Since I’m really dragging my feet in regards to posting anything of substance, take a quick look at my new Aoyue soldering station.

also pictured: clutter

It works like a champ…pretty pumped that I heeded Lady Ada’s advice on this one.

I still need to post my Motor Shield assembly pics. I also really need to post some stuff about the Droid 2…which is constantly blowing my mind. Stick around…it’ll happen.

Sweep is for breakfast around here…implement a knob or be gone.

Same principle as the Arduino sweep example from yesterday, but with a potentiometer doing the actual lifting. Lifting? Shifting…heavy shifting. I added a little potentiometer (little blue guy behind the RainBird sprinkler adjustment tool) to control the servo this go-around:

enhance...enhance

more shame...more plugs

Another success. Dang. Looks like I’m going to have to whip out the soldering iron after all. Not looking forward to this effort; I have a bad feeling that I’m going to fail miserably with the project.

Maybe I’ll knock it out of the park. Life is a garden, dig it.

My source for the Arduino Motor Shield would not approve of my soldering iron. Not by any means…

fail

I still have the ‘made in china’ tag on this piece of shit. Poorly played.

In case any of my reader-base has taken an interest in microcontrollers, robotics, or awesome crap in general, Lady Ada has you covered. I recieved my motor shield in no time what-so-ever, and Limor’s prices smoke those of Amazon to boot. Don’t get me started about her tutorials…pretty bad ass.

I need to toss the pictured iron in the trash and get a real iron before I get after my motor shield project…I can say that the servos she shipped me are tits.

In preparation for the impending shit-storm that will consist of me, a soldering iron, and dozens of small, fragile components, I decided to see if I can actually get my Arduino to talk to a servo. Well, it turns out that the code is not the issue.

The built in servo library is pretty easy to tackle. A little bit of analogue, a little bit of digital, a little bit of shameless self promotion…

shameless plug

messy

Step one…check. I can sweep through 180 degrees. Can I solder to save my ass (and semi-valuable electrical components)…time will tell.

Also, I’m post dating this post. Happy B-Day Betsy.

I splurged on a motor shield from Lady Ada for my Arduino antics.

Here it is..

shit, indeed

“Some Assembly Required” Sonofabitch. I guess my soldering skills are going to be put to the test. Stay tuned.

One step closer…

Switch open yields a killer red LED…

stop

go

I even tossed in some 1K resistors to keep my LEDs healthy, in addition to my 100 ohm / 10000 ohm pull-down setup.

+4 resistor

I even managed to comment my code, for a bonus win:

/*
* binary red/green led setup
* by Joseph Swanson
* http://swantron.com
*/

int led1 = 11; // green LED (pin 11)
int led2 = 12; // red LED (pin 12)
int swit= 5; // switch (pin 5)
int varr; // to read pin on/off (pin 5)

void setup() {
pinMode(led1, OUTPUT); // output green
pinMode(led2, OUTPUT); // output red
pinMode(swit, INPUT); // switch input
}

void loop(){
varr = digitalRead(swit); // store swit to varr
if (varr == LOW) { // button = pressed
digitalWrite(led1, HIGH); // trigger green
digitalWrite(led2, LOW); // ground red
}
if (varr == HIGH) { // button != pressed
digitalWrite(led1, LOW); // ground green
digitalWrite(led2, HIGH); // trigger red
}
}

+1 Snippet

I’m getting closer to having this thing behave the way I intend. Stay tuned for a while longer. I’ll have a robot up and rolling in no time whatsoever.

Maybe Vegas got the best of me, brain-wise. I’m struggling mightily with this pull-down switch prototype on my Arduino. I got it, after far-too-much troubleshooting.

maxxximum powwwwer

Maybe I need another frozen slushy drink. Or alternatively, a supplementary OML to get me through this…the end goal is to get some logic incorporated to ‘read’ the state of the switch, so that I don’t need my finger on the sonofabitch to keep the light lit. Or lighted…getting tired here.

Stay tuned. I’ll get this knocked out.

