No, I did not forgo Black Friday shopping altogether for Hack Friday (the new day which one spends hacking things together). Shopping started at 7:30 Thanksgiving with a trip to Walmart and also some online shopping.
Hack Friday started a couple months ago buying a robotic head. It comes with two servo motors and two electric motors. About the same time I bought an Adafruit motor shield to control the head via an Arduino. I have not had time to wire it up with other projects like the Cylon Pumpkin. With Halloween over, I wanted to focus on the robot. Helping was receipt today of another Adafruit order from this past Sunday when they had a 10% off sale for Hack Friday. Just in time!
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The head is driven with the motor shield's two servo outputs and two of the four motor controllers. For now, a potentiometer is read to control the motor and a rotary encoder, interrupt driven, selects which motor to control (could be done with 4 potentiometers possibly better). The motor shield leaves enough Arduino pins free (all analog pins and digital pin 2 which is interrupt controllable). Eventually the head will respond to sensors and possibly talk via an Emic speech board coming from a sale at Make.
Making the hookup much more enjoyable is my new Hakko soldering iron - near instant controlled heat, making the old Radio Shack model seem so 1976.
Happy Hack Friday!
Hack Friday started a couple months ago buying a robotic head. It comes with two servo motors and two electric motors. About the same time I bought an Adafruit motor shield to control the head via an Arduino. I have not had time to wire it up with other projects like the Cylon Pumpkin. With Halloween over, I wanted to focus on the robot. Helping was receipt today of another Adafruit order from this past Sunday when they had a 10% off sale for Hack Friday. Just in time!
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The head is driven with the motor shield's two servo outputs and two of the four motor controllers. For now, a potentiometer is read to control the motor and a rotary encoder, interrupt driven, selects which motor to control (could be done with 4 potentiometers possibly better). The motor shield leaves enough Arduino pins free (all analog pins and digital pin 2 which is interrupt controllable). Eventually the head will respond to sensors and possibly talk via an Emic speech board coming from a sale at Make.
Making the hookup much more enjoyable is my new Hakko soldering iron - near instant controlled heat, making the old Radio Shack model seem so 1976.
Happy Hack Friday!