In order to get better at soldering I practiced on a kit from Amazon, which has all the parts to assemble a clock on a circuit board. The clock would run on military time. After assembling it and soldering the parts together for the first time I faced an issue. Two parts of my display…
Tag: Electronics
Animated Eye on a 1.28″TFT GC9A01 Display
Halloween is a fun time of the month, which could be made even MORE fun by filling it with exciting and spooky projects. As an addition to my costume, (on which I have not yet decided) I decided to make a project that I’ve seen floating around for a little while – an animated eye…
Trying out Fusion 360
In order to move forward in the technological world I need to know my way around industry standard software. I was originally going to focus on some 3D modeling software, but when I saw that Fusion 360 also offered electronic schematics my decision was set. After going through the tutorial I went straight to recreating…
Smart LED Strip Installation + Programming
Isn’t taking down and putting up Christmas lights a tedious process? Well, I thought so too, which is why I decided to combine two things in this project:
Tetrahedral Kite with Altitude and Temperature Sensor
This is a very interesting project from my Computer Science class that I thought I would share here. The premise is to create a tetrahedral kite that can collect different data such as temperature and altitude during it’s flight, and record it on to an SD card. Our class used a tutorial on NASA’s website…
Powering Up a Pen and Paper Game with Arduino
I recently worked on an electronics project where I created a game of tic-tac-toe, a simple board game played with Xs and Os on a 3×3 grid. My electronic version of the game uses smart LED strips and buttons, controlled by an Arduino nano controller. Soldering the LED strips together has been a bit trickier…
Trans7-segment display using a decoder
7 segment displays are used to display digits ranging from 0 – 9. They are made up of LEDs arranged in the shape of the number 8, as any of the ten digits can be formed from the shape. A different number is displayed based on the combination of the lit up segments on the…
PWM(Pulse Width Modulation) Study
PWM is a way of regulating the power/brightness/revolution speed by changing the duration of voltage pulses. The relationship between the duration of a pulse, to the duration of a pause is called duty or power percentage. PWM pulses can be generated by an electric circuit or by a micro-controller. Arduino, for instance, has a command…
RGB LED Study
An RGB LED has four outputs: three LEDs (red blue and green), as well as either a common cathode (-) or a common anode (+). The RGB LED referred to in this post is a common cathode. By scaling the voltage of each of the LEDs within, the RGB LED is able to produce different…
Otto Walks On Its Own!
In order to create my own walk cycle for Otto, I needed to see how the walk cycle was done within the blockly software. The video below shows the most basic walk within the software. The speed is set to slow.
Analog Input Blink
I used an example from Arduino.cc to practice receiving analog signals through the analog inputs. In this example, the wait time between the blinks of the embedded LED are going to be sent to the Arduino UNO board from the potentiometer. The potentiometer sends voltage to the analog input, which in turn converts it to…
Finished Otto 3D Printing
This week I finished 3D printing the parts for the open source robot Otto, which I began printing last week. This was possible due to my access to the 3D printers at my school. The next step in creating Otto will be assembling.
Otto DIY – Walking Robot Project
Otto DIY is an open source robotics project. I have already 3D printed the leg parts of the pre-made model, and prepared the stl files for printing using Tinkercad. After the rest of the parts are printed, Otto will be ready for assembling. I’m planning to teach him how to walk by creating movement functions…
Astable Multivibrator – PCB Soldering
The next step in learning about the astable multivibrator circuit is transferring from a breadboard prototype to a PCB and soldering it. The circuit is powered by three 1.5 volt AA batteries. You can find my post about the prototype version here.
Astable Multivibrator
The astable multi-vibrator uses two transistors, and turns on first LED1, then LED2. This happens because the two capacitors charge and discharge, sending signal to the base of the transistors. I recreated this circuit on a breadboard to see how its outcome. The breadboard is powered by a power bank.
