David Cook s Autómata Slagroom: Robotics, Circuits, and Machining

There are at least Ten fresh Autómata Slagroom articles available for patrons. Click here to check them out:

For quick portable projects and makeshift hacks, it is often swifter to reuse a ordinary 5V regulator circuit than to integrate a power supply into the device vormgeving. My toolbox has an LED tester and magnifier light, so why not add a convenient 5V regulator cap to the collection? There are nicer ones on the market that have surface climb on components, but half the joy of an electronics hobby is creating something basic te your own style. This double-decker houtvezelplaat with flashing LED power indicator permitted mij to proef with flush battery snaps and houtvezelplaat interconnects.

Several decades ago, mercuric oxide button cells were common consumer power sources. Mercury wasgoed phased out due to environmental concerns, leaving behind vintage photographic equipment and sees that were incompatible with alkaline’s broad voltage switch or silver-oxide’s slightly higher nominativo voltage. Tinkerers have come up with a multitude of solutions for many devices. Perhaps modern technology can address a few more with an itty-bitty 1.35V low-dropout linear regulator.

Buying fresh wire begs the question of what type of insulation to choose. PTFE is selected since it doesn’t tend to melt back spil common PVC wire insulation does. The fresh wire arrives without a spool, which necessitates printing a spool on a three-dimensional printer. The spool is effortless enough to specimen but consumes the day with a six-hour print time. Soldering the freshly acquired wire to another wire is frustrating with the classic misaligned ‘helping’ arms device. Thus, old-fashioned wooden clothes speld fastened to a colchoneta become the project being worked on rather than whatever I needed that wire for te the very first place.

Te a pinch, you can generate square, sawtooth, sinusoidal, triangular, and noisy/static waveforms by playing a patterned disc on a record player or spare motor using a light sensor. An LED illuminates the paper disc, which reflects varying amounts of light into the light sensor spil the disc rotates on the turntable (see the movie for a demonstration.) The circuitry is fairly elementary and uses commonly found parts. Can you guess the waveform generated by the thumbnail photo?

Who hasn’t looked at a classic crimson resistor lead forming implement and exclaimed &quot,I could 3D print this!&quot, I took a slok at designing and printing a few variations. The end result is a functional implement with a duo of improvements, but not spil crisp, due to the limitations of huis fused-filament resolutions.

Circular T9 LED bulbs are available to substitute fluorescent bulbs te desk lamps. LEDs provide a broader spectrum of light, which is particularly significant if you are shooting macro photographs, but is also lighter on your eyes if you’re soldering or examining boards. Unluckily, the commercial LED bulb I received wasgoed defective and had a flickering power supply. Hacking ter six extra smoothing capacitors and substituting a missing LED solved the problem.

If your consumer electronic device is failing, it is often caused by old, overheated, or defective capacitors. If you open up the case and inspect the capacitors, you may find some that are bulbous, crusty, or are lifting off the PCB. Here are some photographs of bruised CapXon brand aluminum-electrolytic capacitors found inwards failing Samsung LCD monitors. Also included is a photo of a good capacitor that has beneficial goop surrounding it.

Bismuth is a high-density non-toxic metal that forms beautiful crystals. Well, supposedly it forms beautiful crystals, just not for mij. See examples of clay casting failures and chipped surfaces spil I muddle my way through attempting to make anything out of bismuth.

Sometimes you gotta know when to walk away — which wasgoed eight years ago. I dug up this autómata that wasgoed supposed to emulate a sunflower tracking the zon. Due to a vormgeving flaw te an overly complicated analog sensor bus, and normal ugliness, this project got literally shelved. Now it sees the light of day, if only to be a lesson to others.

For many hobbies, an overhead slok of your desk or workbench is the ideal view for your movies. This is unwieldy for tripods, but suitable for a desk sway arm. Similar to a desk-mounted magnifier light, the camera can be quickly placed at various distances, and can be swung away when not te use. The single arm does not tend to block slagroom lighting. Take a look at my tablet-mount setup, and see how the arms were extended to getraind a larger form ejecutor.

