One step closer…
This thing screams with wall wart power. Watch…
Now comes the hard part…choosing a decent battery and mounting the circuit board savely on the chasis. I have found a few good candidates, but they are a little bulky for my application. Still looking…
The UI should be fairly straight forward. Just need a few more garage sessions, and I’ll be good to go.
The cordless Dremel was a super purchase FWIW. One of the best tools I’ve used.
I aspire to clean this mess up.
I have an app tossed together that provides my six digi-outs. I just need to spend some time welding my soldering iron, and figure out how to mound this stuff on the platform. Expect a video post Sunday.
I thought I could get away with utilizing the onboard 6V from my cannibalized motion platform…aka the orange thing…in order to power both the DC motors and my IOIO. My bluetooth connection was cutting out…indicating that I needed to introduce a separate power source for the board and for the motors.
My workaround didn’t pan out…time to rethink the build. Guess what I have on my desk:
Adafruit Motor Shield for the Arduino. Two good looking H-Bridges staring at me….that’ll do. I never thought I would find myself treating my Arduino gear as a scrapheap, but the day has come.
The H-Bridge will allow me to cross over (think of a capitol H) and provide bi-directional motion from the hardware level. 3.3V digital outputs…no more open drain needed (bonus.)
Anyhow, I ended up putting together a little test board…socket, some male pins, and eventually some wires for a more secure connection. Sucking some serious soldering fumes…
It looks sloppy, but here is the hardware in its entirety:
Here is a quick video of my testing. I fired up my IOIOSeek program, which has two simple digital outputs triggered via buttons…
Early success? Yep. Except for the early part…this has been more work than I had assumed. More EE work…hoping the UI and hardware containment goes smoothly. Tune back in.
The project is wrapped. I have fully shown servo control via bluetooth, via Android, via IOIO. +3 via
The easiest way to test this, by far, is to snag the app on the Android Market. Here:
This does require a newer version of the IOIO bootloader than is currently shipping from units at Sparkfun, but details can be tracked down at this Google Groups area on how to update. It will work standardly, with a USB cable.
From there, you can take a look at my code on GitHub.
I haven’t included the IOIO libraries, but that will be part of the Eclipse setup if you decide to start hammering out some code. I can provide some guidance if anyone is in need of any.
Take a look. I bumped the SDK minimum again, in order to ensure that this function is intact. If this causes any hardship, I can relax the requirement.
Anyhow, take a look at the app in action in the previous post. Cheers.
Taking it up another notch…servo control via bluetooth
Watch the video to see the Andoid / IOIO / servo in action:
I’ll get app updated on the Android Market and on GitHub this weekend. Happy Friday.
