CwhatIcanDo / CwhatIdid

5X7 Matrix Driven By picAxe 18m2

2011-09-14T13:49:00.000-07:00

It started as a simple way to communicate with a robot. I wanted my robots to have faces... I could have one that showed a grumpy face when it got stuck, or when batteries got too low, or just to have a fun looking little "bot" of some kind or another.

Of course, all this tinkering around with lights led me to a LED Matrix display I had lying around the junk box. I got a couple of them for a dollar a few months(/years) ago, just cause I thought they would make good indicators for experimenting with robots.

There I sat staring at the new picAxe 18M2's that I got when I blew my 18X and wanted to keep experimenting. The M2 versions of picAxe are "real" chips. That means, they have enough memory to do some more interesting things with. And there is the whole faster bus thing, and extra timers, and all that. The chip is designed to run four (4) processes simultaneously. Sort of a stubby propellor (8 processors) of course, you have to use different and interesting design processes. The point is, when you run it in "normal" mode, not multi processing, you can really crank up the processor's operating frequency.

So now I am eyeballing the 5X7 dot matrix display with an idea in mind to using the 18M2 at 32mHz (instead of 4) so I can actually handle the timing of Rows and Columns in the 2057 LED arrays. Oh boy, this looked like fun. I could build a 5X7 unit for just over the price of the 18M2 because of the surplus 2057's. I would let the drivers in the chip supply plus voltage so I could use the same chip to sink (20ma per pin on the chip - plenty for the 2057.

Now I know, I could have gotten the 20M2 (20 pins) and had enough pins to drive the 5X7 display with extra pins to drive more than one 2057 displays. Like having only one display with a 20M2 on it while having more displays simple wired to the chip.

Things I learned:

Average current drain is low when you are switching the power by sequentially enabling the Column lines. The whole 5X7 array averages well below 20ma probably over time roughly 15ma, even though you are driving 35 LEDs in various configurations of on's and off's.
Flickering becomes an issue at low speeds, some the videos are using 4mHz speeds, so you can see the flicker. Since I switched to running at 32mHz, each pattern looks nearly flicker free. That could be improved too.
PicAxe's just got better for home hacker/experimenters.
20M2's can be had for less than four bucks! More pins! I'm switching! (I know, the socket costs more and all that, but it's pennies for the total parts costs.

How to build your own:

Of course, the whole build it yourself project with the schematics and some "get started" software are online at CwhatIcanDo.com
Go follow the guidelines and build one of these to put into something practical...

Weekend Project: Get Started With Robots

2011-04-27T17:50:00.001-07:00

Well, it was time for a lot of cleanup. Google videos transferred to You Tube. I discovered early development videos as I attempted to get the dogbot to find the opening to a door, to running the bottom of a little $4 junkbot I picked up used.

It makes for a mighty interesting thing, the flat robot running around the room, seemingly headless.

This in turn reminded me of the handiest tool in my robot workbench. It's a motor driver board with an IR detector attached. Sometimes, I just hand wire it to an old robot or RC car chassis, adjust some software, and I can test about any platform available.

Simple yet handy tool. If you have a servo tester, then you are playing at the level that could use this subassembly.

Why the picAxe? Cheapest and quickest way to get going. That's about all.

Later, I'll do something with some of the other chips. It's not that I don't like programming in C...

picAxe 18m2 Robots Look Out!

2010-12-14T14:01:00.000-08:00

Bot builders look out!

Yes, it's controlled by simple BASIC programs, but holy moly! Someone took all the complaints I had about trying to use picAxes for anything but single solutions and "fixed" the picAxe 18m2 chip! I bought one from SparkFun for Five Bucks.

It goes beyond the otherwise fun 18x. It all started when I tried to get my little black box robot to do a little more than just run around avoiding objects. Yes, the bot is cool, and the 14m is a great little chip to run it around, but that's about it. I really wanted to be able to read the adc coming from the IR Distance measuring device, but about all I could do was make the bot run around and do some intelligent avoidance. I needed more program space!

