Hockey MANOI + Wii Nunchuck

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Today (Thursday) I got my MANOI working with my Wii nunchuck!

It was super easy since I already had the configuration ready because of my other robot.

Here are some pictures:

The SSC-32 is barely visible anymore!

The big transformer powers the battery to give it 12-13V (constantly). The small transformer is for the Arduino, cause I couldn’t find a 9V battery

MANOI’s Leg

MANOI

MANOI’s back- the battery and Arduino are attached to tape using velcro

The way it works is the Wii nunchuck has an i2dc interface with the Wave Shield, which is on the Arduino. Using the Nunchuck library, you know what button is being pressed and values of the accelerometer.

I already made functions to determine if the nunchuck is tilted home, left/right or up/down. Soooo, I just added the “skating” functions to that, and the condition that the C button has to be pressed. There’s more control this way.

To shoot, it’s just the Z button.

The most surprising part of all of this was when I realized that MANOI “skates” better when I added all the stuff to his back. I guess it adjusted the center of gravity just right!

There’s a video here:

I still have some more stuff to do… like add a few more motions and sound.

Posted in: MANOI, Projects, Robot.

Friday Night Robotics!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, November 15th, 2008

This is my Hockey MANOI work in progress robot. It needs a lot of improvement before I actually take it outside (hopefully there won’t be snow by then). It’s using a plastic stick that I found lying around (check out the pics)

So far it’s going okay, I guess. Trying to make a robot balance with many moving parts is difficult though, and really exhausting. There’s lots of things that I’ll need to fix… The program is basically a sequence of movements:

- Forward 6 times
- Shoot 3 times
- Backward 6 times
- Shoot 3 times

The Forward and Backward movements do vary slightly, but they both result in the robot going backwards. I’m trying to think of a way to fix it that will be the best way, like attaching a few heavy rocks to the front of the robot won’t be the best way in this case. Once the robot shoots after going Backward, there’s too much movement and it falls over.

I’ll probably have an if statement in the Shoot movement asking what was the last movement. If it was backwards, the shot will be more slow and less intense so it won’t tip over.

The stick also has to be mounted better… it moves WAY too much =P (those tie wraps serve no purpose)

Despite all of the falling over, it’s fun to be trial’ing and error’ing to see how the robot can balance And it’s working off of an Arduino! I plan to add the Wave Shield, with some hockey sounds/songs that MANOI can play — there will also be a FSR on the stick so the robot will know if it should shoot or not

Posted in: MANOI, Projects, Robot.

SOFREEZINGCOLD

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

ITS SO FREEZING COLD! I think I’m gonna transform into an ice-cube!! ZGG!

Speaking of cold… You know when you first start to skate, you pretend you’re walking? You hardly go anywhere, but you do go somewhere because of the friction… My robot can now do that! I was playing around with MANOI, gave him some roller-skates (actually: lego wheels), and programmed it in. After a few trials and errors, it works! MANOI now can look like a goofy Canadian newbie skater. SWEET!

I’m trying to find a small hockey stick that I can tape to its hands, but I have a feeling Ill have to make one myself. Carving it will be okay, I’m just worried about how I would make it thin- like half an inch. I’ll probably use one of the sanding power tools to do that (since I don’t want to saw my hand off (or fingers (but then again, they may just fall off because I’m SOFREEZINGCOLD (wow this is a lot of nested brackets (LOL))))).

I hope to play hockey with my ‘bot on Saturday… this will be interesting!

I updated my blarg to Wordpress 2.7 B2, and stylized a new theme! I’m not sure what I should name that lonely RSS elephant over on the right though. Syndie, the syndication elephant? LOL!

Posted in: MANOI, Projects, Robot.

Shuffling Robot

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Instead of having my humanoid completely lift its foot off the ground, it “shuffles”. At least one part of the foot remains in contact with the ground. (It does work when there is no ground underneath the foot, though)

I finished the right leg on Tuesday… I worked on the left one today, and will hopefully finish it off tomorrow so I can spend some time on it on Saturday (and make an insightful blog post for once)

What I’m interested in seeing is what is the maximum speed the robot can go at, without tipping over. Since I’m coding it in slow-motion, I may not account for all of the possible moving parts when the robot is going faster.

Robot motion is pretty cool stuff- it looks easy, but it really isn’t

I’ve also been working on a few other things… More on that (hopefully) tomorrow or Hallowe’en.

Posted in: MANOI, Projects, Robot.

Humanoid Walk

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, October 25th, 2008

This entire week I have been working on MANOI! (and iPhone apps)
I discarded the idea of having a separate TX line- as the SoftwareSerial stuff never worked properly.
Right now I’m in the process of mapping out a way for the humanoid to walk. It’s intensely difficult… So, I’m doing it with pencil and paper… then I’ll code it into the Arduino, and find a protractor to double check all the angles.

(Hey- my plan sounds FANTASTIC in theory! I guess this will mean I will end up doing everything BUT the plan )

I’ll probably make a back-dated blog post on Wednesday as that is when I got the robot to balanced, and it’s a pretty significant milestone
My “jello world” iPhone app is coming along nicely. I like it a lot, hopefully I’ll be putting it up in the App Store in the middle of next week

Posted in: MANOI, Programming, Projects, Robot.

It’s WORKING!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, October 18th, 2008

My testing version of my program for Processing and Arduino to control the SSC-32 is WORKING!
I’ll post a video of it later, once I hook up some buttons, and “clean” up the code.

Posted in: MANOI, Programming, Projects, Robot.

iPhone!!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, October 18th, 2008

I got an iPhone yesterday!!! Yay!! (belated birthday present)

…Of course, this happiness if a prelude to a TONNE of hard work that I’m going to do. I’ll be developing apps for it!
I’ll still be working on MANOI today though… hopefully finish the Processing - Arduino & SSC-32 program. It’s really difficult!

Maybe I’ll be able to have the iPhone control MANOI some day bahaha

Posted in: MANOI, Other, Programming, Projects, Robot.

Problem after Problem after Problem

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, October 16th, 2008

Wow, hahahaha I meant to post this yesterday! I wrote it all up… then forgot! Haaa woow

It really feels like I’ve been working on this software to control MANOI for ages now. On Friday I thought that I was really close to finishing off- that it would be so simple to send a variable from Processing to the Arduino.

Evidently, that assumption is DEAD WRONG! I have to send it through Serial. This raises many problems, like the possibility that the data might be fed to the SSC as well.

I’m now powering the SSC-32 by the Arduino. It’s plugged in to the Gnd and pin 6, so I can tell it to turn on or off. PLUS, I have a latching switch on the 5V, just in case.

So it almost feels like I can safely say that I’m really close to finishing off. I’m playing around with code that only sends data to Arduino when it knows it will receive it. Of course, when I try to send data to the SSC-32 it messes the whole process.

The moon last night (2 nights ago) was really bright… it looked pretty through my telescope This Harvest Moon is one of my favourites because you can see Tycho Crater.

Posted in: MANOI, Programming, Projects, Robot.

More MANOI

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

I always have problems adjusting MANOI’s feet. It’s kind of cool that all of the balancing of the robot comes down to its feet. Hardly anything else matters, other than the feet!

My blog posts seem pretty boring without pictures, so I’m trying to keep this short…

So what I’m setting up now is a program to code MANOI! It will be in Processing. I’m going to be using the controlP5 library for all the buttons and the sliders
Hopefully I’ll be able to get MANOI up and running (really) before December! The new Trossen Robotics contest prize is pretty amazing @_@ Imagine winning a Pleo!! Cuteness! The contest is going to be tense.

Since we’re allowed multiple entries, you can be sure that I’ll enter a fugly MANOI (with all the wires and ‘gutz’ showing) and a cute MANOI (with its pretty white shell on with necklaces). I don’t really understand why everyone thinks that something that is cute isn’t a robot. It’s kind of weird
I ordered two of the new ATmega chips. Essentially this will be great for MANOI! MANOI has a Wave Shield on the Arduino, and I’m thinking about getting a shiftOut to control LEDs for a LED necklace. I might even use one of the digital potentometers on the necklace too! BlinkM LEDs would be cool, but it would be a bit over-kill. I’m thinking Blue LEDs.

I’ll also be programming MANOI with many dances… from Thriller to Soulja Boy… seriously.

But, the first step is to get this software programmed up so I can complete MANOI’s home position.

Posted in: MANOI, Projects.

Festive Styrobotz

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, October 6th, 2008

Custom Styrobots are really fun to make… and they cost the same price ($20). A friend wanted a yellow Styrobot, with green hair with a comb in it, two combs on the cup, and a poem. It was pretty fun to make! Despite the rotation of the pics being messed up… here are some pictures!

The poem on the back is ‘The Road not Taken’ by Robert Frost. It’s a pretty good poem Here are morrrre pictures!

Great eh! There will be 3 NEW Styrobots appearing in my store very soon They’re all Hallowe’en themed.

In my opinion, Battygoo is really cute as are the other ones! Asside from that… MANOI is aliiiive! I’m currently in the middle of making a program to set its home position.

So keep an eye out… the Styrobots will be poppin’ into the shop very soon

Posted in: MANOI, News, Projects, Robot, Robot News.