Blog - Francisco Dias

terça-feira, 9 de agosto de 2011

Leaving this blog

Hi There!

I've been 3 months without posting here, but I didn't stop making things...
There are lots of new ones on my main site: http://www.franciscodias.net/

Have a look!

From now on, you can visit my new blog here: http://www.franciscodias.net/blog

terça-feira, 26 de abril de 2011

Robótica 2011

The Festival Nacional de Robótica (Portuguese Robotics Open) is an initiative of Portuguese Society of Robotics which aims at promoting Science and Technology among students from the 1st grade to university studies, as well among the general public, through robot competitions.

This year the Festival took place in Lisbon (IST) and I and Francisco Purdom participated on it with Magabot, a robotics platform developed by Artica, IdMind and Mapa das Ideias:

They invited me to participate on the competition called Condução Autónoma (Autonomous Driving) - Rookies. The challenge was to make the robot drive a road, in a very similar way to an automobile, respecting the roads and the lines, in the fastest time possible.

There were lots of very good participants:

Of course, I used my app ComputerOnWheelsController, which I had just created (feel free to download and try it). The specific code for the contest was done in just 3 or 4 days.

It was coding until the start of the rounds, but in the end we got a third place.

I would like to say a special "thank you" to André Almeida from Artica and Paulo Alvito from IdMind for all the help provided and for the fantastic opportunity they provided me :)

quinta-feira, 24 de março de 2011

Make a simple platform and give mobility to your computer

Original Instructable: http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-simple-platform-and-give-mobility-to-your-c/ (Please rate it and vote on it for the contests).

A computer is a very handy thing to use in your robots.

If you start listing all the features that can be used for robotic purposes you'll find that it is cheaper to buy a netbook than buying LCD, wifi and bluetooth modules, cameras, speech synthesizer modules, keypads, memory card readers, speakers and many other stuff.

Thats why I decided to make this platform to my netbook. To let the computer control the motors, I tried two different ways: Firstly I used a arduino duemilanove with two motor driver boards, but then I found that it would be much easier if I just used a motoruino .

With this I could create lots of different applications that let my computer follow certain colors, follow human faces, detect flames, drive around the house avoiding walls, be remote controlled through the internet or using a wiimote, and the list of possibilities is almost endless. You can find and download some examples that I've already done at my website:http://www.franciscodias.net/processing-applications.

The Materials:

This is what you'll need:

1x Motoruino
1x FDTI Cable
1x Box
2x Motors, wheels and supports
1x Third wheel
1x Battery pack
Some wires and jumpers

Prepare the box:

Let's prepare the box to fit our needs:
Cut the holes that you need for the USB cable and for the wheels.

I used a knife which I heated on the stove.

Place everything inside the box:

To the motoruino, you have to connect the wires from the motors and the battery to the respective screw terminals.
If you have doubts check this page: http://www.guibot.pt/using-the-motoruino/.
Then you have to connect the usb cable, if you're using one with the FTDI chip embedded just connect it dirrectly to the board, if you're using an adapter board like me put it in place and connect the usb cable to it.
Make sure you're connecting it the right way, you may have to connect it faced down.

Upload the sketch to the motoruino:

Download the attached file, open it with the Arduino Software, read it if you desire, choose the serial port and the board, and upload it to your board.

Test it!

Open the serial monitor window and see what happens when you send the following commands:
   - 'w' move forward
   - 's' move backward
   - 'a' spin to the left
   - 'd' spin to the write
   - 'g' stop

Open your imagination!

Now that you have your platform working, start creating applications for it!I've created some with processing, which is a very easy language to learn, specially you you already know how to program in arduino.

You can have a look and download them here: http://www.franciscodias.net/processing-applications.

Always remember to check the available Serial port on your computer, in my case is COM19, but this is different from system to system.

Thank you for reading!

quarta-feira, 23 de março de 2011

New Tutorials page

Have a look!

segunda-feira, 21 de março de 2011

TheBox Revisited!

Some time after I made this robot, the board stopped working, and I have been all this time without doing anything on it. But, last week, when I received my two new motor driver boards, I decided to rebuild it:

It worked very well, but, then I had the possibility of trying the guibot's motoruino, which simplified a lot the robot, so it ended like this:

I made an instructable of it which you can find here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-simple-platform-and-give-mobility-to-your-c/.

I've submitted it for some contests, so, if you can, please vote on it using the following links:

Thank You! :)

terça-feira, 15 de março de 2011

New Motor Driver Boards are here!

Last week I've received my new Motor Driver Boards:

This time they have worked as expected and successfully drove TheBox motors (better than the board from the robot which came with them).

quinta-feira, 10 de fevereiro de 2011

New Domain

I'm still working on this, but I'm proud to announce that I've registered a new domain for this blog and my site for two years.