Transistors Study
A transistor is a semi conductor device that is able to direct the amount of electric power. It is often used to amplify electricity and sound waves. It has three electrodes: the emitter, base, and the collector. The current of the load flows from the collector to the emitter. The main advantage of using a…
Christmas Tree Soldering Kit Assembling
As an activity for Christmas, I decided to practice soldering with X-mas tree soldering kit. The layout was very simple, and I was able to finish it in a couple of hours. It contained three circuit boards, two for the tree and the third one for the base. It’s electronic components included: AA batteries wires…
Traffic Light PCB
As the next step in the Traffic Light project, I transferred the circuit from a breadboard, to an expansion prototype board for Arduino UNO. In order to do this, I took all the elements from the previous project, and designed a wiring diagram, and soldered the parts on to the PCB. As a result, the…
Diode Study
A diode is an electronic component which allows the electric current flow one way, and not the other. It is often represented as an upper case D on diagrams. A diode has a positive side called the Anode, and a negative side called the Cathode. In order to showcase this, I created a circuit on…
Arduino Traffic Light
In this project I created a traffic light prototype with an Arduino UNO. The LEDs would have to light up at the sequence of a real traffic light and work in a constant loop. Materials used in the project: Arduino UNO breadboard 5mm LED 220 ohm resistors wires I used the Arduino programming software to…
Programmable CarBot
Contents: idea layout execution programming gallery Idea The next step in the journey of CarBot was to make it programmable using Arduino software. With this feature it will be possible to write code to move the robot around in every way, thus providing more possibilities for further projects. Layout Car-Bot’s Arduino UNO board is powered…
DC Motor Driver Module
The goal of CarBot’s next upgrade is to make it able to move backwards without having to turn around. Before we do that, however, its really important to learn how a motor driver works and explore how it can be incorporated into CarBot. Here is a study of the DC motor driver board. Materials breadboard…
Ohm’s Law; Resistor
In this project I explored the basic properties of a resistor and discovered some important electronic formulas. “A resistor is a passive two-terminal electrical component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element.” (Wikipedia). In a simple circuit which powers a light emitting diode (LED), a resistor limits the amount of the passing electric current….
Breadboard Practice
Being able to use a breadboard is key when learning electronics. This was a simple practice to light up an LED. Some of the components that were used in this exercise are: Battery LED Resistor Button Wires Using the basics of working with a breadboard (such as where the current flows, which sections are interconnected,…
CarBot Part 3 (Remote Control)
After the negative results of the last experiment (touch censors), CarBot will be receiving a more modest modification – remote control. This will be a very simple model, with a wired remote that will turn on and off each of the two motors to steer the machine. Unlike the last idea, this one worked very…
CarBot Arduino
Working with Arduino can come very handy when programming robots. In this part of the project I applied some of my knowledge in Arduino programming to the CarBot project, making it able to move around using Arduino code. As it can be seen above, the program makes the robot go forward for 1000 milliseconds (or…
CarBot Relay
This project was intended to understand the function of a relay on a breadboard, and working with an Arduino UNO controller to complete simple tasks. I started by creating a circuit on a breadboard that would use relays that will control CarBot’s motors. Connecting the circuit to the Arduino board will allow us to control…
Beetle Bot
This project was a follow up of another bot made a couple of months ago that used the same mechanics. The old version had many flaws, such as an irreplaceable battery, which was why it had a short lifespan. (just like a bug) The BeetleBot would improve upon those things, also a adding a nice…
Voltage and Current Basics
In order to understand how current and voltage works, you have to start with the basics. To do this I used an electronics kit and a guide, which helped me learn more about measuring current and voltage, and how different elements affect them.
CarBot (Part 1: Circuit)
The goal of this project is to create a moving bot using a parallel circuit with two motors. This is the first step to creating any type of wheeled robot. For now, the bot will only be able to move in one direction whilst the switch turns on the power. It currently includes: A switch…
Electric Circuit
A simple practice project that showcases the work of an electric circuit. First modeled in Fritzing, then recreated on a breadboard. Once the switch is flipped, the diode lights up.