Today, I went over to the Uni to get on and do some stuff. I've been over there before, and spent all day getting nothing done. I've also stayed at home and got nothing done. But today I was firm with myself and gritted my teeth and ordered the CAN-bus AVR microcontroller modules that I need in order to make an autonomous robot vehicle. I refrained ( Read more... )

Spent all day today at Tech Adventure, with three Compukit UK101 machines. In fact, in addition to my three machines, there was a fourth, highly modified, Compukit brought in by David Stevenson. That one also operated for most of the day, with such features as a 32-line text display and 32k of dynamic RAM. In fact, the machines all performed ( Read more... )

There was so much going on at Dorkbot Bristol this month that we ran out of places to sit and ended up sprawled on whatever floor space remained. I started off the evening by showing the five-button analog controller that I made at DorkSnow in London. It's basically five selectable voltage dividers, connected to an analog input pin on an Arduino ( Read more... )

Yesterday was Dorkbot Bristol, all afternoon! We took over an empty office building (well, just the top floor) in Stokes Croft, and much good stuff went on. I took along the radio-controlled car chassis that I've been working on, plus an Atmel ATmega32 controller and an HP 95LX handheld to use as a terminal. Others brought along a high-speed ( Read more... )

I've been working on the little rotary encoder gadget that I took along to last month's Dorkbot Bristol. It's a CD-ROM hub/motor, stripped out of a broken drive and repurposed. I've wired up the three hall-effect sensors to give a signal that represents the rotation of the hub, and connected it all to an Atmel AVR ATmega8 microcontroller. I've ( Read more... )

I have started on the first of the essays. I think I must have picked the wrong one, previously. Things are much better now that I'm working on the robotics papers instead of the mechatronics.

Meanwhile, the first UK version of The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk (http://www.tgimboej.org/) is on its way to me. But surely I ( Read more... )

Must get a coffee grinder. Argos don't sell 'em, and John Lewis are out of stock ( Read more... )