So I decided to go back to the old 18x chip I had used in the original 1st robot, the dogBot. It had enough program space to have interesting behaviors, but had problems because the timers couldn't run at the same time. So drive the wheels with a pwm signal, but you'd have to turn off PWM, to get the servos to operate. It was cool, but even with the program space, I could only get bursty operation: See this video, you'll get the picture:

So the dog would pull itself forward, shut off the pwm, then pull forward again.

Originally, I was trying to run the thing off a 14m, but the issue was the timers, not the chip itself. Eventually, it could find the door and do simple things. But it wasn't the greatest.

Now I'm looking forward to using the 18m2 to make dogBot come back to life, though I may change it's form (like giving it two-wheel drive and steering?) It will do things different.

By experimenting with a small platform, I was able to run four programs at the same time. Now I don't have to jerk and hack the PWM and Servos, but can run all at once and give a smoother operation. Basically, I've told the platform to constantly read the distance from the object it is to avoid.

This is not much of a video, but it shows the platform slow down and stop, then back up and turn, then it just shuts off and waits till I press what used to be the reset switch and it starts out fast, slows when an object gets close and stops reverses and makes a siren sound. Once it backs out of the way of the object, it constantly beeps (showing me it is in slow down mode). Right now it can't just drive away, but it's only a test platform, not ready for prime-time.

But here's what happens so far... It's pretty nice, a lot better than run and look and run and look some more. I think the picAxe 16m2 is gonna make my life a lot more easy and things are gonna be more fun than work with the multi-processing in the m2 chip. I here it still has EEPROM bugs, but I haven't needed the extra program memory in any of my simple bots. Maybe I'll like the chip so much... Well, who knows?

Yet another Cheap Robot

2010-03-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been reading about Arduino's controlling the ever faithful Rumble Bots. They don't fight any more, they just run around under autonomous control.

Bot Bodies - Rumble Bot

In the early days (last year?) I was playing around with wheels and gears and all sorts of things when I stumbled upon an old Rumble Bot. I had to look 'em up because they weren't selling new ones... They have a card reader built in and all kinds of things that would make them a fun Robot.

I was just concentrating on using the body for batteries motors and gears when I saw Deans article via Make magazine. Dean used Arduino, I had used picAxe. When I added up the costs, I discovered Deans Arduino powered unit cost more than mine, so I thought I'd dig out the old videos and put this thing up as a proper project. So here it is on the CwhatIcanDo website complete with videos and step by step overview so you can build one too...

Dean's arduino cost $30
His Ping unit costs $30

Doing the same thing but replacing even the Motherboard means:
08m (if you want to be fancy) $4
08 motor controller board $15
Sharp IR detector unit $15

You can use the upper part of the body like Dean. One cool thing, Dean put touch feelers in the arms of his last conversion, it's a great idea. Use the rear switch already mounted on most models for detecting objects when backing up too!

CwhatIcanDo Projects

Motorola Droid - They Call it a Robot

2009-12-02T14:25:00.000-08:00

Got my hands on a new Droid from Motorola. This is the finest piece of gear from moto in a long time. (Since they layed off many software developers.) I'm pretty sure it was google's guys who put the kitchen sink in Android, the Moto and Verizon took the Android, slapped in into a very decent piece of hardware and Voila!!!

Details can be found on C What I Can Do website. Follow this link to Motorola Droid: Article >>

You've got yourself quite a little handheld computer in the Droid. And I did a writeup on CwhatIcanDo Projects. I did a little javascript based script that runs in a browser on the iphone or the droid, doesn't matter. I didn't ask the droid to ignore the screen commands, so it actually jumps around a little, but hey, it works! At least enough to tell me it is possible to control things through a web server on the phone's browser. It works.

So what am I thinking here? Is Droid possibly a brain for robot control? I don't know yet, it may not be fast enough, but the I/O port should be able to talk to a robot motor controller via serial bus.

