Posts from: December '08
PIC 2
The birth of The Thing was delayed a little. I had the intent to design a simple DC motor controller. However, problem one, the PICKit2 programmer died (hail to Microchip who were nice enough to send me a free replacement), then, problem two, I had some trouble finding the right elements. Most of them I finally bought from Pulsator - DC motor (6V), relays, jack, etc. After the soldering iron kicked in, the demo board got a little overcrowded, but this was inevitable anyway:
The demo board is no longer bare...
...with the motor...
The design is a simple H-bridge, using four relays. The huge resistor from picture 1 stands on the way to the ground - it redirects some of the current to the A2D (Analog-to-digital converter), so I can measure how much current does the motor draw, respectively - how heavy it is loaded. I put those results on the LEDs for debugging purposes. You can watch the demo here.
You can see how, when the motor gets some load, the current raises (the LEDs show it in binary; they flicker a bit, but this is normal, since they are updated some 200 times a second. Indeed, I initially tried to average a quarter second worth of measurements, but the result looked quite dull).
Now that I can command the motor, I just need to find some more mechanical parts and learn the power-saving capabilities of my PIC... and The Thing will be ready... watch out.. IT Knows Where You Live (devil)
Posted in category Hardware -- 28 Dec 2008, 02:49, 14 comments

popcorn
A group of Computer Science students are trying to make pop-corn using mobile phones...
Posted in category Images -- 8 Dec 2008, 03:14, 3 comments