Fifteen years ago, I pridefully photographed a PCB using an Intel QX3 fucktoy microscope. How well does that old microscope challenge against a modern 16 megapixel camera with macro objectief, extension tubes, tripod, linear table, linear slide, remote shutter, 28 LED stadionring light, and stacked photography software? Can such a photo setup match the microscope’s 200x magnification? Ter fact, exactly petite of details can wij clearly see with a modern equipment? Would you believe Ten &micro,m?

Create your own colorful finger-friendly dials for common trimmer potentiometers. With a little slot that press-fits into the screwdriver slot, and a dab of emblem adhesive, thesis huis printed dials will make your projects much lighter to adjust.

Throw away your multimeter and spreadsheets, here is a self-contained current-limited LED tester that displays LED voltage druppel, current, and recommended resistor. With about $Ten ter parts and a 9V battery, this indispensible contraption is tailored for the everyday tasks of the electronics enthusiast.

Recall that thing you were going to get to? Well, it took mij seven years to ship a package. No kidding. What’s inwards? Are there more like that? (Yes, 144) Come closer to hear the tale of The Superb Internet Migratory Opbergruimte Of Electronics Junk.

Arg! The multimeter measurements are wrong because the probe detached from the circuit because the IC hook peak broke, again! I go through far too many cracked IC hooks to keep throwing them away. Is it possible to 3D print a replacement peak? Is this an chance to improve the peak to be more sturdy?

How to accurately set the extruder nozzle height above the print bloembed when leveling a 3D printer. Use a thickness gauge, magnet, and a multimeter te continuity mode to beep when the print head makes voeling. Includes a trick to clean the peak of the nozzle by scraping it with the zinc interior of a penny.

What features do hobbyists, students, and puny shops look for te a PCB manufacturer? Do people care about lead free? What about houtvezelplaat form and internal cutouts? Is houtvezelplaat color significant enough to opoffering spil an option? Find out the results of the PCB survey.

If you don’t have a huis machine shop or 3D printer, you can make a motor mounting bracket from a PCB. Printed circuit boards are strong, lightweight, precise, and are lightly manufactured. The PCB bracket can then be linked to your project using screws, straight solder, right-angle headers, or dual-row headers. The movie ter the article shows you the process step-by-step, including how to make the houtvezelplaat non-rectangular and how to place screw slots at angles.

You consistently create homemade PCBs with traces spil fine spil 6 mil traces, using common household objects, such spil sandpaper, cleanser, aluminum foil, and a clothes metal. I test various chemicals, temperatures, and pressures to determine how to make circuits with minimal voids, distortion, and fills.

How big of a crevice do you need drilled te a printed circuit houtvezelplaat to gezond a part? Don’t just measure the part with calipers and use that for the slot size! You vereiste make the slot larger to account for the tolerances of the part and the circuit houtvezelplaat manufacturer. Of course, that brings up the question of how much can you trust the size of the slots the manufacturer is drilling. Let’s see what speld gages say about some of the boards laying around the autómata slagroom.

Error correcting code (ECC) is superior to ordinary checksums, ter that is can both detect and keurig errors te gegevens storage and transmission. Learn how Hamming codes work. Fully working C library included.

Infrared pictures and pictures can expose energy waste, health issues, security codes, animal behavior, and circuit houtvezelplaat flaws. It is also a excellent way to cheat at hide-and-go-seek. Take look at a gallery of fascinating thermal photos taken with the Flir E4 infrared camera. Additionally, there is a movie of a power-supply heating up, spil well spil desoldering wires.

The problem with most proefje rocket launch controllers is that the battery is located with the technicus, far away from the launch padachtige. This requires thick cables and wastes significant energy. By locating the battery near the rocket engine and using a remotely-controlled relay, the improved launch system is more efficient but can still be built at huis. Includes accomplish schematics, the pcb layout, and source/object code.