I put together a little sketch while I was horsing around with the Arduino serial monitor…

hmm

…pretty stupid, huh? Especially, since it repeats this horrible haiku every five seconds. Forever. This is, oddly enough, the first thing I have taken the required 10 seconds to add comments to my code, which ought to be worth at least a +1

/*
* Awful Haiku
*
* This useless thing prints an aweful haiku
* repeatedly, for no particular reason
*
* courtesy of your friends @ swantron.com
* http://swantron.com

*/

void setup() // reset
{
Serial.begin(9600); // set serial baud

}

void loop() // loop area
{
Serial.println(“Haiku “); // start of haiku crap
Serial.println(“~~~~~”);
Serial.println(” “);
Serial.println(“Arduinos are neat.”);
Serial.println(“You can do a bunch of crap;”);
Serial.println(“Like print a haiku.”);
Serial.println(” “);
Serial.println(” “);

delay(5000); // 5 second delay
}

+ 1 Haiku
- 1 Awful Haiku
+ 1 Comments in Code
- 1 Useless Program
- 1 No LEDs
____________________

-1 Total. Sorry for wasting your time.

so it begins

My ethernet shield is here…I haven’t talked to it yet. This could be awesome.

Amusing Amazon order time…

Into the Ether

Arduino Ethernet shield, and a ring stretching tool. Go figure. Both respective projects will be well documented.

Aftermath of my last Arduino session in my garage/workshop? Bonus LED action.

bonus LED action is bonusy

It turns out my florescent lamp was pretty weak…the 7 O’Clock sun put it to shame, in the day-after mess of my ‘lab.’

Indirectly awesome.

***ADDITIONAL BONUS MATERIAL***

See if you can spot the following

* Netbook
* Notebook
* Zoot Badge
* Solar Panel
* USB cord
* Table
* Cardboard Box
* Other Random Electronics Crap

Good Luck!

Here we go. As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m horsing around with analog input to my Arduino, in the form of input via a solar cell. For the win. It turns out, that I’m getting far better with my casual electronics experimentation…I will chalk this one up as a win.

My basic set-up is this…Radio Shack solar cell, breadboard, florescent light source, Arduino, and a notebook.

Step 1) gauge light source via multimeter.

one point twenty-one gigawatts

1.7 V…no need to toss in a resister, as the Arduino can handle 5V without issue. Good to go.

Step 2) Interface with Arduino via breadboard.

breadless soldierboard

This could have been a direct setup, but for the sake of not soldering a solid lead to my solar cell array, I chose to twist the crap out of the existing + and – leads of the wire outs on the unit, and cram them into the breadboard. USB connected to the Arduino, of course

Step 3) Chop in some code for the Arduino. This was the tricky part…not that tricky, however:

~~code snippet time~~

void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600); }
void loop() {
int v = analogRead(0);
Serial.print(v);
Serial.print(‘ ‘);
delay(900);
}

~~~end code snippet time~~~

enhance...enhance

Note the lack of comments? I’m a flipping math dude, so that is wholly optional in my book. Long story short, Wiring is a stripped cousin of C++…I have to void setup and loop here, since I am not concerned with anything once I let ‘er rip. I will touch on the programming specifics at a later date, but inquiring minds can find this info quite easily on the Arduino project’s main page, or on Wikipedia. Knock your socks off. I added the delay for sake of real-time monitoring, and matched the baud rate to which I had configured my USB connection. ttyUSB0 would be that in question…9600 would be the rate.

Step 4) Read input via serial monitor.

those figures average out to 'awesome'

As you can see, it is pretty much constant, with some fluctuation due to my set-up. Noisy, yes. Cheap components, yes.

Step 5) Testing ‘zero’ state. Here, I have employed my box of smokes. American Spirit Lights, to be precise.

Yellow Box of American Spirits...A Labritory Must-Have

Step 6) Gauge system.

Here, I’m altering between ‘on’ and ‘off’ states. I start with the ‘off’ (smokes on solar panel) configuration for a time, remove the box to open the system to ‘max input’ for appx 7 secs, and then place the box to remove the input energy.

FOR THE WIN INDEED

Most definitely for the win…with the experimental noise, that could be considered effectively zero. For the win.

In summation, I have read in analog, as intended. Lessons learned? Pretty straight forward I suppose. My cheap-o solar cell is rated for a max of 6V, which I was far under. If I was to use this setup with a stronger light source, I would need to take this into consideration. I didn’t perform any data transformation, as I was not concerned with ‘actual voltage input values’ in this case…merely relative. Most importantly, I was able to knock out the task I had set out to do. Hopefully, I can ride my EE high and get cranking on something awesome, like a netbook robot. With some lasers.