Just software this time

Its been quite a while but here is a project that I have been working on for around three weeks to a month. It is some code in Java that plays a game of Black Jack. After the finals are over though 'm going back to PICs because I've been given the challenge to have a bot up and running for a competition in Colorado.
So there should be more videos soon with my little robot for sensors and new brains....YAY!

Got some new/old equipment

So I currently have two oscilloscopes sitting in my lab/office. I agreed to help a friend out and see which one of them runs the best and most accurate. So for the time being I have two but hopefully I'll get to keep one of them.....I'm hoping that it's the Tektronix......the one with the gray front panel. Even though it's the least accurate I like how it looks, and I think the error level is due to the probes and the fact that it needs a little adjusting....but I need to read the service manual to figure out how to do that.

Rolling down the hallway

Here is the kinda completed tank bot. Next step is to do the same thing with a PIC microcontroller and then add stuff to it.

Some pictures for the bot

So the first few pictures here is the original layout that I had for the bot. It Ended up causing problems...The big problem was that I cooked the PING))) sensor that is in the front and for some reason the motor driver chip stopped working. The next photos are the new layout. Since I was down a sensor I had to improvise and mad my own.

The box moves

So like I said in my last post I went and bought a tank bot chassis last weekend. It showed up in my mailbox yesterday and I dropped everything that I was planning to do for the evening in order to slave tirelessly over said bot. Needless to say I had it up and trying to avoid walls in a matter of hours. The only problem being that it tried to avoid walls but still ran into them frequently. I'll have a video up sometime in the next few days after I get the thing to stop scraping the walls....

New stuff on the way

So because I'm hitting a dead end right now with the whole writing VHDL code and all I decided to go and get a sonic rangefinder and a small tank-bot chassis. Lets see if making this thing drive around will open up some new ideas for the FPGA.

Some Headway.....

It doesn't work quite right yet but it's going in the right direction

I've got a plan....if I have the time

So I decided what I want to try to do with the Nexys FPGA. What I'm planning on doing is to have around three or four 8x8 LED matrices hooked up to make a scrolling display that I'll be able to update with a keyboard hooked up to the board. It'll probably take me the rest of the semester to do if I can even figure out how to accomplish it but it sounds like it'll be a lot of fun either way.

Starting something new.....again....

Nexys 3

Nexys 3 VGA out

Papilio One

So since I've returned to school after the summer break I've been receiving a lot of new toys to play with. One such toy was an FPGA board called the Papilio-One. It's a pretty neat little board that I hope is going to provide a change of pace from the MCU stuff. The other new thing is also an FPGA board called the Nexys 3. My professor is letting me play with it for the semester so I hope to figure out whether or not I would want one by that time. 

It can see!

So here is a cool video that I just made showing that the PIC now can receive input with an IR LED and two IR transistors. FUN!

Something besides an LED

So my wife suggested that I try to make something run that wasn't an LED. Lucky for me this is what I've been planning on doing from the beginning.....I was just waiting for parts. There were many problems for some strange reason, all figured out, but not very fun. The strangest one was that the motor would stutter for a bit then even out. For some reason lowering the voltage down to 5.5v - 6.0v solved the problem. Here are some pictures as well.

Yay, goodbye to free time

Well the new semester has started. I can see the time I'm going to be spending on staring at code dwindling to nothing. The only good side of this is that I can ask so many questions about PIC to other students that they might start to avoid the lab....still fun for me though. On another note I've spent most of the afternoon sorting out parts that I got today so I'm almost ready to say screw it and let everything be messy......but then I wouldn't be able to find anything. Here's what some of it currently looks like.

Got the Clock Running

 So this chip was a bit of trouble because it does not have its own internal oscillator. The fun part was trying to figure out why it only worked when I touched the first three pins with a finger and then pushed the button. Eventually I figured out that pin one needed +5v applied to it. Yay, works.

Analog to Digital............?

Well it kinda works now. Actually it works just fine, my brain just kinda knows how it works. What I originally did was chop up the code trying to get it to work and replaced certain lines until I got it working. It was actually kinda fun. The best part though was wiring it all up on the breadboard and having it actually work..... off to try and mod the code again.

The Freebies are HERE!

So here is one of the chips I got sitting next to the demo board that I received when I bought my PICkit 2. The funny part is the one on the left is the exact same chip as the one on the right. The only difference is the package type. I prefer the DIP package on the left because I can put it into a breadboard as shown. The other cool thing is that I'm going to be getting a free development board from Texas Instruments as well which is the red board here. Yay, more syntax to figure out.........poop.

Freebies

So I found out that microchip allows 2 free samples per month. Lucky for me microchip allowed me to participate and I have two microcontrollers hopefully arriving in the next week. More toys, and free toys at that...yay!

RGB, pick a color

What I'm trying to do is make an RGB stand for this glass piece that I got in Oregon. The LED's that I have on the board are diffused except the blue one which is why the colors don't seem to blend in the video. The next step is to buy red and green ultra bright LED's to see if they blend better.

The power of a push button

It's great when things work out. All I had to do in order for this to work was change the first few lines of code to include a check to see if the push button was activated. Next I hope to do some A to D (Analog to Digital) stuff.

SUCCESS!!!!

Here is a video of the program I wrote finally working. YAY!

Computer Issues

So for the last week and a half I've re-installed Windows 7, XP, and back to 7 a couple of times to see why I've been getting BSOD. Since the last two runs have had no errors I have to assume that it was either the video card that I still need to test in my other computer or I have a bad HDD which I also still need to test. Either way I hope that this was the last time I have to install an OS for awhile.