Resources

I was looking for an option to create a circuit with a switch, so I can use two single cell li-on Nokia cell phone batteries in series, but charge them in parallel through a USB charger. The idea is to be able to install the batteries in a small robot, where they will not be easily accessible to charge with my regular li-po battery charger. I have a couple of these simple but effective battery chargers lying around, but they can only charge a single cell. After some digging around, I found the following circuit and was able to successfully to put it together and test it. You need a “double-pole-double-throw” (DPDT) switches. It is a switch with six pins, essentially two single switches with a common button / slider. The two sides of the switch are not connected and control two separate circuits. So here is what you need: ...

While testing a new circuit on a breadboard, my good old Arduino Uno suddenly released its “magic smoke” with a loud pop and stopped working. On a closer inspection, I saw that a small crater had appeared on the 5 volt voltage regulator. The next step was to figure out just how bad things were. I powered up the board via the 5v pin from a regulated power supply and…the Arduino came back to life! It looked like the voltage regulator was the only damaged component. ...

Breadboards and hook-up wires are great for prototyping and testing out basic circuits. At some point though, you will want to create something more permanent and robust. Robots move around, bump into things, shake and vibrate and wires tend to disconnect way to easy. Soldering will help fix that! The best part is that even though it may look a bit intimidating, soldering is actually quite easy. All it takes is some practice and using the right tool for the job. Below is a collection of soldering videos and tutorials that helped me get from an absolute beginner to being relatively comfortable making custom boards with through-hole, and even SMD components (most of these even work!). ...

I am working on circuit that will allow me to program my Arduino boards (I have an Arduino Uno and a couple of Arduino Pro Minis) over a wireless Bluetooth connection. I am planning to use my cheap and easy to find HC-06 Bluetooth module for this. One of the first thing to figure out is the baud rate that the Arduino IDE uses, when uploading the sketches to the various Arduino boards. I need to make sure that my HC-06 Bluetooth module is configured to communicate at the same rate, so the avrdude stays happy. ...

Erik Verberne teaches Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Netherlands and looked into the Arduino platform in an attempt to enhance his department’s curriculum. He diligently documented his research and is now sharing it with the community. The result is an e-book of over 200 pages full of examples and tutorials, from Arduino and ATTiny programming tips, to working with LCD and LED displays, playing sounds, detecting obstacles, wireless communication via IR and Bluetooth and much more. See the official thread in the Arduino forum for the latest update and a copy of the Arduino guide and make sure you post a comment there if you find it useful! ...

Shift registers are useful chips that can add more outputs or inputs to your micro-controller. The 74HC595, for example, provides 8 additional digital outputs that can be controlled with only 3 Arduino pins. Additionally, you can “daisy-chain” multiple shift registers to multiply the number of outputs even further. Below is a great video by Kevin Darrah explaining how shift registers actually work. He took an interesting approach demonstrating the functionality of the shift register using manual input via push buttons, rather than a micro-controller. ...

App Inventor provides a fast and easy way to build simple apps for Android phones and tablets. It is targeted primarily at those of us with limited, or no experience in Android development. App Inventor has a fairly intuitive graphical interface, where you first visually design the application screen and then add the logic by dragging and dropping a series of colour-coded code “blocks” that snap together with a satisfying click, when connected correctly. ...

A free, on demand course offered by Udacity. Definitely worth checking out… Course Summary: “Learn how to program all the major systems of a robotic car from the leader of Google and Stanford’s autonomous driving teams. This class will teach you basic methods in Artificial Intelligence, including: probabilistic inference, planning and search, localization, tracking and control, all with a focus on robotics. Extensive programming examples and assignments will apply these methods in the context of building self-driving cars.” ...

Coursera is a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. One of the courses included in 2013 is “Control of Mobile Robots” by Magnus Egerstedt, a Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. According to the course summary, you will learn how to make mobile robots move in effective, safe, and predictable ways, avoid collisions while reaching target locations, as well as dabble with robots that fly, or walk. Sounds pretty cool! The next session starts on January 28th, 2013… ...

Circuits 1 – Khan Academy