todbot blog » general

BristleBots and LED throwie art at Crash Space!

todbot — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:45:39 +0000

This upcoming Tuesday, 9 March 2010, 8pm at Crash Space in Culver City, we’ll be having some fun quick DIY projects for you to build. Come on over and have fun with us. The project kits are $5 for CrashSpace members or $10 for non-members and you can take them home after you build them.

In the kit you get the parts to build your own Bristlebot, a tiny robot made from a toothbrush: (consists of toothbrush, pager motor, battery, and foam tape)

and LED throwie art: (consists of two color-changing RGB LEDs, battery, and a magnet)

We’ll have a Bristlebot [...]

Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise

todbot — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:42:58 +0000

This is one of the greatest bits of youtubery I’ve ever seen, and I generally dislike auto-tuned stuff. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos was one of the most important things to happen to me as a child. This video & song gives me the shivvers. And makes me miss Sagan all the more.

I love the song’s chorus created from cut up Sagan quotes: A still more glorious dawn awaits Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise A morning filled with 400 billion suns The rising of the milky way

(via jwz)

Arduino Serial protocol design patterns

todbot — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:50:38 +0000

[I posted this to the Arduino developer's mailing list, but figured others might find it useful too]

When I first started with Arduino, I thought Serial.available() was a very loose wrapping of the RXC bit in the USCRA register, i.e. if I didn’t get data out of there fast, it’d be gone. That led to convoluted code like:

if( Serial.available() ) { val1 = Serial.read(); while( !Serial.available() ); val2 = Serial.read(); // and so on }

Yuck. So you end up designing protocols that are too terse. Or maybe you think you need to [...]

New RoombaComm 0.96

todbot — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:02:40 +0000

Paul Bouchier has kindly spent time and updated the Java RoombaComm library. Not only did he add support for the newer 5xx series Roombas, but he fixed a lot of bugs, added new features, made things work easier under Windows, and generally cleaned up the mess of code I had created.

Check out the Changelog for a list of the changes. And try out the new version of RoombaComm!

Kennedy 520 machinist toolchest

todbot — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 22:36:35 +0000

This is the best toolchest ever, if you do electronics or other small tasks.

My dad was an avionics tech, he knows how to fix any electronic thing in an airplane. He’s had a toolbox like this as long as I can remember. He used to take in on planes when he’d fly to go fix them. Kennedy has been making them in Ohio, apparently unchanged, for like 100 years.

The toolchest has several felt-lined drawers (so the tools don’t shift around), with adjustable metal dividers in the drawers. A front cover hides all the drawers and protects them when the chest [...]

Smart garments (I’m on TV! for 3 frames)

todbot — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 22:09:20 +0000

My friend Syuzi Pakhchyan had a nice long segment on Make:TV this week. She visited the todbot lab to have the laser cutter cut the designs for the switches in her garment. There’s a 1-second shot where the camera pans over the lab and to the cutter. For about 2 frames, you can see me. Wooho, my Hollywood career has begun.

You can see the post about this episode of Make:TV, or watch it here:

Make a black iPhone/iPod headset

todbot — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:47:58 +0000

I like the stock iPhone headset. They sound okay as headphones, their mic is pretty good, and setup is much easier than with a Bluetooth headset. Plus they’re pretty cheap at $29. I also liked the stock iPod headphones, for similar reasons. I’m clumsy with headphones and tend to break or lose them. But these stock headsets stand out. The white headphone cables has become part of the Apple marketing message that I’d rather not take part of. So all I want is a black version of the Apple headsets. Since no [...]

Sketching08 talk: Good Hardware APIs et al

todbot — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:11:13 +0000

The Sketching in Hardware ’08 conference was held at RISD in Providence, Rhode Island this year. Both RISD and Providence were very welcoming and I think we had a lot of fun. Once again, Mike pulls off an awesome conference.

For my talk, since I didn’t have one big thing I’ve been working on this last year, I decided to shotgun blast a bunch of different topics out there, arranged roughly on the topics: - Good Hardware APIs – about the evolution of BlinkM’s layout, - USB not on Rails – an update to a previous Sketching talk of mine, [...]

