Super Sanguino!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

I got my Sanguino yesterday night, so it was time to finally delve in and make one of these awesomeness things! PLUS, I get to do a nice blog post about it.

I’m happy that I got super shipping… I don’t think I would have received it in time otherwise!

See:

It even comes with bubble wrap! ^_^

Let’s get started

The board is really shiny, but it is more of an orangey-red than a red-red. However, it is really catchy. Too bad in the end it is covered by all the components though!

See, look how giant the chip is! Sweet!

It’s time to solder. This is the cleanest the soldering iron has been in a few weeks

The SANGUINO silkscreen is easily covered by the DIP…

These capacitors remind me of balloons hehe

It doesn’t have a chip on its shoulder… yet (get it? the 648P isn’t in yet hahaha)

This part was sooo confusing. The instructions said… “Insert the LED on the flat side of the board” or something like that. Flat side? I never knew that there was a non-flat side… BAHA!

If the red LED is not entered correctly, nothing will work…

The proper way to insert the LEDs is… negative, positive and negative, positive. It clearly didn’t say that on my silkscreen >_> At least I only got one of them wrong

Sooo, after cleaning that LED up… it works! YAY!

The software was aggravating to get working, but I did manage to get it to work in the end. I’ll post up my version of the Arduino 12 IDE for Sanguino tomorrow, or something.

The number of outputs and inputs is so astonishing! It even has two TX/RX ports. I’ll probably finish off MANOI and Snowplow robot tomorrow, and think of a way to use the Sanguino in MANOI!

It would be cool to have an IR sensor right now for MANOI, so I could mount it on its stick, but instead I may try two LDRs with LEDs. I have the supplies for that, so I can easily implement a Bayes Filter algorithm to determine if the ball is there or not.

The Bayes Filter algorithm is a form of AI. I’ve been working on a tutorial about the BFA for uCHobby.com for a very long time. (TeX takes a long time to type).

Swweeeet!!!!

Posted in: Projects, Robot.

Exploring Stanford

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, July 27th, 2008

Stanford has an extremely beautiful campus! It’s full with wildlife- like tiny frogs, geckos and palm trees! It’s also a really giant campus – as I found out after playing The Game. (I’ll blog about The Game later). Apart from enjoying the puns on Bread-First Search (BFS) and Death-First Search (DFS) algorithms, I really enjoyed exploring the campus. Usually I took all of these pictures while going Fountain Hopping, but sometimes I just took them while walking to the class!
Fountain Hopping was an amazing activity. Basically, you find a fountain – and you jump in it! It’s so amazingly fun! One time where we went to the fountain outside of the hospital, we were kicked out. It was pretty awkward!
One of my favourite features of Stanford is the beautiful architecture. You really have to see it in real, but I hope my pictures will better illustrate it! The detail and texture is amazing.
The total GB count of all the photos I took is 9.46! But, I only chose the best and uploaded them, so with all the small versions and thumbnails, it totaled to 2.3GB.
There will be way more posts with way more photos! Here are 309 – Hope you enjoy them!! Clicking the image will open it in the lightbox (like normal), but if you click the camera, it will open the high res photos. Please don’t use any of the high res photos without my permission first =) Thanks!!
Click continue reading for all the pictures

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in: Art, Other, Projects.

Be back soon

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, June 21st, 2008

^_^ =D ^_^ =D ^_^ =D ^_^ =D ^_^ =D ^_^ =D

^_^ =D ^_^ =D ^_^ =D ^_^ =D ^_^ =D ^_^ =D

See ya later to all of the people that read this! A big thanks to everyone that helped donate over $1000! It helped a lot. The rest of the costs were covered by a reserved education savings account thing. This is going to be amazing! And I’m going to the JPL! Feel free to email me when I’m gone! I’m not sure if I will reply, but if I do it will be from RobotGrrl ~at~:) rocketmail.com.

I hope to come back with many project ideas and a better outlook on AI (artificial intelligence) for NLP (natural language processing), CV (computer vision), and HCI (human-computer interaction)! I’d want to explore it with Arduino, too.

In 3.5 weeks, get ready for lots of blog posts! Funnily enough, this blog post is #666. xD

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

Interviewed!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

…and not for a job Check it out on RoboJenny’s site.

Yaay 1st interview!! ^_^

Posted in: News, Robot News.

|Advanced Order| and |Thanks, MAKE!|

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, June 8th, 2008

Thanks to MAKE for featuring my Styrobots. I really appreciate the encore! Encore encore encore! Yay!!

There is one Styrobot left – Spideygoo – in my Etsy store.

The next ones that I’ll be uploading (fruity themed!) will all be advanced order. Meaning, the switch, battery, and motor have not been installed yet, and they will only ship when I come back from the Stanford trip.

Also- I figured out a way to connect many Arduinos together without using a computer as a central hub. It will sort of be the speed of light minus processing time. Kind of like Fibre optics but a bit different. ;D I think it will work well! I’m going to be using this knowledge to make a super powered Wall-E robot with AI. =D

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

Astonishment

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

You know that Cylon contest, over at MAKE and DVICE?
Well, I may not have been able to enter, but they featured my Styrobot!

I went from $200 to $700 to $1000 in a matter of hours. I’m quite flattered, really!

I’d just like to shout-out to everyone that has helped! This means all the anonymous people, thank you all so much! Also, Jon, Win, Norri, Adrenalynn from Trossen Robotics Community Forum for buying my three Styrobots (and wanting me to autograph them XD), RoboJenny, Mike, Chris, Laurel, and (a different) Chris!!! Thanks so much to all of you. I really appreciate it.
Also, thanks a bunch to Steve who made the article on Robots.net and Kevin who made the article on DVICE.com. I really appreciate it!

I updated some stuff around as I had spare time,

• Posted pics of Teachers Styrobots
• Posted pics of Rube Goldberg machine
• Posted pics of uCHobbygoo

It has been an amazing few days, thanks to everyone! I really do appreciate it, really!

THANKS!

And thanks a bunch to Miss Gierus!

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

Delivery, Donation, and a Feature!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, June 1st, 2008

My Styrobots have reached uC Hobby successfully! I’m really happy that they didn’t get damaged! They look as awesome as can be! I’m sure they will be really happy there. Thanks!

Here are ‘high-res’ pics of uCHobbygoo and Jigglygoo.

Pretty neat! I made the logo part with a sharpie

I’d really like to thank Pablo Bleyer for his donation of $50! Thanks a bunch! It’s a really generous donation. He has some really cool projects too, like javabotics! His website is so neatly organized with the news and who what when where why how part on his projects. Everyone should do this. I’m going to be sending him a Styrobot, after I get back from the trip. Thank you!!

Last but not least, there’s an article at robots.net about my Styrobots! WOW! Thanks so much to them! I really love that site, I found it when I was playing around with my MANOI AT01. I’m so honoured!! THANKS!

Posted in: Projects, Robot.