Now that there have been a couple events under the belt for this machine: sons birthday party and a carnival, I am looking to make the claw machine more noise immune. The last event showed a random reset of the machine that would cause it to home...
The boards are finally finished. This was a long time coming, but I could machine the pcb's (which I have been wanting to do pcb milling for quite some time, but things did not fall into place until now) the mill have to become operational. The...
Now that the boards were complete, the boards could be wired into the box. The boards were designed to keep the 5V power supply voltages separate between the two boards. This required 2 separate 5V power supplies to feed the control voltages...
Finally getting to posting the schematic and the board layouts. Here is the microcontroller board that controls the claw machine (schematic):And the finished board layout:All the inputs from the outside world (joystick control and limits) pass...
Here is claw machine at the booth of the Omaha Mini Maker Faire. It was a good show and there were lots of kids to win the prizes inside. By the end of the day, I only had to pull out a dozen of toys to just give away. Along with the...
Still wanting to add the capability of using android apps to control the claw machine, I am making progress on this feature. Adding an HC06 made adding Bluetooth relatively easy. This is a serial Bluetooth device that is pretty straightforward to use....
To finalize the Bluetooth added feature, a small 3.3V regulator board was needed. Along with this, it was designed to also carry the voltage level shift and HC06 as a plugin.The voltage regulator is an LM317 adjustable supply. This allows for an adjusable...
Got around to mounting the Bluetooth module inside of the controller box. The board was soldered up (as seen in a prior log) and the HC06 was only mechanically held to the main board via its electrical connections. This proved to be too flimsy. So an...
Since the previous post, the first 2 flood boards have been built and used live at a concert (unexpectedly, but helpfully, allowing me to find where my protocol and approach has had some inherent weak points). To simplify, I shall just post an itemized...
The Flood Bank Array (FBA) boards now have completed enclosures, have endured a bit of drop-shock testing and are fully debugged... Each board now works on all channels (R/G/B/W). The Control Console (CC) software has had some further debugging work,...
If the picture isn't a bit of how I felt when assemlbing these little tricksters than the explanation will. The entire build except for one piece went smoothly. Some parts were no longer being sold so I had to improvise with better newer...
TLDR: I finished most of the theory to the design, power on is done, device recognition is done for this phase and will be revisited regularly, power control is done, touch communication is done-ish (i still need to order the touch screens from the chinese...
I am finishing partial schematics for this bridge and I feel if anyone else wishes to base their design or give me any ideas on this I should set up a few ground rules. I am setting these rules based on the limitations that I have found that are affecting...
After four months of continual silence from life getting ahead of me, I have had a chance to sit down and truly figure out what the platform will be based on (who got knocked out by me being in the quarter finals even though I resigned?). I had my original...
It's not pretty by most senses of the word, but it's almost ready to get moved into KiCAD for a proper layout. This isn't everything that I wanted, but it's what I needed to make this power system function* enough for a test. After about 5 iterations...