So I gave solder paste shot. I really like it. I bought a syringe of no-clean from Howard Electronics Instruments. The syringe comes with a fairly wide tip but the syringe and tip are luer lock type so you can buy all sorts of different width tips for the syringe. I wasn't 100% certain that the syringe would be a luer lock type when I bought it so I skipped buying extra tips.
Feb Meeting Wrap Up!
Small turn-out today but still a nice one when you consider the inclement weather. We covered the basics of Arduino setup and learned how to install and use the TimerOne library to easily generate PWM signals suitable for driving small DC motors. (The built-in analogWrite()'s fixed 490Hz signal will likely burn up your H-Bridge.)
Missing Feb Meeting
I'm not sure this is the right place for this but ...
I'll miss the Feb meeting .. out of town. I'm still working on the minisumo and hope to have it running in a couple of weeks.
Dennis
Regular Meeting Feb 21
02/21/2009 12:30
America/Chicago
Hey ya folks! I wanted to get the event lisitn up for the next meeting. I'm thinking we'll cover the generatation of PWM signals to feed into H-Bridges. In others the software side of steering a tank-drive style robot. I will probably show examples from both Arduino and BASCOM (both AVR environments). Bring your laptop and let's get your coding enviroment rolling and learn to generate PWM signals.
Jan 17 Meeting Wrap-up!
Folks who attended the January meeting saw a presentation on H-Bridges and went through a hands-on lab where they wired a couple of H-Bridges up to a microcontroller to control some junk motors. It was a good meeting overall and folks learned valuable skills and important lessons.
Eddy Wright of Wright Hobbies was good enough to donate H-Bridges to our lab and attendees went home with 3 free H-Bridges after having successfully wired them up in the lab!
Jan 17 Regular Meeting (Updated)
01/17/2009 14:00
01/17/2009 17:00
America/Chicago
Update: Due to a scheduling conflict at TomG's house (our host) I have moved the time of the meeting from 2PM to 5PM. Sorry for the switch!
Last time we discussed several light detecting sensors. I wanted to give you guys links to this stuff so that you can acquire it and play with them for yourselves.
Dec 20th Regular Meeting
12/20/2008 12:00
12/20/2008 15:00
America/Chicago
Let's decide on a club contest! I am pushing for:
Mini-Sumo
Mini-Sumo has a number of things going for it:
- It is head-to-head and very competitive.
- It is challenging, but not too challenging for beginners in a club environment.
- There are a number of kits to get you up and going or you can go pure custom.
- The contest is very portable. Mini-Sumo contests are held all over the world.
Wiimote Camera
Here is a neat little write up of how on may take the camera in the Wiimote and interface it with a microcontroller. Its one of the things on my TODO-one-of-these-days list.
