Jim Wink's Make Blog

As mentioned in my last post I had ordered two new spools and a pen holder from MarginallyClever . Since then I've received these items and added them to my setup. I also went out and got the most recent code from the Makelangelo repository on Github . Finally I stopped at a local craft supply store and bought some nicer Faber Castell art pens. All this together has produced some rather nice results. To the left is a photo of my 7-year old son after a fresh haircut. The photo, incidentally, was one of the first I'd ever taken with our new Canon 4ti. It's "first light" as it were. This drawing was done with one of the sharper dry-erase markers I'd purchased earlier. Despite wider tip, it still worked out pretty well. One thing to note here: some lines have been removed from the image the software originally created. I found out that once the software finished loading a JPEG (or other) image and converting it, it stores the gcode in a file called "Wi...

I recently spent some more time working on my Drawbot, which is now called a Makelangelo . I don't mind the name change since that makes it easier to find in web searches. I'm not sure of the source of my renewed interest. Possibly because the awesome folks at MarginallyClever.com are frequently making updates to both software and hardware. Possibly also because, like many makers, every so often I get the urge to make something. Or in this case, improve on what I've already made. One of the first changes I made was to how the stepper motors were attached. I still like the idea of not attaching the motors to the board directly. I instead attached them to these corner units I created that hang off the board proper. The reason I do this is because I keep thinking I'll make a bigger board eventually. Building these units once and then shifting them to a new board should, in theory, be easy. Anyway, during a trip to a local hardware store I found some Nylon or plastic...

I have a new toy, but because I forget to say anything about it, I have not yet posted. So here it is: It's a Raspberry Pi. Got it from Adafruit a month or so back. More specifically I got: The Rasberry Pi Model B 512MB Ram A Pi Shell - clear case Cobbler Breakout Kit HDMI to VGA Video _ Audio Adapter Armed with these goodies and a spare Dell 17" LCD monitor we had I started setting up. I grabbed and erased a spare 4 gig SD card & grabbed a copy of Wheezy and an imager from the Wiki . Adafruit, of course, has some awesome tutorials on the subject as well. One annoying thing about it was that I couldn't get the thing to display on my old Dell 17" LCD. I had some newer LG monitors it was fine with, so I knew it was working. There is a config file you can set on the SD card from any other computer prior to boot up that sets a variety of initial state items. One was an HMDI boost setting which did the trick. Some time after getting it initially...

A while back I ran into an article on Make about a Vancouver maker named Dan Royer. The article talks about a kit for something called a DrawBot . The DrawBot uses two stepper motors hung at the upper corners of a flat board. On the steppers are spindles of mono-filament line (fishing line) and between them is a pen. On the board is paper. Running the steppers is an  Arduino  and a  Motorshield . The goal? Have the computer (connected to the Arduino) tell the Drawbot to draw something on the paper. Brilliant, right? Check out his site for videos of the DrawBot doing it's thing. Very cool. The sketch on the Arduino is code written by Dan that is essentially a G-code interpreter. It'll take instructions sent to it by the connected computer and direct the pen accordingly. This is something I'd been looking for: a way to learn G-code, by doing. Seeing as I already had an Arduino. Not an Uno, mind you - a Duemilanova '328 board, but still. I also have a Motorsh...

A while back I ordered an Attiny 2313 from Adafruit . Along with it I ordered a USBtinyISP to program it. For whatever reason I could never get the thing working.  The process involved downloading AVRDude , WinAVR , and various steps of setup. After getting everything installed & following the instructions carefully, I still couldn't get it to work. I did submit some questions on Adafruit's forum & got some answers, but I suspect the problem was either I'd made a mistake in assembling the   USBtinyISP  or just my general lack of understanding of what was going on. It was also possible I'd wrecked the chip, so I gave up after a while. Later I decided it might have been better to take myself out of the equation, so again I ordered another programmer and some chips, this time from Sparkfun: a Pocket AVR programmer , another Attiny 2313 and an Attiny85 . So far I've not gotten around to trying out their AVR programmer & until recently the chips staye...

