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Now that I got my recycled 40×2 character LCD working with Arduino, the next step is to get it to show something useful. I decided to add it to my Bluetooth Controlled robot and display data from its two ultrasonic distance sensors (initially). Gradually more interesting info like battery voltage and wheel encoder data can also be shown, as I get those components working. The problem is that now I need to find another 6 digital pins to control the LCD itself. Fortunately, there is an alternative: add a 74HC595 shift register and take advantage of the Arduino SPI library. Here is how: ...

A couple of days ago I came across a discarded Meridian PBX phone and naturally, took it apart. Among some of the more promising salvaged components was a 40 x 2 character LCD. There was a ribbon cable attached to the LCD with a 14 pin female connector. The pins were helpfully labeled on the front of the panel (from 1 to 14). On the back of the LCD I could see five KS00065B LCD Driver chips. The next thing to find out was how to hook this up to my Arduino Uno. ...

An Arduino Uno controlling a small robotic arm that sorts balls in their respective containers based on the ball colour. A TCRT5000 IR sensor is used for basic colour detection. I’ve made some progress over the weekend. Check it out…

This is the second part of the tutorial on how to program an AVR ATTiny85 chip with Arduino Uno. All the hard work has already been covered in Part 1, so make sure that you have completed the steps in that section before you continue! By default, the ATtiny85 runs at 1 MHz. You need to do an extra step to configure the microcontroller to run at 8 MHz. This is a requirement for using some popular libraries (like Software Serial), as well as to take full advantage of your chip. ...

I recently bought the OWI 3 in 1 ATR (all terrain robot) kit from Amazon. What got my attention was its potential for hacking and re-use of its components. In the “Rover” mode the unit is pretty tightly packed. There does not seem to be much space to add electronics, or batteries inside, but they can be added on top. The front of the robot seemed a good spot to put the extra stuff, so I taped a 4 full AA battery pack as a test. The results were pretty good – the motor handles the extra load without a problem and the additional weight at the front actually helps the bot to climb over fairly tall obstacles with a vertical wall: ...

Experimenting potential configurations for a mechanical arm. Motor + screw as actuator. To do: – Stop motor when the clamp grabs something (without crushing it) – Add servos for 2 axis movement The planned steps for this project actually are: – Define platform – Locate the object – Move towards it – Collect – Sort – Locate dumping sites – Unload cargo according to dumping site

UPDATE, November, 2015: The article below was written for Arduino IDE versions, prior to 1.6.4. If you are currently using Arduino IDE 1.6.4, or later, follow the instructions in blog post instead. This tutorial is based on the steps I took to program an ATTiny85 with my Arduino Uno and use the nifty little chip for a small line following robot. The idea for using the ATTiny came from the MAKE magazine and more specifically their “How-To: Shrinkify Your Arduino Projects” YouTube video. The ATTiny libraries for the Arduino IDE come from the High-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab. They have some other interesting materials for Arduino on their site as well. Step 1: Collect all necessary hardware components An Arduino Uno (or compatible board) An ATTiny85 IC One 10 uF capacitor Breadboard and jumper wires ...

We held our first line following competition last week. We knew ahead of time that right angle turns may cause some issues, so we set up a few to see what happens. We did have some challenges, like you can see here: But at the end we had several clean runs and a winner:

Continuing to mess around with the ATTiny85 IC… I ported the code from my Arduino Uno line following robot to the ATTiny. Some changes were necessary to make it work: The ATTiny has only 3 analog pins, so the sensor array has 3 TCRT5000 IR LED/Sensors instead of the 6 the original line follower had The SoftwareServo library was needed, as the standard servo library that comes with the Arduino IDE does not work on the ATTiny The code used is below, and more info on how to program the ATTiny chip using your Arduino as a programmer is available in this post. There is one more pin available on the ATTiny85, so I am thinking of adding an ultrasound sensor and some basic obstacle avoidance next. Here is the Arduino Code that runs on the ATTiny: ...

A few days ago we got several ATTiny85 ICs (datasheet) and this is a first video of the small chip in action. Working out the kinks of programming this little guy with an Arduino Uno and getting Arduino libraries to work with it takes a bit of effort and digging around the forums. Still, as a small, light and cheap (can be found for $1.15 online) alternative of an Arduino Uno – it looks very promising! Here is a detailed tutorial on how to program the ATTiny using an Arduino Uno. ...