Archive for the 'Projects' Category

Project Leonard – Bar Clamp Chaos

Published on April 14, 2012 in Projects. Closed Tags: , , , .

Well this week I had some time off and was finally able to devote some overdue attention to some of my many on-going projects. First in line was my 3D printer build Leonard. It’s been a while since my last Leonard posting, what with work, Koothrappali and Project Wave (coming soon) poor old Leonard has just sat in a corner collecting dust and er…. breaking!!!

To my surprise over the approximately 3 month period since I last did some development, nearly all of the printed bar clamp parts have failed and those that are still in one piece, are showing serious signs of fatigue.

The obvious conclusion (looking at the above picture) would be that I had overtightened the frame around these parts, however I strongly refute this to be the cause and/or case and lay the blame on a combination of  both material properties and poor part design.

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Kinect Robot Power Adapter

Published on March 26, 2012 in Kinect and Projects. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

Those of you who have been following via my facebook page would have seen that I have been toying around with the idea of utilising the power of the Kinect with my latest robot build, Koothrappali. In order to facilitate this however I first had to verify that I could run the system unmodified with my tablet and with a portable power source.

Point one was easy to resolve, and after installing the drivers I soon had the Kinect up and running. Point 2 however, was a little more tricky, but also achievable via the development of a custom Kinect Robot Power Adapter.

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The Haptic TrackPad – Arduino & PSP Touch

Published on March 19, 2012 in Arduino, News and Projects. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Hello again and welcome to another two birds one stone posting. Today I would like to introduce you to another little side project that I currently have on the go, The Haptic Track Pad, and whilst I’m at it, also provide you with a little code so that you too can apply simple touch screen technology to your Arduino applications.

The Haptic TrackPad

Designed primarily for those with visual impairment, the Haptic Track Pad is a peripheral input device that utilises force feedback to afford the user with an enhanced sensory experience in a similar manner found within contemporary gaming peripherals and mobile technologies such as smart phones and tablets.

To see prototype one in action check out the following video:

My research into Assistive Technology  peripheral development has indicated that on the whole as a device the standard laptop/net-book track-pad is usually completely abandoned by those with VI’s, resulting from artefact’s's such as incompatibility with screen readers and/or positional point of reference bearing.

This is a shame and a big problem especially as as we progress further towards Weisers Third Wave of computing. Many interfaces are now becoming touch screen dependant and as mobile and tablet computing grows in strength so too does an influx of potential new barriers for those with disability.

The Haptic TrackPad utilises a combination of technologies to alleviate the restrictions commonly found by those with visual impairment, for example PWM can be used to vary the feedback given for a variety of uses such as iconic hot-spot indication and/or physical boundary identification and even some novel uses such as per-pixel indication of image and/or colour.

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Koothrappali and the Arduino Motor Shield

Published on March 18, 2012 in Arduino and Projects. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

In today’s post I am going to kill two birds with one stone as so to speak. Primarily I plan to introduce the Arduino Motor Shield R3 and provide an accompanying tutorial, in turn also allowing opportunity to introduce you to my latest robot build, Koothrappali. After all, what better way to get to grips with a little code than with a practical example.

This post demonstrates the control of a Rover 5 Robot Platform via the use of an Arduino Pro and the Arduino Motor Shield R3. If you don’t have a Rover 5 or an Arduino Pro specifically, don’t worry as in theory the code can be used to control the shield with any variance of equivalents e.g. 2 DC motors and an Arduino Uno etc.

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Introducing The EarTrack

Published on March 8, 2012 in Arduino and Projects. Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

Here we have a quick photo of  a quick mini project I put together last night whilst playing with my new Sparkfun BluetoothMate. The EarTrack. Features include full 9DOF tracking (inc Yaw, Pitch and Roll right out the box), Bluetooth serial (thanks to the BluetoothMate) connection (fast data transfer) and even USB recharging.

The device can be used to provide head tracking capability for natural user interface(s) and VR and is soon to be released as an open source project :) just as soon as I have finished putting together a little accompanying windows app and library etc. If you cant wait a few days send me a mail and i’l see what I can do beforehand (you will just need to parse the serial stream).