The single motor drive train on the flamante Back And Forward autómata wasgoed unique but a failure. To overcompensate, the next generation is four wheel drive and six switches just to budge forward and stir back, repeatedly. There are some nice mating parts that may be useful ter your next project. And, you’ll be astonished to see what’s inwards the half-height batteries.

When sampling at the maximum software rate, the signal itself may affect the software, resulting te inaccurate readings. Here is an example of how I debugged an kwestie and doubled the rate.

Yummy is a line-following androide made from an m&m’s candy tin, te homage of Sweet. Yummy features a light sensor for detecting when the candy tin has bot closed, to delay beginning the motors spil long spil necessary. The rear tail lights use Ten mm crimson LEDs with Fresnel lenses.

The scroll wheel on the Microsoft Wireless Mouse 5000 can zekering working overheen time. Spil you’ll see, the scroll wheel is a classic interrupter encoder wheel that can be immovable by cleaning. The difficult part wasgoed figuring out how to open this mouse, which ended up being held together with four T6 torx screws hiding underneath the slip strips.

Excess solder can clog circuit houtvezelplaat fuckholes due to overzealous soldering or when desoldering to eliminate a part. It can be annoying to attempt to get the solder out of the crevice, but thesis methods and instruments can help. Article also describes how to make your own Teflon desoldering tips.

Nothing is more pathetic than a androide that has lost a wheel. Couplings based on the standard mating cross axle have a habit of sliding off. But, the peg fuckholes present ter larger wheels provide opportunities to securely fasten the hub with screws. Using a lathe, milling machine, digital readout, magnets, PVC plastic, and a carefully-drafted layout can produce a rugged Seglar coupler. Ah, an article on math and machining, what could be more universally appealing?

When a consumer device stops working because of a proprietary battery pack, you may be able to repair it by substituting the batteries with off-the-shelf rechargeables. If necessary, it is possible to solder together your own battery pack so long spil you wear safety equipment, have a solder gun, and clean the terminals. Of course, this assumes you can find cells that match te size, voltage, and chemistry.

A pleasant autómata that doesn&rsquo,t do much consists of a collection of interesting parts assembled together because they didn&rsquo,t getraind any other robots. The androide is a successful proef ter making couplers shorter, employing escap cuadrilongo motors, detecting distance moved with an interrupter infrared encoder, and a cube of numerous smaller PCBs. Powered by a single 180 mAh lithium polymer cell without a voltage regulator. Motors driven using low-voltage high-current Zetex bipolar transistors. Includes lots of big pictures and a descriptive demonstration movie.

The Panasonic PNA4602M 38-kHz infrared detector wasgoed a very popular electronic part for obstacle and wall detection. Unluckily, the PNA4602M is discontinued and similar modules can&rsquo,t treat continuous signals. Good news! The fresh Vishay TSOP4038 is an excellent substitute. Tests compare detection distance, false pulses, and detection time. Also included is the relevant source code to variable-frequency duty-cycle measurement.

A very popular method of sending and receiving gegevens inbetween devices and computers is good old asynchronous serial communication. See traces of characters being transmitted. Learn how far timing can be off before introducing errors. Includes a table of popular crystal frequencies and baud rates, spil well spil machining information and a source code snippet for an automatic bps detection device.

Reuse is a good thing. Ter this case, a unique surplus voorwerp that emerges to be a digital caliper is actually a digital indicator based on the caliper figure and circuitry. The gegevens port pinouts, mounting screw sizes, and example output analysis are posted, along with a cheap way of powering the instrument from a ‘AA’ cell.

A rocket found te a tree had liberate and missing fins, a violated valscherm, and a lifeless shock cord. Replacement fins can be made from balsa wood, using a schrijfstift and a hobby knife. After sanding, they can be reattached with two kinds of glue. Elementary repairs and replacements make the rocket flight capable again. After all that work, an overzealous choice of a rocket motor sealed the rocket&rsquo,s fate. Where do you think the rocket (and &ldquo,Desconocedor Major Tom&rdquo,) ended up?

To demonstrate the massive difference ter densities of naturally-occurring claro metals, a large magnesium ingot is machined down to a precise cylinder using a hacksaw, milling machine, and lathe.

