Heavy Mod Vulcan Trip Sensor.

The whole idea behind Project Heavy Mod was to have a Remotely operated Nerf assault rifle. In the end that is precisely what it turned into. With control via Xbee we can now remotely trigger the Vulcan. But that wasn't all the remote system was meant to do. Not only did I want to remove pesky co workers from my office from the click of my keyboard. No, it needed to go one step further. Enter the trip sensor.

This little bugger has a long range Sharp IR detector, a plunger switch, a STDP switch, Arduino Pro, and Xbee.

This little package is capable of being placed in unsuspecting locations, tripping the sensor to send a FIRE! command to Heavy Mod.

The plunger and switch on the side allow you to swap between manual, and automatic mode. When in manual mode, Heavy Mod's laser module is turned on, and the Vulcan will await a manual fire from the plunger switch. With a flip of the switch your in automatic mode, the laser turns off, and the Vulcan is ready to wait out it's pray.

 

  

 

Ambush videos coming soon. Enjoy.

Configuring Xbees.

The Heavy Mod Vulcan uses a pair of Xbees to communicate. All Xbees come with the same default settings to allow simple connection, and communication. However, in the case of Heavy Mod, I wanted to be able to drive the machine from the Robothon robot Scrapper's Wii mote control system. In order to work with the Wii mote, we need to change the default Baud settings to 19200. In order to do this we need to work with a software package called XCTU. This can be a bit of a daunting task. But I have written an Instructable to walk you through the whole process. You can check it out here.

Xbee configuration Instructable

Heavy Mod Nerf Vulcan

You saw it stock, out of the box in my last post. Now let's get you up to speed. This was a fun project. It had it's issues, but in general this is a fairly easy project. A good one for a beginner, to intermediate Arduino project.

After a bit of a paint job, and some hacking to the electronics, we are left with a wireless Nerf destroyer.

The parts inside include:

Arduino Pro Mini

Xbee Regulated Explorer

Darlington relay

and a laser module.

 

 

Happy Holidays everyone.

I hope everyone has stuffed themselves silly with treats, and home cooked feasts. It truly is a wonderful time of year.

I decided to treat myself to a gift of my own this year. But I didn't wait until Christmas to open it. Actually I didn't even try it out before voiding the warranty and hacking into my new Nerf gun.

Check back next week. I will be showing you what I have done to modify this foam flinging weapon. I'll give you a hint, it now has an Xbee, Arduino Pro mini, and a handful of other equipment stuffed into it now. I'll get some pictures, and videos posted up after the holidays. Until then, happy holidays.

Wii mote controlled sumo bot.

After competing in Robothon 09' the autonomous sumo bot "Scrapper" was converted to a remote control bot. Using an Arduino, a pair of Xbees, and a Wii Chuck, the bot now rolls around by input received from the thumb stick of the chuck. The accelerometers are outputting data, but currently not used. The 2 push buttons control start, stop, and reverse. The backpacks on its top cover are both Xbee, and IR packs. The IR allows tracking via Chris Rojas' bot tracking projection system mentioned in previous posts.

This little bot weighs in at 450 Grams before the addition of Xbee, and IR led backpacks. It's chassis was made out of recycled Circuit boards. The original weight with all electronics, motors, wheels, and tires, was only 198 grams. So an additional 250 grams of lead was added to bring Scrapper up to his weight class of 500 grams. By competition rules Scrapper is also under size restrictions, as well as weight. He measures in at just under 10 cm square. For more on the specs that were followed when building this bot, have a look at the Robothon sumo rules

Scrapper competed autonomously in the 500 gram Sumo class in the 2009 Robothon Competition.

 

 

 

Under the hood we can see the Arduino pro mini, and motor driver tightly packed into the 2" x 3"

compartment. Also in there are 2 high torque geared motors, and 2 lipo batteries.

 

Under the Controller's cover we find an old Decimellia, Xbee Explorer regulated, and another couple lipos.

Robo Joust turns into Robo soccer.

With a few IR leds, a hamster ball, and a half dozen robots, what more would you expect to happen? Robosoccer of course!

Today's joust was mild, with the table lowered to about 4 inches from the ground, rather than the planned 4 feet. The battle was lighthearted, and much less violent than originally expected. However, the competition was fierce once a impromptu soccer game broke out on the jousting floor.

For more about the interactive floor make sure to check out Chris Rojas' blog Project Allusion. He has been the one behind the magic floor. More information on the Wii Chuck controlled Sumo bot coming soon right here on Tech Desk Tid Bits.

Interesting new projects with the Sumo bot.

Since Robothon 09', Scrapper, the sumo bot, has been converted to remote control via a Wii chuck, and Xbee equipped Arduino. A complete post will be coming soon with more on this bot.

With the coming robotics workshop that will be held tomorrow at SparkFun head quarters, we have been preparing some interesting projects for the attendants to play with. Here is a sneak peak of what we are working on.

Chris Rojas (http://www.projectallusion.com/), has been working with Processing, Community Core Vision, and a modified Memo TUIO particle system  to create an IR tracking user interface. This allows simple addition of IR leds to such things as a Sumo bot to interact with virtual environments. Have a look!

The New controller for the Sumo Bot

Tracking IR with cross hair.

Scrapper is drawing it's path in the window beside it.

Pretty cool stuff. If you happen to be in Boulder on the 5th of December you should stop by SparkFun for some robot geekery!