We have movement

I didn’t want it to come to this! After many attempts to get the printer to go forward on its own accord (many resulting in ruining the control board and having to buy a new printer) i have brought out the secret weapon – ARDUINO.  I also bought a heavily geared down DC motor from Tamiya. These factors combined result in some serious direct to everything progress!

The video shows the printer stepping forwards at a pace set by the Resistance registered by a potentiometer. Later on the potentiometer will be very important in tweaking the printer so it outputs correctly. The DC motor has more than enough power to move the printer.

Circuit:

The black and red wires go directly to the dc motor. The power is switched using a simple transistor.

A lesson in failure

Recently I have been working on making a standard ink-jet printer free from the usual constraints of desktop printing. Looking at examples of direct to garment (DTG) printing and some of the ink-jet to 3d printer hacks out there i began tearing to pieces my desktop printer. The plan was to make the print heads as close to the bottom of the printer as i could. I also wanted to have the printer placed on wheels with the paper feed pushing the printer forwards. The result so far looks like this:

Although it looks the part so far it less than fulfills the part. I think in the build process i may have damaged the control board or something which is causing the results to be fairly unpredictable. I have been stressing and struggling with this thing for ages and have got any further. I was just about to abort the project when i started to look back over everything i had done one last time. What i realised was that although what i had first envisioned had not been realised some of the results were pretty damned nice.

Scanimations

If you don’t know what a scanimation is then here is a youtube clip by the creator -

If that has got you curious, excited or you are just plain bored then check out a little tutorial i wrote on how to create a scanimation. Please ignore the indexhibit sites style for the moment i have not had the time to style it yet.

Scanimation Tutorial.

The Sound Database

I have almost finished a project which I have been working on for the last few months so i thought it was about time I posted it up here. The website is written for Peter Cusack of CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Art & Performance). He approached me looking for an online database to show case sounds around major cities in the UK (which eventually turned into the world) and here is the result:  The Sound Database

There are a few bugs and usability features that I am working on but the base of the site pretty much finished.

The site uses a number of different languages and API to achieve the end result.

Languages-

• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• PHP
• MySQL
• AJAX
• Regular Expression

API:

• Google Maps API
• SoundManager2
• Prototype
• Scriptaculous

This is the first time i have coded something this complicated and i am fairly pleased with the results. Next i hope to add some extra functionality to the site.

1. A randomizer which pans around the world randomly playing sounds as it goes.
2. A walk though feature whereby the user can draw a line though the sounds. An icon will drive the path of the line playing sounds in close proximity. Sounds will pan to the left if they are on the left and right if they are on the right.

Rhythm bug improvements

Its been a really long tome since i wrote anything on here. This is partly because i am slacking and the mainly because i have 7 weeks left of my degree and have endless amounts of work to do. Just thought I’d take some time to document version two of the rhythm bug idea I posted a while ago.  Its a bit slow at the mo but works well. Gonna try different wheels maybe a different motor to see if i can improve its performance. I have also changed the switch to be more linear instead of rotating. This seemed to fit better into such a small space. One other detail that is worth mentioning is the humble Drawing pin. The contacts that slide across the circuit board are made from upside down drawing pins. They slide really well, conduct electricity really well and allow the contact to rotate with the movement putting less strain on the solder join – Useful little things!

Rhythm bug

After my post on subconscious tapping a while ago i have been pondering over my own version. I have been developing a very simple robot that bounces back and forth between two objects; the further apart the objects the slower the beat. I plan to make quite a few of these little bots so that different beats can be made by having each robot bounce between different distances.  Here’s a quick mock up of how the robots will be made -

I have nick named him Gaz the destroyer i made a mock up out of cardboard before this one who was not quite so successful. He was called Baz the racing slug! i do in fact need to get out more.

I am quite happy with the over all performance of the mock up. There are a few things to take into consideration. The robot produces a slight wheel spin on the return journey. This is because of bad weight distribution. I have decided to counteract this by making the robot 4 wheel drive. I also want to consider what material to construct the mechanism with so that when the robot bashes against an object it makes a good noise.

Back to basics

I love Arduino it makes life so easy. Things that used to take quite some time and a good selection of components now really can be done in a matter of minutes. Take for example the flashing LED a simple and obvious task. With arduino all you have to do is press the + pin of an LED into pin 13 or arduino and the – pin into the ground pin of the arduino and there you have it. Well almost a couple of lines of code later and you are done.

CODE>>

Int ledPin = 13; // LED connected to digital pin 13
void setup()
{pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // sets the digital pin as output}

void loop()
{
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // sets the LED on
delay(1000); // waits for a second
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW); // sets the LED off
delay(1000); // waits for a second
}
(snippet of code taken from the arduino site and is not my own doing please dont sue a poor student cheers)

Recently i have been wondering….. Is it all to easy. I can make arduino do these things so easily and yet have no idea how to create the same effect using actual components. I set out on a mission to create the flashing LED the old fashioned way. I found this tutorial which explains very clearly how to do it using a 555 timer IC. brilliant! half an hour later and the flashing LED mission is accomplished. All i can say is hurray for arduino life is so much simpler now.

VIDEO OF MY EFFORTS:

Nxt Mindstorm

As a first blog entry this might be quite sub standard but I’m going to give it my best shot. Recently I had the opportunity to play with the Lego Mindstorm kit. Who would of thought getting your degree could be so much fun? The anticipation and excitement as i opened the box was reminiscent of the chaos i caused every Christmas morning of my childhood. The instruction were tossed aside and a shower of Lego pieces vacated their correct compartments and scattered noisily all over the desk. after a good half an hour of random, unsuccessful compilations of Lego pieces and the Lego Nxt brain itself i decided it might be time to admit defeat.

The Nxt might at first glance appear to be a playful, naive, toy but when you start researching its capabilities the possibilities are endless. The simplicity and speed at which the Nxt can be manipulated makes it an awesome tool for prototyping. Once i spent some time to read the instructions and followed some of the basic tutorials i was hooked. There is something quite liberating about just clipping components together and instantly setting them to work. One of the only things negative i have to say about the Nxt is that i found the software quite tiresome. Maybe after messing with code for so long i have conditioned my self for a top down style of thinking where as the Lego software was very visual based heavily upon drag and drop. After a little research i found a class library for C# entitled MindSqualls and this opened up a whole world of possibilities. MindSqualls can be downloaded here along with a lot of documentation and tutorials.

The end result – His name is Mo-B (Haven’t a clue why just seemed right )

Some inspiring robots from others and places for more information: