Making a Robot With Arduino Part 1: Intro to Motor Controller

October 24, 2011 by · Leave a Comment 

So from the previous post, we already have a base, with all the thing plugged in.

The big idea, arduino control motor, so we just plug a dc motor into arduino? No? Not so fast, a robot don’t just need to move forward, it also need to move backward, in addition, a robot need to rotate to change direction. Not so easy now isn’t it.

Like many stuff in electronics, there is a component for this. Introducing the The Motor Driver, it make it easy for us to move a motor is both direction, and as it stop, the circuit is cut off, and stop the current from the motor from going back to arduino(it is a good thing ;-) ). Also it control both dc motor, independently.

The motor driver we used is based on the L298N , which is an IC to control it. But we are lazy, so we just buy a ready made controller. To make things easy for us.

The datasheet for the motor driver have the information we need on how to drive a motor on it.

Motor Driver

Motor Driver

That’s all for the motor controller. This is essentially the main component of the robot, along with the arduino. Next post will involve wiring the controller to the arduino, and some test code.

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Electronics Friday is Off This Week

October 21, 2011 by · Leave a Comment 

Yup, you heard it right, there will be no electronics friday this week, i.e today.

We will going to have electronics friday next week.

Sorry for the late announcement

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Making a Robot With Arduino Part 0: The Intro

October 17, 2011 by · Leave a Comment 

One of the thing we show case during Hack in The Box is a Arduino powered robot, controlled over ZigBee, i.e this guy.

The plan of this series is

  1. to show you how to make a robot,
  2.  how to control it with arduino, and
  3. how to interface it using ZigBee wireless.
What we going to use
  1. A 2 wheeled robot base, this comes with 2 3-6V DC Motor
  2. Motor Driver
  3. 2 Arduino, one to control the transmitting ZigBee
  4. 2 Zigbee Wireless
  5. 1 9v and 4 1.5v Batteries
  6. Usb Cable for programming the arduino
Lets introduce our first component, the robot base, it only have a frame and 2 motor, and a few hole here and there to allow us to mount and secure components on it. This is what we going to make the robot on.
 Side view of robot base Notice that the component is secured via screw

 

This is the robot base installed with the electronics, basically you install it by screwing the components into the hole on the base, as you can see from the image. The arduino itself have holes for this purpose. There is no special component on the base, the electronics is just what we added ourself.

 

So there is no special requirement to the base,  so you can get it easily from a few source online, such as sparkfun and seeestudio. and there is not even requirement for it to run  on a 3-6v motor. It just that most 2 wheeled robot base comes with it. you just need to adjust the battery needed if you have a different motor. I seriously doubt this is the case.

 

Thats all for part 0, the next post will be about, why you need a motor controller

 

p.s Sorry that I can’t show the empty base, because the wiring can be a mess to put back.
[UPDATE]
Look like there will be a post on assembly after all

 

 

 

 

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Electronics Friday Cancelled This Week

October 13, 2011 by · Leave a Comment 

Due to all the awesomeness that happen in Hack In The Box 2011. We have to cancel Electronics Friday this Friday. But Electronics Friday will continue as usual next Friday.

So yes there is no activity this Friday.

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HITB2011KUL – We are so there.

October 10, 2011 by · Leave a Comment 

It’s the month of October and it’s that time of the year again. The past few weeks the space has been buzzing with people.  On Friday we hosted the last HITB2011KUL meeting and the guys from @randomdata and HITB.nl came down.

 

Volunteers and Crew of HITB2011KUL: before the meeting

HackerspaceKL members and HITB crew hacking on something I have no idea what tho.

HITB.nl crew came in force this year.

Hack In The Box (HITB) is run as a not for profit, community backed effort, the Hack in The Box Security Conference (HITBSecConf) series has become the ‘must attend’ event in the calendars of security professionals from around the world. Having started as a small gathering of Malaysian security specialists in 2002, the event has since expanded out of its home base in Kuala Lumpur to Dubai and in 2010, The Netherlands. For the 9th conference in KL this year, HITB once again brings Hackerspace Playground, running along side the conference to show that hacking is not only about bits and bytes, exploits and payloads and to introduce hackers to the interesting and exciting world of microcontrolers, LEDs, soldering irons and 3D printers.

LEGO Mindstorm. Think you can build a robot? We'd like to see that.

This year’s Hackerspace Playground will showcase stuff like:-

LEGO MindStorms – Build your own robot and write the code to run it!

Soldering 101 – Can’t solder a simple circuit to save your life? We’ll show you how and promise it won’t smell like chicken!

DIY Microcontrollers – Build interfaces and electronics with Arduino. Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, hackers and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments.

Lot’s Of LEDs and Lasers – Build your own project with enough 31337 LED lights and lasers

Inline Hardware Sniffing – Think a piece of hardware is secure just because it doesn’t have an interface? Think again!

RFID Toys – Come play with RFID systems and see for yourself how you can build, adapt and break them!

 

 

 

And for the first time, HITB will host a 24 hour hackathon, dubbed HACKWEEKDAY. Inspired by the recently completed HackWeekend and GTUGKL hackathon, HackWEEKDAY is a 24-hour code off that runs alongside the 9th annual HITB Security Conference in Malaysia – Asia’s premier deep-knowledge network security event that routinely brings together some of the world’s leading security experts under one roof Kicking off at 13:37 on the 12th of October and ending a full 24-hours later on the 13th, this hackathon brings together Asia Pacific coders from all walks of life to come together and work on open source security tools such as Firefox plugins (SQL Inject Me, Don’tPhishMe), new Maltego transforms and other projects.

With all these events jam-packed in just 2 days, this will be the best time of the year to come and support us at the Hackerspace Playground. We have some merchandise (keychains and 1337 name tags) for sale to raise funds for the upkeep of the space as well as showing some demo projects by the HackerspaceKL and Randomdata members. Access to the Hackerspace Playground is FREE and open to the public.

For more details, check out http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2011kul/ .

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Hackerspace KL Item Price List

October 8, 2011 by · 2 Comments 

We have finally completed the Tag and the Key Chain, so now we can announce the price. The price list is below. You can buy it at Hackerspace Playground during HITB Security Conference 12-13 Oct in Intercontinental Hotel Kuala Lumpur, the playground is public area so everyone is welcome to visit us.

Details at the links

Completed Badge

The Badge: RM 20

Hackerspace KL Key Chain

Hackerspace KL Key Chain : RM10

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