LEDs create beautiful and informative light trails when a androide is photographed ter a dark place with the shutter open. This treatment captures the precies movements and behavior te a single photo, spil opposed to replaying a movie overheen and overheen. Use a tripod, remote control, and proef with lighting conditions for best results.

When power is disconnected from a circuit, the capacitors on the houtvezelplaat are discharged by the electronic components until no voltage remains. That&rsquo,s fine. But, did you know that if you charge a capacitor on its own, it will leisurely discharge through itself? More remarkably, some capacitors become leakier with time, but can be healed through usage. I wasgoed shocked to detect how difficult self-discharge is to measure.

A blowout price on a 2×8 LCD module without specs leads to a bargain on industry-standard 14-pin alphanumeric LCDs. Demonstrates plain technics for determining connector pins. Ultimately, the datasheet is found, and the tegenstelling and backlighting pins are covered spil well. Includes an example of writing custom-built bitmap characters.

Green is so boring! Ultimately, your electronic devices can have beautiful crimson, black, and blue color circuit boards. The example shows an exposed-PCB Emparedado autómata that starts with colored copper clad boards. The PCBs are etched at huis with a peristaltic pump, after including an picture of my dog and dealing with government-coded dots. The project is rounded out with a clear DIP socket and a shrouded battery cap.

A visual guide to breadboard-friendly trimpots (petite variable resistors) that emerge ter almost every hobbyist electronic project. The article features comparison pictures and part numbers of Trio/8-inch and 1/4-inch square single-turn and multi-turn trimmers. Even more interesting is the cutaway close-up photographs of the inwards gears and brushes of thesis little potentiometers.

A autómata that drives forward to a wall and comes back is a popular contest and student project. Remarkably, this androide can be made with an off-the-shelf 8-pin motor chip, a duo of resistors, and a duo of chips. The article provides a finish walkthrough of the schematics, along with an animation of the switching states and a movie.

Have you everzwijn had a pile of assorted resistors that you wish to quickly organize? Place each resistor ter the forearms of the electrified Laico minifigure to see and hear the nearest standard resistance. This practical peettante includes both an ohmmeter for resistance measurement spil well spil a voltmeter for battery measurement.

Modifying a Pelican micro-case for a dustproof, waterproof, and bugproof outdoor electronics container. Tips on punching a rubber liner and connecting outward wires through a PVC pipe, or hacking a seal with poster tack.

Digital cameras have a relatively low voltage limit on their sync hot shoe, compared to mechanical cameras. This makes modern cameras susceptible to harm from higher-voltage outward flash units, which consumers and hobbyists may attempt to reuse from previous generations. The circuit described ter this article is a classic solid-state level-shifter often used to interface DC circuits to AC appliances.

There&rsquo,s nothing more depressing than to see corrosion on your precision contraptions or antique hardware, particularly if the stilte is ter a hard to reach area. Fortunately, there&rsquo,s an electrical technology to switch roles oxidation without harming stengel or metal the way abrasives or harsh chemicals can. Includes results of testing a graphite electrode for the anode.

Periodically you’ll run across electronics such spil relays, cables, igniters, switches, or current-sense resistors that have resistances less than one ohm. Few multimeters accurately measure less than 1 &Omega,, but most have a millivolt mode that can be combined with a Five V source, a immobilized resistor, and some plain math to determine milliohm resistances.

A few reserve slots, broader pads, and copper fills can greatly increase the versatility, solderability, and ease of testing of the printed circuit boards you vormgeving.

A puny solar panel or series of solar cells can power an electronic device during the day, spil well spil recharge NiMH batteries to power the device at night. This plain recharger uses diodes for reverse-power protection and so that the project can measure the power source voltages. Includes schematics and graphs.

A digital peettante is an essential device for all androide builders and electronic hobbyists. If you&rsquo,re just beginning out, can you buy the least expensive monster and still get accurate results? How much do you need to spend to get a welvoeglijk mid-range prototype? A dozen multimeters are tested and compared.

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