Motors control with MCU.

Guys from Nerdkits.com, presents "Motors and Microcontrollers 101". The tutorial covers some basic idea of motors:


Check out the complete tutorial here:
http://www.nerdkits.com/videos/motors_and_microcontrollers_101/

Getting Started with BeagleBoard, with Angstrom distribution

Beagleboard is very small but powerful, with the nice integrated Anstrom distribution, you can turn this little board to a desktop like environment! I followed the beginner guide "HowToGetAngStromRunning" and successfully make it works within 30 minutes!

The good things are that all the drivers are pre-built, so whatever I plugged a USB ethernet, or a USB mouse or keyboard, all works like a charm.

Let's check out some screenshots:



1. Firefox running, I copied my Chinese TTF from my Desktop Linux to it, so it can display Chinese as well.


2. WORD processor & Game.



3. Native ARM development, with the GNU toolchains built-in the distribution, you can work in a complete ARM development environment.

Link:
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard

BeagleBoard from Digi-Key.

I received the beagleboard from digi-key. Beagleboard is a low-cost TI ARM development board, featuring ARM Cortex A8, only $149 US. I haven't play it yet, Let's put some unbox photos here first:


1. Very small, but powerful!


2. With SD card slot, USB OTG, USB host, HDMI and audio!


3. a small box with cute beagle sticker.

AVR Serial (UART) communication get explained.

Evil Mad Scientist Labs presents an in-depth tutorial on AVR serial communication, provided with ATiny2313 and ATmega example codes. Another must-read article from them!


Link:
Basics: Serial communication with AVR microcontrollers

Easy 4 Legged Walker bot.

Recently I am studying on servo motors with AVR, one of the basic element of making robots. I am thinking to start a simple project to play around with servo motors, a simpleWalker: 4-legged 2 servo walking robots may be a good choice. The full instructions are on instructables.

Video:

Cheap wireless solution for AVR/MCU projects.

The nRF24L01+ is a 2.4GHZ RF Transceiver produced by NORDIC semiconductor, it is a very small , powerful and low-power solution for your home project. I am studying how to interface with my AVR MCUs. Luckily, I found out someone has a driver written for AVR, it is well-documented and easy to follow. Check out the link here: http://www.tinkerer.eu/AVRLib/nRF24L01. Basically, you need to have a SPI interface, so most of the AVR MCUs have! so How far can it goes? Sparkfun did a test, around 360feet LOS.

Robo One humanoid robots get demostrated in Hong Kong.

Just get back from an event showing the robo-one humanoid robots in Hong Kong. For the readers who don't know what is Robo-one, Robo-one is a humanoid robot wrestling game in Japan, which is a one-on-one match. Each side controls a humanoid robot and tries to make another side fall on the ground. Many Japanese players create their own humanoid robot for the competition. The KYOSHO, a famous RF toys maker, produced 2 humanoid robots (MANOI PF01 & AT01) which can be played in robo-one. So now you can purchase one from kyosho and modify your own without building from scratch!

Some photos from the event:


# All robots


# MANOI AT01 in pink


# MANOI AT01 kicks ball


# MANOI PF01 cute look.


# Football time! Have fun.

Video of the Robo-one, Japan:


Awesome! right?