Posted January 24, 2014 by Chris

"So I decided it was time to build a kegerator…More importantly, because I’m a nerd and I’ve never worked with an Arduino I decided it would be fun to play with one. I ended up with an Arduino controlling an LCD for each of the 3 taps I installed, displaying what beer is on tap and how much beer is left in the keg."

Posted January 21, 2014 by Chris

"..Since I was going to be using an microcontroller to count the turns and stop the machine when the predetermined number of turns has been reached, I could make this winder do more stuff too. So, I made this pickup winder into more of a pickup winding station…"

Posted January 14, 2014 by Chris

&quotA while back I built a mobile-controllable home automation system, and promised to blog it. It’s taken a while, but here it it…DIY Home Automation via WAP and the Web–How-to."

Posted December 29, 2013 by Chris

"I wanted my robot to be able to track object and follow them. The first thing I wanted to do is give the robot the ability to follow an object with its head camera. The head camera is mounted on a pan-tilt servo system, and hence is capable of moving left and right, up and down."

Posted December 26, 2013 by Chris

"PanoBot is a rudimentary panorama-taking device for any Canon camera running the CHDK firmware. This project was made back in ’08 so there are numerous projects that are much more full-featured than this implementation; nevertheless, I am making the code available for reference."

Posted December 23, 2013 by Chris

"We have a very nice Christmas-tree stand: it’s a tall, heavy, cast-iron chunk that does a wonderful job of holding our tree up. The problem is that it’s difficult to determine how much water is in the stand, or whether the tree is getting any water at all. Occasionally our tree will drop all its needles, or spontaneously combust, at which point it becomes obvious that the tree needed more water; but it’d be nice to have some earlier indicator."

Posted December 22, 2013 by Chris

"I have the Arduino Motor Shield working, the Ultrasonic module is pinging around, Christmas brought some small DC toy motors, and a bag of plastic gears is on my desk. All the good ingredients for a small robot: the Freedom Robot!"

Posted December 15, 2013 by Chris

"The circuit works great for dropping coins, marbles, fruits and the like into a glass of water, but the microphone pre-amplifier is just not sensitive enough to detect a single drop of water falling from a height, unless you hold the microphone really close. Am still working on a more sensitive version that should be able to do that."

Posted November 25, 2013 by Chris

"During the last months I’ve been working on a 2-wheel balancing robot (also named inverted pendulum). In the meantime you can find a number of similar constructions in the world-wide-web. Most of them are constructions built from self-made parts. Very few use Lego mindstorms parts. I believe that here the first one is described for which fischertechnik components were used. Due to its artistic balancing act I have named this robot ARTIST."

Posted November 24, 2013 by Chris

"All of the hardware and software is open (in the GPL sense), including parts lists, circuit board and chassis designs, and software. With a stated goal to produce sub-€100 robots, I’d really like to see this take off. Combined with a wireless power surface, a micro-robot in perpetual motion would make a great desk ornament!"