Read more

Upgrading Robie The Robot.

Part one, in a journey to upgrade an old robot. This classic 80’s robot This robot was also known as: Tandy Robie, Radio Shack Robie, Robie the Robot, Talking Robie, RS 4061, Robocom 1000, Robie Parlant, and Robocom Robot (Super).

Read more

Parametric VESA Mount Fixer.

Recently I encountered a monitor that used a different mount despite being only a few digits of in model number. The monitor needed to live with the other, so I created an OpenSCAD mount to convert lower mount VESA, to central mount VESA.

Read more

Surface Preparation and Finger Prints. How bad are they?

In preparing a surface for paint / glue / thermal paste / soldering / whatever, there is one thing to remember. A normal finger print is of similar thickness to cling wrap (0.01mm). A thick (eg post pizza) print, where the ridges are no longer visible, is closer to the thickness of a sheet of paper (0.1mm).

Rule of thumb. If you would you would not be happy with this kind of material on the surface of whatever you are coating, remove your finger prints.

Read more

[UPDATE] Comprehensive Arduino Flash Memory via PROGMEM

[Updated for arduino v1.6] This post is a huge set of PROGMEM examples (done as unit tests) which you can freely copy and paste into your work.

The readership level is set at those who are already familiar with the arduino PROGMEM documentation here and the use of the F() macro and __FlashStringHelper*

Its designed as a reference to save you the “lets see how to make this work” time and communicate common pitfalls. Search for the method you need to use, and see it running in working tested code

Read more

ASCII-Art Arduino Pinouts

Managing arduino projects can be a nightmare because its hard to keep track of your hardware setup in your code comments. To enable easy documentation of pin assignments, I created a couple of ASCII art arduino pin-outs.

These come complete with ports, PWM and coms all marked. Simply paste as a comment into your code and marvel at your new found organisation.