling now after the hordes of people who wandered through the halls of the Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire.

Within the halls of the London College of Communication, makers were separated by categories into different studios. We had lots to look at and admire, however Raspberry Pi’s and 3D printers, not surprisingly took centre stage.

I don’t intend to talk about everything that happened, just a few things that really made an impression on me.

One 3D printer that caused me to take a second glance, and a third, and a fourth, and a chat with the creator, was the 3DR.
The 3DR is an inverted delta-bot style 3D printer that is constructed mainly out of 3D printed parts. Because of the simple design it seems to me that it must be must easier to set-up initially as the only areas you need to focus on are how tight the strings/cam belt are, and the position of the 3 arms, of course that is only the case if the rod guides are all the same height and parallel to each other.

A 3D printing company caught my eye as we wandered around because of their impressive printed objects and nicely build RepRap printers. Active 3D is based in Tunbridge Wells and aim to help introduce schools in the area to the opportunities that are available in 3D Printing. They offer workshops and monthly meetups which aim:

• To train people in how to use 3D printers.
• To train people how to maintain a 3D printer.
• To provide an easy to use instruction manual.

And finally, catering to the more artistic of us, and the thirsty, the Tropism Well could be found in one of the main halls.
The Tropism Well is a drinking fountain with a difference. With a base made up of a 14 litre tank, which can be filled with any beverage, the Well automatically detects the presence  of a person and elegantly bow’s its neck, presenting to the honoured person a gift of a perfectly poured serving or a drink, before bringing its neck back up straight as if to observe you enjoying its gift.

Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire

 

So the three of us are off to The Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire on Saturday.
Maker Faire’s were created by Make Magazine in the USA, they are now events that happen all over the world.

Currently in the UK we have 6 Mini Maker Faire’s in; Brighton, London, Nottingham, Manchester, Dublin and Edinburgh. There is also a “featured” Maker Faire in Newcastle. Find your nearest Maker Faire here.

On the agenda for the Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire in London are loads of workshops including learning to solder (Through Hole and Surface mount),  creating a mini synth and 3D modelling in Blender. See the full list here.

We are really looking forward to the day and will update everyone with what we see and do! =]

 

London Arduino

Tonight was my first time along at the London Arduino Meet Up.
The London Arduino Group is of a similar idea to the Raspberry Pi Jam events that I’ve been to
before. It is a group of people who want to share knowledge about the Arduino platform and start to
innovate across other platforms.

This month we had presentations including hobby electronics, internet controlled LED’s and 3D
printing.

Using an Ethernet shield, Christian, put together a set up where he was able to control the status
of an LED in his web browser. This was done on a local network (sorry guys who wanted to take
control of his little light) where he showed two methods of flicking the switch.
The first method he showed off was to use the arduino as a web server and construct the html on it
as well. Then it was a simple matter of connecting to the IP address that was defined on the
arduino and hey-presto it worked.
The second method that he demonstrated was a little more complicated involving node.JS, sockets and other technical jargon that I didn’t catch.

On a similar vein we had Liam demonstrating the use of a TP-Link Wireless N Nano Router (TL-WR702N) to connect an arduino to the internet. He argued that the use of WiFi shields is overly complicated compared to Ethernet shields, as well as being a lot more expensive  So if you are willing to have a slightly bigger package then you can connect the Ethernet shield to the nano router and leave that to sort out the complicated subtleties of wireless connections, allowing you to get on with innovating your wireless solution. Another thought is that a nano router is much more versatile than a WiFi shield because it can be plugged into a computer, games console, Raspberry Pi, or any other device that has an Ethernet socket.

In the realm of Hobby Electronics we had Danny, who was plugging his first ever kit robot. Orionrobots.co.uk is his creation and is where he is selling his first his own starter kit robot. In this kit you will find everything that you need to to construct a small chassis with 4 wheels controlled in pairs (left and right) by a L298n dual H-Bridge controller board which is interfaced to an Arduino Uno R3 (provided in the kit). With a easy fit design, you only need a screwdriver to put this kit together making it perfect for anyone who is; unsure with tools, in need for a robot chassis quickly, or just lazy.

