Its name is Herbert!
So I finished my robots brain and his name is Herbert. Well mostly finished… I still need to add a JST connector for the motor power supply, as well as a rectifier so I can ensure the voltage is never reversed. That and I ran out of female pin headers since they apparently are an art to break apart and keep intact… >.> But it is functional enough I can start coding for it. I will write up a component list as well as a circuit layout when I am not slightly drunk from celebration. But in the mean time, here is a video of the robot brain.
I’m Back!
Well at least for this moment. So I was finding life a little boring and decided to puck up my tinkering with my ATMEGA microcontrollers. Well I got a USB programmer and due to user error I couldn’t get it to work and became frustrated and dropped any thing dealing with atmel in exchange for learning PHP. PHP is going well, branched into a little bit of Javascript and HTML DOM so I could do AJAX. All of this turned into a huge project at work since I am currently working on a wordpress plugin.
But now that I fixed my stupid error and can write to my ATMEGA again, I hope to have some encouragement to keep working on credchips for my Star Wars game so the players have an actual electronic currency exchange.
Cleaning up
Alright, it is Sunday and so far this weekend I have done nothing productive. So I am cleaning up my electronics work area so that later today I can get to work on my project. Going to try my best to not play any Mortal Online today. That game is sucking up to much of my time and I have only had it a week or so. Any ways, back to cleaning.
Parts are here
Well the parts arrived, so hopefully either this weekend or early next week I can begin to tinker again. I haven’t tried out the USB programmer yet, but I am hopeful. Since I already have the C code compiled and the test boards set up, I really just need to get enough motivation to sit down and start programming then trouble shooting. Unfortunately my Friend had to show me a new video game that is in beta and it has taken up a chunk of my free time. Well it is a fun game, but it does decrease my productivity. Mortal Online, you get to run around in a fantasy setting and it is a sand box style of play. So since I love sand box games, I had to try it out. It is probably the buggiest beta I have ever been in, but it has a lot of potential.
Parts on order.
End of my lunch, and I got the new programmer and a few parts on order. Should be enough to keep me amused for weeks on end. My friend Dan is in a RPG game with me and we decided to make a credchip to track the PC groups currency. Yo dog.. I heard you like geekiness.. Later tonight I will likely start transferring over photos and documents to my new site as well as changing links in my youtube video. Any ways I need to get back to work since lunch is gone.
It’s back, for now.
Well I am going to attempt the whole blogging thing again. Hopefully it lasts more than 9 posts this time. After the move into my new place I got windows 7 for my machine and lost the ability to tinker with my microcontrollers. Found out that windows 7 will not work with a parallel port programmer. So if I get enough spare cash tomorrow I will order a USB programmer so that I can maybe continue tinkering with different MCU’s along with a few parts I need. Sadly the robot brain is mostly done, but sitting in a box. Without an ability to program it I lost interest in it. Though it will likely get pushed onto a back burner for now, I plan on at least making a little IR communication device this next time around.
Oh still working on the template for my new site. So likely things like link color, background color and the rest of the stuff will be changing over the next few days most likely. So if you see something completely broken feel free to tell me, but it will likely be changing soon any ways.
Moving
Well I can finally get the hell out of dodge. My new apartment opened up and I can move out of my old place. Things have been a bit hectic lately so sorry for the lack of any robot progress. Just seems like one thing happens after another.
Though on the bright side having my own place and no Ex to drive me crazy I should make more progress. That is if I don’t get distracted by other things.
Slackin’
I know I haven’t posted in a while. I am finally getting over the cold from hell.. Thought I was over it earlier and it ended up coming back with a vengeance. The motor driver I needed from sparkfun showed up last week. Speedy shipping and an apology for the error. So far I am very happy with the service I have received. Now I just need to assemble the board.. maybe I should have made my blog “great at procrastinating”..
They are here!
Alright. My parts have arrived for my robot brain last Friday. Due to a cold and feeling like crap I haven’t even considered assembling it till now. So now I am off to go solder it together and take a few pictures. The only down side is my motor driver didn’t come, instead I got sent a PIC microcontroller. Sparkfun was awesome though and they are shipping me the correct part and a return label to send the wrong part back. They also wrote a pretty nice apology. In a few hours there will hopefully be a completed brain post till then I am off to go burn my hands with an iron!
—–Edit—–
Scratch that. As I started to solder I realized I still feel like crap. Hopefully tomorrow will be a new and less chest cold ridden day.
Leisurely day
I really didn’t do much today. I did a bit of cooking. Made some steak, onion and cheese quessadillas for lunch and had the left overs for dinner. Swung by radio shack to pick up a part. I was surprised to see they actually carried what I needed. I think that happens about once every tenth trip. On the way back I picked up a 30 pack of AA batteries from work. Until I bother to get some rechargeable batteries they will work great to power the drive train of my robot. I noticed that at work we sell 2450mAh AA batteries that are rechargable. I think that is the route I may go.
Besides errands I pretty much wasted the day watching Hulu.com. For those of you who have never seen “Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog” your missing out. I feel that no life would be complete without watching it. So Here it is!
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