Back to work...

Sorry for the delay in getting to the next project but I can now share with you why I've been a little tardy. I was asked by Make: to host a new video series called "The Latest in Arduino," and it's taken a bit of my free time to get it rolling, but now that episode 1 is out (and raw video for episode 2 is submitted) I can get back to the Beginning Arduino projects.

Before I move on to the robot project, I needed to solder up the MotorShield. It wasn't difficult, but look close and you may see an error I made... it's not critical and I can still work with it, but it'll always stick with me as a reminder to go EVEN SLOWER when soldering up these shields!

Now that the MotorShield is done, I need to solder some wires to the motors on the robot base... so I'll try and tackle that tonight so I can get another project completed before Friday.

I'm also going to be attending Maker Faire in San Mateo, California, in a few weeks... if you're going to be there, come by the MakerShed tent - that's where you'll find me. I've been asked to tag team between my own booth (showing off the 3D Printer that goes with my new book "Printing in Plastic: Build Your Own 3D Printer" with my co-author Patrick Hood-Daniel) and a booth where visitors can test out the MintDuino and wire up a few cool things. Should be fun.

Learning Processing Blog

It's always nice to find a fellow blogger working his or her way through a book and documenting results, good and bad. Related to the Arduino, I'd like to point you to Will Price's blog where he's currently working through both the Make: Electronics book and Learning Processing, a book certain to be of interest to all of us just learning to code for the Arduino.

Arduino Books - 50% One Day

O'Reilly has a one-day 50% eBook sale for its Arduino titles... you can find more information here. I've been going through the Arduino Cookbook, myself... it's a worthy title for your bookshelf, and at 600+ page and tons of sample code, it's well worth the $16 price today.

Stepper Issues

This stepper motor is driving me crazy... I've tried all the iterations (I think) and it gets power, the axle won't rotate, it buzzes... but no rotation. I'm going to spend a few more minutes with it tonight... maybe tomorrow... and then move on to the robot project which is next.

I've checked my wiring... double-check it... it's not the wiring. I'm pretty certain something weird is going on with this motor. I have a LOT of stepper motors (4 for my 3D printer and 3 for my CNC machine) but they have unique connectors that I'd have to cut and I'm not going to do that for this project... these are BIG steppers and not cheapies at all.

In the meantime, I've got to solder up a MotorShield that I'll be using for Project 29... will try to get to that tomorrow...

Project 28 - Need Some Help - UPDATE

For those of you with access to the book and/or a better understanding of the Uno, I have a question - Figure 10-1 shows a wire running from what appears to be a numeral 9 near the 5V and GND wires at the bottom left corner of the figure. This wire goes into the positive power column/row at the top of the breadboard which then connects to the stepper motor.

On my Uno, this is labeled Vin (I think) - the author says to use external DC power for this project so I'm wondering if that's how power is being applied to the motor. It's just never been mentioned in the previous projects so I'm a bit confused.

Also... a bit of checking online reveals that the Uno wants a 9V AC-to-DC power supply adapter which I don't have... but I do have a variable one that can be set to 9V. The only problem is I cut off the end to expose the wires for the Make: Electronics book (so it can be plugged directly into the V and GND breadboard rows). I'm thinking I should be able to just plug in the Arduino to the USB for its own power needs and, while still running the 5V and GND wires from the Arduino to the breadboard for the chip's power needs (5v or less I'm guessing) I can just skip the "9" or whatever that is and provide power to the motor with my variable adapter's leads... right?

Update: And wouldn't you know I'd buy the one stepper motor that doesn't seem to have any kind of help in terms of data sheet when it comes to sorting out the six wires and what goes where! Argh...

While I Wait Some More...

Still waiting on the servo so in anticipation of an upcoming project involving building a line following robot, I decided to go ahead and put together the 4-Wheel robot base that was loaned to me by MakerShed...

It's a solid base... this thing is designed well. I did find that the online instructions for building it didn't match up exactly to the parts I have (the black metal frame pieces are slightly different in the number of holes but that wasn't a problem) and the photos don't really show the motors being held to the frame with the long machine screws that came in my kit... but it's not difficult to figure out anyway.

The upcoming project uses a 2-wheel robot frame along with a caster, but since I have a 4-wheel version I'll probably have to modify the code a bit to control 4 wheels... or just hike the base up on a home-made caster of some sort... will cross that bridge later... I may actually break down and buy this thing from MakerShed as I can see it being a really nice base to have for future projects... BTW, there's a bunch of small add-on parts for holding sensors and such that I haven't attached in the final image here.

While I Wait...

While I wait for a little cheap-o stepper motor to arrive for the next project, I thought I'd share with you something Arduino-related that I just got my hands on - it's the MintDuino from MakerShed... and it's totally cool... and really fun to build.

Everything you see there on that little breadboard fits in that tin. The breadboard actually folds up - the power/GND columns fold back and then up to snap into place, making it fit nicely in the tin, too. It took me about 20 minutes to assemble using the instructions over at MakerShed, and it's not as "user friendly" as a real Arduino due to the lack of labeling... but that, to me, is where the fun begins.

I took the MintDuino and began comparing it to the Uno... I used the circuit tracing that you can see on the surface (front and back) of the Uno and was able to determine which pins are which on the Atmel chip. If you want to gain a little better understanding of the Uno's circuitboard, build your own MintDuino and things start to click. (Not everything... I'm still learning and figuring things out - there's a lot more I don't know than what I do know...)