So, from now on, you can access this blog using blog.franciscodias.net and the main site using www.franciscodias.net.

terça-feira, 8 de fevereiro de 2011

Dale Dougherty: We are makers

A nice talk by the guy who founded the Make Magazine:

segunda-feira, 3 de janeiro de 2011

Pião

See it on LMR:

http://letsmakerobots.com/node/23990

Functions:

Navigate arround being remote controlled, for now...

Output Devices:

2 Drills' Motors

Microcontrollers:

Arduino Duemilanove

Power Sources:

2 12V Drills' Batteries

This is my most recent project. It is a robot which uses two cheap drills’ motors, that I bought a while ago for my tank. I didn’t like using tracks, so on this one I’m using wheels.

The motors are controlled by a arduino duemilanove using this motor driver board that I designed myself:

Unfortunately I made a mistake on the design so I had to correct it with some wires…

The only tests I did were using a wiimote and a processing application to remote control it, but I hope to make it autonomous soon.

The motor holders were my first work with polymorph and are quite good :D

quinta-feira, 16 de dezembro de 2010

FireTracker

Download Zip File: http://letsmakerobots.com/files/FireTracker.zip

Libraries Used:

controlP5
wrj4P5 - I recommend you to have a look here.

Description:

This application is very similar to the ColorTracker but instead of colors it tracks flames.

To link the wiimote to your computer you just have to have the bluetooth on and press 1 & 2 buttons.

It has some vertical lines, the white ones represent the x center of the flames and the other two, x min and x max, which are blue, divide the image in three parts. If the white lines are on the left part the application gives the robot an order to turn left and if they are on the right part it should turn right.

There are one other horizontal line, the y center of the flame which is white. The flame is represented by a yellow circle. If it is between the x min and x max lines the robot goes foward.

The blue lines can be adjusted using the correspondent sliders.

The serial commands (w,s,a,d and g) can be sent at a 4800 baud to the COM port specified on the text field, you just to write it there and press ENTER (example: "COM5").

domingo, 5 de dezembro de 2010

Using a WiiMote with Processing

The wiimote is a really cool controller to use with your robots. It has many buttons, accelerometers and even a camera which tells the coordinates of the four principal IR emitters that it sees.

There are many examples of applications using it, some of the most populars are from Johnny Chung Lee. But there are much more, just search for "wiimote" or "wiimote robot" on youtube or google. On LMR there are some examples too:

And others with just its camera:

But I wanted to use it, without having to hack it, to communicate with processing and control my robot TheBox.

On my computer I have installed WIDCOMM bluetooth software which I found here.

To install the processing libraries I followed this tutorial.

I had some problems placing the folders so here is a simple scheme:

+ Prossessing

   + libraries
   + Loc
   + library
   - Loc.jar
   + lll
   + Loc
   - ...
   + wrj4P5
   + library
   - bluecove-2.1.0.jar
   - bluecove-gpl-2.1.0.jar
   - WiiRemoteJ.jar
   - wrj4P5.jar
   - Loc.jar (optional)
   + lll
   + wrj4P5
   - ...

To test if it is all working you can try these examples found here:

If they work, you can pass to the next step, the serial communication with your robot.

The application MyFirstWii is really easy to adapt.

All you have to do is to import the serial library, create a serial object, define the COM port & the baud rate and add the serial communication where the data about the buttons is analyzed. Here is an example:

import processing.serial.*;
import lll.wrj4P5.*;
Wrj4P5 wii;
Serial TheBox;
void setup() {
  size(300,300,P3D);
  wii=new Wrj4P5(this);
  wii.connect();
  TheBox = new Serial(this, "COM5", 4800);
}
void draw() {
  background(0);
  stroke(255);
  translate(300/2,300/2,0);
  lights();
  rotateX((int) (wii.rimokon.senced.x*30+300));
  rotateY((int) (wii.rimokon.senced.y*30+300));
  rotateZ((int) (wii.rimokon.senced.z*30+300));
  box(100,100,100);
}
void buttonPressed(RimokonEvent evt, int rid) {
   if (evt.wasPressed(RimokonEvent.TWO)) println("2");
   if (evt.wasPressed(RimokonEvent.ONE)) println("1");
   if (evt.wasPressed(RimokonEvent.B)) {
   println("B");
   TheBox.write('g');
   }
   if (evt.wasPressed(RimokonEvent.A)) println("A");
   if (evt.wasPressed(RimokonEvent.MINUS)) println("Minus");
   if (evt.wasPressed(RimokonEvent.HOME)) println("Home");
   if (evt.wasPressed(RimokonEvent.LEFT)){
   println("Left");
   TheBox.write('a');
   }
   if (evt.wasPressed(RimokonEvent.RIGHT)){
   println("Right");
   TheBox.write('d');
   }
   if (evt.wasPressed(RimokonEvent.DOWN)){
   println("Down");
   TheBox.write('s');
   }
   if (evt.wasPressed(RimokonEvent.UP)){
   println("Up");
   TheBox.write('w');
   }
   if (evt.wasPressed(RimokonEvent.PLUS)) println("Plus");
}