From Motorola Droid

The big question is can you use the GPS, and all the goodies in there to actually put the Droid into the Robot and allow Bot Control via DROID. Sounds like it would make a good commercial, a little droid with some wheels to get it around...

From Motorola Droid

Video Collection

2009-06-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

Just an update at the 6 more months mark. Things are going slower than I hoped, but the site is growing in google PR ranks.

Virtual Robot Plays Online!

I am putting up a new project every month minimum.

This Will be a Year To Remember

2009-01-29T16:01:00.000-08:00

We have a new president, so far he seems OK, but he's only been in office for 8 days. The site is running now and doing well as far as reliability is concerned. We are beginning to get a smattering of traffic, and our videos are getting some traction now. We have reached the moment of slow growth while we work out the financial deals and partnerships. Else, this site is going to end up a glorified blog...

Our goal for this year is to go "Public" and to be able to have our creators start to generate some income through partnerships or whatever. Considering the state of the economy, a good how-to website should do well, especially if the projects are fun, cheap and easy. And for the most part, that's what we'll be doing, building up the site projects and getting our accounting software melded into the framework.

Here we come 2009!!!

It Isn't Beta, But it is Open

2008-11-23T10:42:00.000-08:00

True, we didn't hit the goal of Beta Release by Thanksgiving,

but it is a Public Alpha. No, I didn't get a design like I hoped, but we are ready. The site itself works just fine. You still need your own YouTube and/or google account and Picasaweb for images, but that is not much of an impediment. As yet, you cannot edit your parts list, only delete and replace. But I believe those are the only two bugs.

Before I call it Beta,

I need to hookup the whole "connect to CwhatIcanDoProjects on YouTube, googleVids, and picasa", so users take advantage of You Tube positioning as a group. And you need to be able to edit the Parts List AND the e-commerce piece needs to be hooked in.

But, there is plenty to do while in Alpha.
Tell a select group of known hackers, modders, and roboteers about the site and solicit their input.

Make our first deals with distributors, we have a "partial" deal with SparkFun to allow me to populate some projects, but there is only permissions for using SparkFun IP, we can't do a distributorship with them (yet). I'm certain I want at least one SparkFun like company, a small 'specialty' online distributor and my sights are on something like electronic goldmine or equivalent, and I really would like to get one of the bigs like Jameco.

SparkFun offers PC board production as well as 3-D modeling, done by batching, on the cheap. Perfect for creators with brilliant ideas to make into products. It's hard to find an equivalent to SparkFun, so I'll just hang with them for a while even though there is no current financial relationship. It's just one of those things with timing not quite right for SparkFun's business plans. We appreciate their contribution to the site. It will work out. Of this I am certain.

And, most important of all, I will take this time to focus on soliciting directly the best possible already published creators from around the internet. Look for a lot of kits of parts, and a chance to split commisions, if I am successful in this part of the effort. These folks can benefit the most directly right now, so they are logical pioneers for the site.

No. I can't yet call it Beta, but It's open for limited business, and subject to basic redesigns, but ready for those who are already on the leading edge.

CwhatIcanDo

Open For Public Alpha Testing

2008-11-18T13:41:00.000-08:00

Open for Public Viewing (and participation) go to C What I Can Do now and you are permitted to operate the site and to freely come and go.

This is the time, before official Beta release - Where the design is likely the only major thing that will change - I hope.

From TrakBot: Build Your Own Track Drive Robot

Now is pretty much your last chance to get involved with CwhatIcanDo and become a contributor to the site's purpose and functions. You may just take a look around at the framework and some of the great projects. If it seems like mostly robot projects, that's because it is right now... Lot's of robot projects and a few little scraps here and there of placeholder projects.

I hope you enjoy your interaction with CwhatIcanDo.com!!
(No. I mean I REALLY hope you enjoy it!)

PS: Read the bug list in the previous post for outstanding bugs and the easy workaround.

Sneak a Peek!!!