I haven't posted in a while. I have still been busy tinkering, but for one reason or another haven't gotten around to posting. I have made some progress on my design for a color fading juggling ball, and have started some other projects, but I think I will save them for another post. Instead, I'll say a word or two about some new purchases. When I built the web cam pan this summer, I sent with it my one and only Arduino. It was an older one with an Atmega 168 and 16 k of memory so I was looking to upgrade. Prior to sending it off, I first bought an Arduino Pro Mini 5.5v / 328 from Sparkfun . I also had to get an FTDI breakout board for it as it doesn't have on-board USB communications. Man, that thing is tiny! It's about the size two postage stamps! Pictured here is what it looks like after putting pins all over it so I can snap it into a breadboard. I did learn one thing with it - solder carefully. The picture you see here is actually my second Pro Mini. With...

Here is a photo of a project I started a while back. I took an old Logitech web camera we had sitting around, removed it from it's case and sandwiched it between two small sheets of Acryllic. My reasoning here is it would be easier to attach that to a servo than the weird sphere casing it was originally in. Really, I think it just looks cooler that way. The servo is bolted to - well through - a plank I had in the garage. I think it's left over from building the deck. A plank, yes. Probably green-treat or some such. If I could've figured out a way to get duct tap on it, I probably would have. Anyway, behind the web camera is an Arduino Duemilanova (168) - the original/first one I got. It's connected with some simple wood screws through the board. Underneath all this, on the other side of the plank is a Power Switch Tail . This nifty little device is a bit like a really short extension cord with a switch. Regular 120 volt house current goes in one end and comes out the ot...

Axman Surplus is awesome. I've been thinking of building a CNC . There are a number of articles on the web that'll walk you through building a CNC, including this one on how to build a desktop CNC . That one, in particular, could use a tool I already have - a Dremel. Anyway, a CNC is complicated. There's a whole language used for communicating with CNC's called g-code , that is pretty much a complete mystery to me. Then there's taking 3-d models and converting them to g-code, and probably any number of details I don't have figured out. It'd be a bigger project than I've tackled so far. But like anything, I've got to start somewhere, so I figured I'd start with equipment I already have. In this case I'm referring to the Motor Shield I got from Adafruit . I built it a while back and then set it aside and never used it. So I figured this was a good time. I'd already figured out how to run a servo on the Arduino, but the Motor Shield has p...

I had to do this. Partially because I could, but also partially because I needed a quick project. I hadn't done many projects recently (well, summer, duh) and I needed to do something easy with some real impact. Even if I wasn't sure who in the neighborhood would get the joke. I live in the 'burbs - a lot of non-geeks out here. I decided to do some real soldering on this one. I wanted to create a unit I could keep for later if I wanted to use it. I started with a pile o f red LED's I had liberated from a set of Christmas lights. Many of these LED's came pre-equipped with their own resistor. I'm not entirely sure why, though I've noticed during my forays with the RGB LEDs that the red typically wanted lower voltage. I settled on 12 because its what I could comfortably fit in a Radio Shack proto-board. The LEDs with the resistor seemed okay with the 5 volts the Arduino put out without having issues, but the remaining non-resistored ones were rather bright oth...

I've never had a blog before, and for that matter, never had a reason. Now I do, or at least now I want to get some things down before I forget. If any of this winds up being useful to other people, great. If not, well, I've got notes out in the cloud I can get back to from anywhere. It has come to my attention that computers are better at remembering things than my own brain - more on that later... For a while I've had a number of ideas regarding various gadgets I wanted to build. Most of these gadgets are of an electronic nature. I am a Software Engineer by trade. While I've got 15+ years of experience programming in various languages, I've got little or no experience with electronics. This has, until recently, stopped me from acting on any of these ideas. With software you can debug and you can try again with little or not consequences. With electronics sometimes if you make a mistake you can fry a component - and you're out real money. I hadn't gotten in...