Microcontroller Fireflies

After all the effort to get up to meet the DorkbotPDX crowd, I figured I should do something (non-train related) with the Dorkboards we came home with.

There are six LEDs attached to the pulse-width modulation capable pins. They fade in and out at random times and rates, and will continue flashing for ten minutes after the lights go out.

I got the idea from an Instructable where they put them in a jar and used a much smaller chip like I used in Project Buggy. The Arduino makes it much easier to build and program a project like this.

We'll see how long the 3xAAA's last without any low-power CPU sleep tricks.

BATTERY UPDATE: With the CPU running full time, it should last 12 days, but if put it into sleep mode and only check the light level every 4 second, it will last a year! Hurray for standby!

Dorkboting

Ms. Rivet and and I ventured up to Portland this weekend to hang out with some geeks. We attended a workshop entitled "Arduino Cult Induction".
It was led by Don Davis, the designer of the clever ultra-compact Arduino microcontroller clone called the Dorkboard (there is a Portland club called DorkbotPDX).



We each got to build and tested one to take home. The basic program just blinks the light on and off. From there, who knows where.
Given the compact size, it could go about anywhere! Here it is with the pins labeled.
Here is the image file I made if you want to make your own label.

Wii Nunchuc Controlled Train?

Why yes, you can.

Wii Nunchuk Controlled Model Train - More DIY How To Projects

What the ????

I'm sure my significant other rolls her eyes when she wakes up to find this on the dinner table. Take a guess at what Evil Mad Project (EMP) this is and fill out the poll to the right -->

Then, for the truly curious, find the answer here.

A Byte About Me

0 - My first introduction to computers was in the late 70's at the university where my dad worked. They had a room full of teletype terminals which were connected to a big computer in some other room. They had a user account that would run games if it wasn't too busy. We played a text game called "Star Trek". It would print out what the surrounding quadrants had in them, and you typed in your commands. We used a lot of yellow continuous feed paper. We made up for it by recycling the paper-punch programming cards for craft projects.

1 - In grade school, they had a Tandy TRS-80. The designers of the "Trash-80", as it became to known, thought they could sell 50,000 units. The company decided to only make 3500 because they figured if they couldn't sell them, they would use them themselves. They eventually sold 250,000 units. I programed the TRS-80 to show a WWII submarine with waves moving past it. How is that for foreshadowing?

10 - My first computer was a Sincair XZ-81. I paid $99 for a kit, but they ran out of kits, so they sent me one assembled, which would have cost $149, for the same price. Amazingly, you can still buy a new kit for $200. It had 1 kilobyte ram and ran at 3.5 MHz. It saved and loaded programs on a tape recorder. I programed it to show balls bouncing according to the effects of gravity, and simple orbital paths.

11 - It is a good thing they sent the XZ-81 assembled, because latter I paid $300 for a microcomputer kit, which, when I was done soldering it together, let the magic smoke out of the power supply and I couldn't get it to work. I was too embarrassed to ask anyone for help, so I threw it in the trash. I delivered a lot of papers for that experience.

100 - In highschool they had about a dozen Apple IIs. They were all connected to a thing called a "hard drive" which could store and retrieve 5 megabytes of data. Man that was a lot. My project was a program where you could save text messages which could be retrieved later by other users, kind of like "electronic mail". I don't think I ever got it fully working, but it was a neat idea.

101 - My next computer, which luckily wasn't available as a kit, was a Radio Shack color computer. I think I paid $399 for it. You can get one on Ebay now for $23 + shipping. It came with 4 kilobytes of ram. I got bored with programing in Basic because it was so slow. I taught myself assembly language and made a counter than ran so fast the first digit was a blur. Man that was fast. I later upgraded it to 16 kilobytes because my programs were getting larger.

110 - When I was in early in my Navy career, I bought a Commodore 64. They retailed for $595, and are now available on Ebay for about the cost of shipping. It was the first computer I owned with a "disk drive". The external drive was almost as big as the computer itself. I think I mainly played games on it. I once got so mad when playing a game that I took the disk out and cut it up on the spot. Solved that problem.