2008-11-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

Site Goes to Full Alpha

From TrakBot: Build Your Own Track Drive Robot

It is outrageous I know... I am offering a sneak preview of the new C What I Can Do website... That is correct earthlings, we are coming out of friends and family testing and I'm ready (though still in Alpha Testing) to open the site to more people. This is a chance to become a contributor on a brand spanking new website.

I'm taking the Site From Friends and Family only to a more generic level of Alpha Testing. There are still some bugs. I'll list the known bugs so if you decide to play around, you won't break anything or get frustrated. Remember, it's an Alpha WQebsite. It's not guaranteed to be bug-free. But the Alpha Testers, like you, get a chance to play around and make suggestions and help improve the site.

If you decide to give it a spin, remember you can't go through the "front door" yet, but you can go into the side entrance and have a look around.

YES! I wanna see this new website! I may even have a project or two in mind. I want to help you make it work better, so I'm coming in to the Alpha Test Site!!!

------------
Known Bugs

You will have to have your own YouTube, google Video, or PicasaWeb account for now, we haven't hooked up the interface to CwhatIcanDo's accounts yet.
You can't edit the parts list, if you mess up you have to delete the whole thing and start over with correct information. Sorry, for the inconvienience.

That's it! You were expecting a long list like Microsoft has when it comes out with finished products?

Andrei and I aren't Microsoft, so we are shooting for the fewest possible bugs by release time. I'm hoping we can open for Beta Testing around Thanksgiving...

So far so good...

Website Update: October

2008-10-08T15:04:00.000-07:00

We are still fixing bugs in the friends and family alpha release. I have a few videos up on CwhatIcanDoProjects on YouTube. This will provide a sneak preview... Enjoy the videos...

Web release update

2008-09-15T14:45:00.001-07:00

We are in process with the alpha testing of Rel A 1.0 CwhatIcanDo website. We have a few who have signed up, but only one or two people are actually uploading a video and instructions. Anyway, I've budgeted two months in this limited alpha test model. I started out by applying to some of my friends and family to jump on and give feedback. I've gotten only a little feedback and about a dozen testers.

On the other hand, I've personally uploaded a couple of projects and will do some more over the next two months. Also, I'll be making our first distributor "deals" with some of the websites which sell robot and robot-related parts.

I'll keep you posted. Things are pretty quiet right now.

Alpha Testing Begins

2008-08-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

Wheeee!

And I mean it! This has been the most fun I've had building a website. Now it is open for inspection and positive creative contributions by a horde of Friends and Family, followed by a select group of do it yourselfers of various kinds and flavors.

We already had a couple of web builder/designers take a sneak preview of the site. Their feedback was positive enough to stop me in my tracks. The site is nice. It's the best Andrei and I could crunch together. It's pretty complete, complete with it's own list of bugs which we are using the site to keep track of. At the first of August, the bug list was pretty significant. A few events went on between our various families and it took a while. But I realized one day, the bug list only had two bugs. Neither was a real bug, just a feature that needed to be hooked up...

We did it. And now, and maybe for a couple of months of testing, we are opening the doors for Creators. Some we want to give us design ideas and others a technical checklist, but we also want people to use the tools to create projects. And they are coming too... I can't wait to send the invite email! Gonna Happen!!!

Alpha Release Candidate 1 AlphaRC1

2008-08-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

While we ended up a little off the bulls eye, our vector is still aligned and we are moving in the right direction. Our Target Was to be Ready For Alpha Testers by the end of July. It's the beginning of August, still in an acceptable range, true, but while I already am Alpha Testing, it's not quite ready for our Friends and Family Alpha release. I do have a few web developer friends and they are being very helpful, so we really are in Alpha Testing.

I wish I could show it to you, but it has taken four complete functional frameworks to get here, where we're all pretty happy with our choices. Of course integrating it all together for the Release Candidate and our friends and family surfing around in there, they can forgive the color scheme, but the navigation has to work. It drives me crazy when navigation spins me around. So in a little while now, we will go into stealth mode tests. In reality, this blog entry will probably be long lost by the time you run into C What I Can Do, or C what I did... So even as I'm writing it, it is an historical document. Just like from one moment to the next. It can all change...