The final talk of the evening was from Mark, on behalf of another London Tech Meet-up group, Future Manufacturing, who have a keen interest in 3D printing. They are really keen to see cross collaboration between our two groups on various projects including potentially the Luma Module Interactive Spaceship. The Luma Module is a KickStarter project where they want to build a spaceship that lights up when people interacts with it. This spaceship will then be shipped (no it won’t fly itself) to Nevada for the Burning Man art Festival at the end of August 2013.

Digibury Discussions

So the other day, for the first time, I went along to Digibury, a event for people interested in technology in the local area. At the monthly meetings you can normally expect to 3 different talks.

The Digibury Postcard (Slightly crumpled)

At this months meeting we heard from Joe Webb, a PhD researcher in Cultural Studies. He is conducting an ethnograph about how “computing professionals” have learnt to use computers. He has started to see some very interesting generational differences in how people learnt to use the computers.

Next up on the schedule was a talk from Deri Jones, from SciVisum.
At SciVisum they specialise in load testing websites and web applications. From the data that they collect and analyse they can advise a business’s technical team so that they can adjust the companies website to be more efficient and capable of coping with the expected load. It also means that SciVisum can advise the less technical directors as to if there is a something that the companies technical team can do when their website has a fault.

The final talk of the night was from Chris Atherton, a user experience architect. She was talking to us about the recognition rules that humans apply to the world around them, for example that a chair has 4 legs and a back, or that a wheel is circular and has spokes. She then asked that we apply these rules to showers and to microwaves, and we all came to realise that these products do not have any standard user interface. Eventually after some discussion we even decided that showers do not offer enough control for the temperature of the water, only cold or hot, whereas microwaves offer too much functionality above and beyond heating a dish for a set amount of time.

All in all I really enjoyed the evening of talks, and am looking forward to next months set of talks on interfaces.

So You’ve got yourself a Lilypad?

So as part of my involvement with TinkerSoc, we now have our new hoodies. These hoodies are designed so that a Lilypad Arduino can be sewn onto it and then components added to it. We will be wearing hoodies that we can literally tinker with.

For those that don’t know, the Arduino Lilypad is an Arduino development platform intended for clothing and e-textiles. Using conductive thread you can sew tracks and components onto any fabric and then programmed.
The Lilypad doesn’t have a USB plug like an ordinary Arduino Uno. This is because the Lilypad does not have a FTDI Chip (Future Technology Devices International Ltd) unlike the Uno and many other Arduino’s. The FTDI chip converts the USB to serial communication.

So because the Lilypad doesn’t have a USB connection we can use an Arduino Uno instead. To do this we need to remove the ATMega 328p from the Arduino Uno, then break out the header on the Lilypad. As per the diagram above from left to right, the pins connect to Gnd, Gnd, 5v, Rx, Tx and Reset. With these connections made, we can proceed to connect the Uno to a computer, and then start up the Arduino IDE. While in the IDE, make sure you change the board to the correct version of the Lilypad you are using. (If in doubt try to read the number on the Microcontroller on the centre of the board)

And with that done you are ready to start programming, I suggest loading up the example blink program first. Enjoy.

The PiBow Case

After all the festive activities, I have a new case for my Raspberry Pi, the PiBow. Found at pibow.com, it is a durable acrylic layered case for the raspberry Pi. The case offers access to all the ports and the GPIO pins via a ribbon cable.

The PiBow finished and ready to use.

When completed it protects the main board and has engraving on the top and base to mark the function of each port.
Held together by 4 nylon bolts, it is very easy to modify, especially as there are expansion layers available for things like a camera module, VESA mount, and electronic prototyping.

The PiBow Case for my Raspberry Pi is finished

PiBow – Step 7

PiBow – Step 6

PiBow – Step 5

PiBow – Step 4

PiBow – Step 2

the RPi placed on the PiBow

The first part of the PiBow

the Base of the PiBow case

the Raspberry Pi as taken with the new camera