111 - When I was stationed in Hawaii, I bought my first laptop, a Toshiba T1000se. I think I payed well over $1000 for it. I don't see any listed on Ebay right now. It had 4 megabytes of memory and ran at a blazing 9.54 MHz and had MS DOS 3.11 in ROM so it booted quickly. I mainly used it to play submarine simulation games like Silent Serice II and 688 Attack Sub, which is kind of crazy considering I was living on a sub at the time. Toshiba latter sold some CNC technology to the USSR which allowed them to make advanced submarine propellers. There was some kind of boycott, and I was a bit embarrassed about owning it. I ended up selling it for $50, which is what it cost me to replace the battery to get it ready to sell.There you go. Eight bits (a byte, get it?). Catch the binary numbering? I didn't even make it into the Windows era. Oh well, tune in latter and I'll tell you about the hand-me-down 3-GHz, dual-CPU Xeon, workstation they gave me to run Linux on at work. Talk about fast . . .

Now I'm thinking about going back for another try at the ZX-81 kit. Maybe I can keep the magic smoke in this time.

Buggy hits the Blogosphere!

The people over at Make Magazine blogged about the Buggy Project! Check out:

blog.makezine.com

That gives me a warm fuzzy. I'm hoping they'll put it in the magazine or one of their cool books. The magazine is where I got the soda bottle rocket design from two reunions ago. They have more cool projects than I have time (or money)!

I've got a lot of good feed back on the project at the Instructables Website, but I don't know that anyone has tried to build or improve on it. I was hoping someone would take off with it. I improved the code a bit, so if you come by to visit, bring your buggy and I'll upgrad it and give you a new battery (they only last a week or so).

Project Buggy goes live!

One of my goals after doing the electronic bugs for the reunion was to publish the instructions on how to do it. Doing that was as fun and challenging as doing the bug in the first place!

Here is the result:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Buggy-A-Crafty-Programmable-LED-Creature/

Give it a look and let me know what you think. Let me know if you catch any glaring spellin or grammer errors. Be sure to check out the video. I'm especially proud of that, although the resolution leaves a bit to be desired (I'll blame that on Youtube).

There is a contest to get it published in a book. so vote for me at the instructables page. There is a "vote" button near the top of the page.

Now I can move on to my next project, which is . . .

Game of Life Project

I posted a video of our combined Game of Life board from the reunion on the website of the lady that helped design the kit. I am proud to say she was impressed enough to put it on her blog as an example of teamwork:

http://www.ladyada.net/rant/2008/07/kits-teamwork/



As of 7/15, it has 1400 views on Youtube! Amazing for such poor photography.

Here is a good wikipedia entry on the game of life:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life

Assembly In Progress

Here is an interesting pattern we found. It is an example of an oscillating pattern with three positions. We let it run until the batteries died. I doubt well see it again!

Origins of Project Buggy

Someone asked me how I came up with the LED bug project we did for the reunion. There is quite a bit of "Buggy" that is original, as in idea wise, but there were a number of projects that inspired me to do it.

If you remember the soda bottle water rocket project from an earlier reunion, the plans came from Make Magazine. That magazine also had an article in about “LED Throwies”. They involve using a single LED, a coin cell battery, and a magnet to make something glowing that you can stick to something metal. I did up a couple for my girls without the magnets, and they seemed fascinated by it. They are beautiful in their simplicity, but don't last long or interact with the kids at all

What really got me thinking was Alex Weber who added a small programmable microcontroller chip and a photocell so that it interacted with light. I was already working with an Arduino microcontroller development system (Make Magazine again), so it sounded like something I could do. The shaped copper wire has a wonderful techno-sculpture quality, but doesn’t seem too practical for kids to play with.

The final piece of the puzzle came when I saw Blinky Bugs. Using a simple wire loop as a switch, the bug’s antenna act as a touch sensor. An insect with LED eyes! I was interested in the sensor part, but the loop system sounded a bit delicate to work reliably with kids playing with it.

So, I started out with the goal of creating a platform for a “craft-type” bug project for the children that would interact with them in as many ways as possible. My hope was to come up with something original enough that other people might want to build it and improve upon it! It was marvelous to see the original ideas the kids came up with.

Now I just need to take the final step in the project and publish the design to the web. This is a start!