Posted September 8, 2013 by Chris

“In order to ease electronical design and increase hardware and software stability EMMA2 is built on top of an off-the-shelf handheld computer with integrated color camera and Bluetooth communication. In addition to the hardware components power supply and motor drive control the undercarriage hosts general purpose I/O interfaces enabling efficient integration of additional sensors in the future.”

Posted September 1, 2013 by Chris

“A collection of the final projects from EGGN 482 at the Colorado School of Mines. Each project has a summary with slides and a video demonstrating how it works. Many great projects in this line-up!”

Posted August 30, 2013 by Chris

“In Yaw Control Part 1 I discussed how gyroscopes can be applied in Radio Controlled cars to reduce yaw under braking and acceleration. Since this first post I have developed an Arduino based yaw control system which goes beyond the original goals to address the major flaw in the gyro based approach.”

Posted August 25, 2013 by Chris

“The main reason that I wanted to build a DIY Segway was simply because I wanted to see if it was possible. I also liked the idea of building something that strongly interacts with humans. I will now describe how I built it.”

Posted August 17, 2013 by Chris

“In our project we made the arm the second player in the classic game of Tic-Tac-Toe to demonstrate its programmable repeatable motion. The arm consists of five servo motors, four to control the motion and one to control the end effecter (gripper). The arm moves tic-tac-toe pieces onto a board for its opponent and itself to give the user interactive control over the arm.”

Posted August 12, 2013 by Chris

“The idea of building my own I2C smart DC motor controller is came to me when I was learning and playing together with my son on his LEGO MINDSTORM NXT 2.0 about a year ago. The NXT sophisticated controller also called NXT Intelligent Brick is powered by Atmel 32-bit ARM7 AT91SAM7S256 microcontroller and communicating with Atmel 8-bit AVR ATmega48 acting as a co-microcontroller using I2C protocol.”

Posted August 10, 2013 by Chris

“The Double Down card dealer is a fully programmable automated card dealer. It has the ability to deal a card in two directions (left or right, dealer or player, etc) while at the same time moving linearly perpendicular to those directions (card stack 1, 2, 3, etc).”

Posted July 25, 2013 by Chris

“To maximize a photovoltaic (PV) system’s output power, continuously tracking the maximum power point (MPP) of the system is necessary. The MPP depends on irradiance conditions, the panel’s temperature, and the load connected.”

Posted July 23, 2013 by Chris

“…In this project, we use MOSFETs because of their high switching speed and low RDS resistance for low heat dissipation. H-Bridge configuration requires both P and N type MOSFETs but since N-type MOSFETs have improved electrical characteristics, using only N-type for four of the transistors will be ideal…”

Posted July 21, 2013 by Chris

“I find the CPU/Memory/HDD/Net stats as something I regularly take a look at. But these stats live a virtual life….The desire to somehow free the stats from their virtual world and have them on my desk is what made me create the ReCoMonB – Real Computer Monitoring Block.”