Here is the state of this project:
1. As mentioned we have a design in place that is A Release Candidate. Target, around the middle of the month.
2. CwhatIdid.com opened it's potential and we are re-thinking of it as more of a Sister Site as much as a part of CwhatIcanDo.com Right now the logo is CwhatIcanDo with a pale version of CwhatIdid behind it. But as some others have been introduced to the concept, I may have discovered another use altogether for CwhatIdid and the potential is high.
3. We have many things to do before the site will be available to web surfers, bullet-proofing everything making sure our agreements with Creators give them the Intellectual Property Protection we promise. Dotting i's and crossing t's, plus the mechanisms for a lot of the features that will put the dazzle into the site that will make it a cool place to hang out with your creator friends you get here.

I'll keep you posted occassionally here. I have a few notes to myself I need to be able to look back on and regain my bearings. Not that I'm floppin' around just busy.

Architecture

2008-07-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

CwhatIcanDo.com

This is the root of the website.

From here we branch out into the website pages. We decided on a blog-like interface to create the projects and by actually building several versions of the website. We were working our way to choosing the optimal combination of videos, photos, weblinked pictures with step by step instructions.

This format allowed users to create projects based on ideas. Just hit Create New Project and scratch in your project idea. Now CwhatIcanDo serves as a place for you to create a new project.

If you've already built something, then you might not want to put in the steps of how to build, but rather the elements of the experiments that led you to the actual project. So we wanted flexibility for the creator...

This led us to develop the feeder URL: cWhatIdid.com, a place where finished projects are displayed and the user can dig deeper to see the Steps to Build, or the Experiments that led to the project, whatever someone wants to expose is shown on cWhatIcanDo.com. Say you're a carpenter who installs cabinets, you'll want to put your projects on CwhatIdid.com so you can send perspective clients to see what you did, or how you do a typical installation, or whatever you do that people might want to see your finished products.

So CwhatIcanDo was designed for multiple purposes, but the core of it is a way to show people how to built simple robots, or robotic drives or how to sense IR and use it to add obstacle avoidance to any robot project. The list goes on and on. The architecture of CwhatIcanDo must be able to support a wide range of possible applications. Who knows what the users will do with this website?

Thus the architecture of the website(s) functionally looks something like this:

CwhatIcanDo.com Collects and formats the steps or elements or chapters of a project, be it a story, an experiment, or even a robot.

CwhatIdid.com AND CwhatIcanDo.com Peruse Complete Projects (and steps)

SEO optimizing server optomize.CwhatIcanDo.com Controls optimization of website on Search Engines.

Create and Edit Your Projects create.CwhatIcanDo.com A super-blog, if you will. Allows the creator to control all the aspects of what is displayed for a project. And that includes all the monetizing potential.

Essentially then, we would build two websites both using web2.0 technology.

One site will focus on speed. Promptly loading and allowing quick perusal of the project and the video showing the project in action in the real world.

A second website where the concentration of the technology is on ease of use and tools to create. It would load slower and not show up in too many search engines, but it would make the best and easiest to use Creator Tools on the web today.

We divided up our work. Andrei would be responsible for building the tools and I would be responsible to build the optimized for speed part. At first I was in a learning curve, but with Andrei's help I got my arms around the encompassing technology and together we created the architecture for the site.

At some point we would merge the two together and call it our Alpha Release. We are on schedule for having the Alpha Site completed by the end of this month - give or take... OK, probably actually it will be a little later, but our goal is to launch the site as Beta by fall of this year.

Then we will be about the business side of the site, establishing vendor status with any of the Alpha Tester's projects that need it. And ready to establish a commissioned sale when you get to your project's parts list.

Who knows what it will look like when we open for business in the fall, we will have built and tested the site technically, but expect a lot of feedback and refinements during Alpha Testing, so it's a little hard to predict, but soon Everyone will be able to C What YOU Can Do...