BlinkM & Arduino 3D models

todbot — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:41:02 +0000

Here’s a really quick 3D model of BlinkM, if anyone needs it. It’s accurate to ~0.1mm.

- blinkm.skp — BlinkM SketchUp model - rgb_led_piranha.skp — Piranha RGB LED SketchUp model

And here it is plugged into the awesomely done Arduino Diecimila model by Jon-Paul from the Google 3D Warehouse.

SketchUp is pretty great, but I found a problem with it if you’re trying to make accurate to-scale electronic parts: it won’t create surfaces with an area of <1mm. Took me a while to figure that out. The solution is to make a 10x or 100x size version and then do [...]

Get on the BlinkM Bus with a BlinkM Cylon

todbot — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:43:02 +0000

BlinkMs are a lot of fun by themselves, but they’re also little network devices, each having its own address on an I2C network. Here’s where I think BlinkM can really shine since it makes controlling multiple RGB LEDs pretty easy. For Maker Faire, I wanted to show off this facet by having a single Arduino control a dozen or so BlinkMs on a single I2C bus. The result is shown in the little video below.

Read on for how this was put together.

Overall Design

Controlling several RGB LEDs is no small task, BlinkM makes it easier and I wanted [...]

“WiiChuck” Wii Nunchuck Adapter Available

todbot — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 02:41:17 +0000

Want to hook up a Wii Nunchuck to an Arduino but don’t want to cut up the cord on your Nunchuck? Yeah me too. So I made some of these:

It’s a small PCB that adapts the Wii Nunchuck connector to standard 4-pin header. I call it the “wiichuck adapter”. It plugs directly into the Arduino, no wiring necessary. You can get one too for $4.

Available from the following wonderful shops: - FunGizmos.com. FREE DOMESTIC SHIPPING. International shipping for $1 more. - Tinker.it (UK) - Little Bird Electronics (Australia) - Sparkfun. Ships domestic & internationally. [...]

In Memoriam: Jed the cat, ~1992 – 8 Aug 2007

todbot — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:15:13 +0000

Jed, aka “JedJedJed”, “Jedders”, “Jedbutt”, “Little Wacko” died today after living approximately 15 years. He died quietly in his home with me at his side.

He had lymphoma that ate up his back leg joint and alimentary canal. It was so frustrating, for both me and him, to see his body failing when his mind was still so alert and active. Why don’t we have mind uploads yet? Why no restore from backup? The world of atoms sucks sometimes.

I got Jed from the Pasadena Human Society sometime in 1994 (or maybe ’93). He was ~2 [...]

WineM, a ThingM technology sketch

todbot — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 02:44:27 +0000

At my new company ThingM, Mike and I have completed a technology sketch for WineM, a smart wine rack. Below is a video demonstration and an abstract. A full description can be found on the ThingM site. We periodically create Technology Sketches as a way to explore the ideas we’re thinking about.

(revver link)

Abstract: WineM is a Technology Sketch of a smart wine rack. It’s designed to locate wines in a wine rack using RFIDs attached to bottles and to display which wines have been located using LED backlights behind the bottles. Collectors (or anyone with a large wine [...]

Speaking at dorkbot-socal, Saturday June 3rd

todbot — Tue, 30 May 2006 18:23:32 +0000

At the next meeting of the SoCal instantiaton of dorkbot, I’ll be bringing an entourage of Roomba with me and will be demonstrating the hackability of them. Some of the things I’ll be talking about:

- RoombaMidi / Roombas making music - Roomba Spirographs / Roombas making art - Roomba as robotics experimentation platform - What’s needed to hack a Roomba

What: Roomba-a-go-go at dorkbot-socal Where: Machine Project When: Saturday June 3rd, 1pm Why: Know your enemy, the Roombas are ready to revolt

Word of the day: interfaction

todbot — Tue, 23 May 2006 18:10:29 +0000

interfaction: An interface that is interacts with you. portmanteau of interface and interaction.

For interfaces with a touch response, interfaction == haptic. But there are other kinds of interfaction. The ring of LEDs that surround a rotory encoder to show a parameters value, or keys that beep when you press them are non-haptic interfactions.