Arduino Robot Arm

I have constructed a basic Arduino robot arm using 3 servos that cost me £15 in total plus a couple of hours in time to build and it’s very simple that I think anyone can replicate and build this. I already had the Arduino Duemilanove ATMEGA328, some foamboard, tools and glue. The robot arm has 3 joints and moves in the X and Y dimensions – not the Z (although I will build this in subsequent versions). I’ve included some very basic Arduino robot arm code along with robot arm design / blueprints and measurements for you to download and build (on any material).Full information here

Arduino: Using a Sharp IR Sensor for Distance Calculation

Well, looks like my sonar sensor (SRF-05) is a just a tad inaccurate for precise measurement as I found from my radar screen I made (here).

So I’ve got hold of a Sharp GP2Y0A02 series infrared distance sensor. It’ll detect and measure anything within a 20-150cm range and it does this by triangulation from where it emits a beam of IR and from when it receives it – this isn’t too important to understand.

http://luckylarry.co.uk/2009/11/arduino-using-a-sharp-ir-sensor-for-distance-calculation/

Arduino Weblinks & Projects

A collection of useful links/ index for primarily Arduino projects both my own and of other peoples.

http://luckylarry.co.uk/2010/06/arduino-weblinks-projects/

Arduino: Redefining the TV Remote

We use them every day, but has no one got bored of pressing buttons on a stick, it’s far too much effort pressing buttons! Surely there are better ways to control a device? After doing some work with my Nikon camera using IR to control it, I wanted to do the same with other devices. Check out the video…

http://luckylarry.co.uk/2010/06/arduino-redefining-the-tv-remote/

Arduino + Processing: Make a Radar Screen to Visualise Sensor Data from SRF-05 – Part 2: Visualising the Data

This is where all the work is done to read an interpret the values from the servo and the sensor. If the readings are to erratic then you won’t have nice shapes. Also if you don’t allow enough time to the signals to be sent back then you’ll get false distance readings. So this code is only as good as your Arduino code and sensor setup.

Took me a few evenings to work this out to get it how I wanted, the hardest bit is the trigonometry involved which isn’t that difficult, everything else is done by loops and a few IF statements. I use the FOR loops alot because the all the elements can be displayed programmatically without having to write each rectangle, cirle and line to the screen with their own statement.

Arduino + Processing: Make a Radar Screen to Visualise Sensor Data from SRF-05 – Part 2: Visualising the Data

Arduino + Processing: Make a Radar Screen to Visualise Sensor Data from SRF-05 – Part 1: Setting up the Circuit and Outputting Values

First things first, we need to build our circuit. This is the easy bit! We’ll be using the Arduino to control a servo that will rotate our sensor around 180 degrees. The Arduino will then send the value from the sensor along with the current angle of the servo to the serial port.

Before proceeding please take a moment to check out some of my other work with the SRF-05 and servos if you’re unfamiliar with either.
Stuff with SRF-05
Stuff with Servos

I’m building this with the SRF-05 ultrasound range finder, but because this has a fairly wide field of detection it’s not very precise – I think I’ll end up trying a different range finder maybe an IR one as the SRF-05 works best as a static sensor/ detector, anyway…

Arduino + Processing: Make a Radar Screen to Visualise Sensor Data from SRF-05 – Part 1: Setting up the Circuit and Outputting Values

Arduino: Basic Theremin meets Processing!

My last theremin involved a small speaker. Now I’ve replaced the speaker with my PC, using processing to pick up the values from the SRF05 ultrasound sonar thingy and play different notes accordingly – which gives multiple possibilities and far better sounds.

So to start with check out my previous theremin, the circuit is the same except for removing the speaker and the Arduino code now prints values to the serial port instead of outputing directly to a speaker. The only thing that I’m doing here that is really new is using the minim libary for processing, built by this chap (thankyou). What this allows us is to assign a sound file to a variable in processing and then gives us functions to start/stop the sound.

Arduino: Basic Theremin meets Processing!

Arduino: A Basic Theremin

Theremins are cool. Fact. You may also have heard of them as either aetherphone/ etherophone or termenvox/ thereminvox. Essentially its an electronic music instrument that plays a certain note depending on the position of your hand and its distance from an antenna.

Building a very basic one with Arduino is easy – easier than my basic drum machine. Very easy. Basically we can replicate one by building a circuit of a speaker and a distance sensor, such as my favourite the SRF05 ultrasound thingy. We calculate the distance and the nearer you get the difference in note/frequency emitted from the speaker.

You’re going to need only a few parts and not much code. You can read more about my applications of the SRF05 along with sample code here. If you can’t be arsed with reading any of that then no worries all is revealed below…

Arduino: A Basic Theremin

 

Arduino: Basic Persistance of Vision

I think this’ll be the start of a few more projects for me. I’ve seen some cool PoV stuff (Persistance of Vision) with mounting displays on bikes, so hopefully I’ll get round to doing something like that.

Anyway as a start I’ve got 5 LED’s connected to 5 pins on the Arduino, nothing complex there. The real struggle is to work out the timings, or rather the pauses between the patterns. Starting with how to make a character or drawing.

Arduino: Basic Persistance of Vision

Arduino: Getting my LCD Screen to work.

I’ve gotten hold of what I assumed was a compatible LCD screen with my Arduino board – it’s a Powertip PC1602F and uses a compatible driver for the Hitachi HD44780 display chip. This is essentially what the Arduino LCD libraries are built around, so when I failed to get a display this is the first thing that I checked out. I also downloaded and installed Arduino 0017 which has a better and more up to date library for LCD stuff but you can update version 0015 with this library I think.

Arduino: Getting my LCD Screen to work.