History

2008-07-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

It all started with those robots.

I was waiting on another "deal," babysitting another $50 Million Dollar Idea. Babysitting a deal leaves you with a lot of spare time. It's a large development loop consisting of propose, stay persistent, tweak the proposition, wait for email feedback. Repeat these steps till the deal is made. It's the way some people make their living.

In the Military they called it, "Hurry up and wait."

During my last round of hurry up and wait, I killed the time building robots. Just started out buying a couple of ten dollar "walkers." Cuz I wanted to see how far the hardware had come while I had spent the last twenty years in various loop-cycles investments for Motorola.

The state of AI in the days when I got first exposure to the field was a disappointment. The more I learned the more I could see that processing power would not be able to keep pace with software demands. Really meaty AI, the stuff of robots pets and android kitchen helpers, was the territory of new kinds of computational architectures. That would take a while.

In the earliest years AI flipped and flopped eventually morphed into one of its sub-units, Knowledge Based AI. That was great for all the call centers of the world, but it wasn't the stuff of my dreams.

I guess that's what eventually steered me do go into AI, messing around with Artificial Neural Networks and Fuzzy Logic. I had gone so far as to stick my neck out 30 years ago and declare that someday we would have Microprocessor driven pets published in my book on Personal Computing. And, as opportunity would have it, eventually I came to land in Motorola's Semiconductor Division.

But where did CwhatIcanDo come from? The robots!

Killing the time building robots allowed me to understand the robotic "state of the art." What I discovered was a sizeable number of sites dedicated to robots, often homemade and held together with tape. That is, for every professional robotics site there were probably two to three amateur robot sites. The quality of the amateur sites ranged from super-professional looking, yet homemade "bots" to the aforementioned tape and wire with everything imaginable between. There were a lot of bots, a lot of bot websites, yet there didn't seem to be anyone tying all of it together. I started a blog and used everyone else's software pictures on picasweb, blog on google, videos on google video and you tube.

By experimenting with the blog and you tube and it's associated search engines I started to get position on interesting search words and played around with that for a while. I was able to optimize my approach. But a blog format wasn't the best for creating a step-by-step project or experiment with robot pieces. Thus was born the concept for a website oriented toward building projects which people could look at by scanning through projects until they found something interesting. If I built the website correctly, then when you looked around at finished projects and the steps leading up to them, you could become not just inspired to build your own or another, version of something that inspired you, you could instantly sign up and begin to document your project.

In addition, I thought my fellow homebrew robot friends would like to make a little money and show off their projects all at the same time. So we integrated the parts list into the project in such a way that when a person clicked on the parts list, they could click and easily order the part online, without leaving their project. Since it was clear the click for purchase came from CwhatIcanDo, so we made deals with distributors. Now when someone is inspired to build a wall-climbing bot inspired by your dancing flower pot project, CwhatIcanDo makes money on the sales commission. Then the website splits the income with the person who created the dancing flower pot project that inspired the purchase.

Not only that, if the project resulted in creation of a complete kit of parts, the creator could link to and sell his or her (or it: allowing for androids) directly on CwhatIcanDo. In addition, we encourage our creators to publish (and sell) their own robot books, parts, anything and everything by granting a commission to CwhatIcanDo. Yes, it is possible to double-dip. That is, you can sell your book on Amazon, then you not only get your royalty check, you get your cut of the commission from CwhatIcanDo!

Robotic amateur creators need to be free to create not only fun widgets, but also a have a way to monetize their interest in robots and robotic experimentation.

But there are other creators out there as well. It's not just about Robots... It's about how to do just about anything you can think of. And our creators will no doubt think of things we hadn't envisioned. We are thinking maybe Home projects, automotive, electronic, we allow you to categorize your project where you think it's best. Eventually, those categories will populate with projects and the popularity of getting a chance to CwhatOTHERScanDo ...

Checkout CwhatIcanDo.com (Opening for Beta in the Fall of 2008.)