The EarTrack is to be the first of many open source projects demonstrating my research into Assistive Technology and Natural User Interface peripheral development.

More information and a how to guide to follow shortly :)

Project Leonard – Z Axis Coupling

Published on November 23, 2011 in Projects. Closed Tags: , , , .

Following on from yesterdays Project Leonard post, today I fortunately I managed to get a set of the Z Axis couplings I designed last night printed. If you haven’t been following my RepRap build, yesterday evening I tried to assemble the machines Z axis and hit a small problem, when trying to attach the steppers to the 8mm threaded bar used to lift the X carriage.

The default Prusa couplings just would not grip the 8mm shaft, even when tightened to and/or even past full capacity. A little research of the RepRap wiki revealed another potential design solution as made by Chris Hanton, however I would need to machine the part. Instead I decided to utilise the design as a basis for the development of a printable solution. The above picture shows the bespoke part and the original coupling (with tightening damage).

As you can see the new design is much simpler in implementation.

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Project Leonard – Z Axis Issues

Published on November 22, 2011 in Projects. Closed Tags: , , , .

Well this evening I hit the first snag in the Leonard build. No matter how much I tightened the motor to 8mm bar couplers the bar would not grip. I even tried wrapping tape around the bar in order to increase diameter (yup a dirty hack) but alas to no avail (bad design and/or model implementation if you ask me).

Eventually one of the couplers snapped due to purpose over tightening (not surprisingly) and this brought a halt to proceedings for most of today’s build. The above image shows the snapped coupling. Despite this issue however, I decided to continue mocking up the axis so I could get a feel of how things go together ready for my next attempt.

Once completed I decided to have a go at developing my own coupler utilising the “more durable design” developed by Chris Hanton and as suggested at reprap.org.

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Project Leonard – Y Carriage Build

Published on November 21, 2011 in Projects. Closed Tags: , , .

Well some more of the parts for the Project Leonard build arrived today, more specifically the RAMPS electronics. Inspired by this I decided to allocate an hour this evening to a little more of the build. I started by tightening and squaring off the frame. This step takes some time and would be nearly impossible without the aid of spacing jigs (fashioned out of some spare lengths of wood).

With this achieved (maybe a little to tight in places) I then moved onto assembling the Y Carriage. This like all of the build so far was a fairly easy process that consisted of adding the two running bars and attaching the MDF base plate (via gluing to 4 slide on bushings). With this achieved and a little adjustment to ensure that the bed runs the length of the bars smoothly, I also decided to attach the Y stepper motor.

This is done by bolting the motor onto the provided mount, via use of three 3mm bolts (and washers). A little tweaking was also applied to ensure that the cog lines up with the pulley guides. An additional length of wood was used to ensure that the pulleys line up.

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Project Leonard – Frame Build

Published on November 16, 2011 in Projects. Closed Tags: , , , .

Time for a quick update on my RepRap build, Leonard. Some of my part orders arrived at the weekend (kudos to thingfarm.org for great customer service) so today I finally started on assembling the frame and was pleasantly surprised at how fast everything went together. Utilising the Prusa build guide available at reprap.org I managed to get the basic structure put together in around an hour.

Everything now needs tightening and squaring up, but I’m more than happy with progress so far.

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Project Leonard – My Own RepRap

Published on November 6, 2011 in Projects. Closed Tags: , , , , .

Today I have started a new robotics project, Project Leonard. Leonard is to be my first CNC style automaton based on a RepRap design. I hope that the machine will afford me capability for home 3D printing, engraving, light milling and more. My thinking is that once I have completed the main unit (3D Printer) I will be able to then use it to develop and implement as many interchangeable CNC based attachments that I can think of.

For those of you not in the know:

RepRap is an open-source desktop 3D printer capable of printing plastic objects. Since many parts of RepRap are made from plastic and RepRap can print those parts, RepRap is a self-replicating machine – one that anyone can build given time and materials.

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