HiBot ACM-R5 Snake Robot looks lifelike, leaves us wondering when we can own our own hydrobot swarm (or if it’s already here)
by George on Apr.17, 2012, under Misc
Every once in awhile we like to post a video that, while not necessarily DIY, is inspiration, and gives makers something to dream about and shoot for. Over the weekend, video footage of DARPA’s latest stair-climbing robot made rounds on facebook, the blogs, and the internet at large. The video is certainly impressive, and we look forward to spirited rounds of “drunk person or unstable PID algorithm” with our friends when people watching in the future.
However, what really caught our attention was one of the related videos, which showed off an older robot (2009, although the original demonstration was 2005) from HiBot, the ACM-R5 Snake Robot. Snake robots are nothing new, and robots such as Titanoboa have received gratuitous amounts of press coverage on Make, Wired, and elsewhere.
By comparison, however, HiBot’s ACM-R5 Snakebot has received little to no coverage by the maker community up to this point. Which is unfortunate, because the ACM-R5 has a trick that most of it’s fellow snake robot cohorts lack: it can swim in water. Check it out in the video below (continue reading…)
Retro BSD Running on VoIP32v2
by Ben on Apr.08, 2012, under Experiments, Projects, VoIP Server
After quite some time without development activity on VoIP32, I began investigating modifying Retro BSD to run on it. Retro BSD is a port of 2.11BSD Unix to the PIC32. It operates by loading the Unix kernel and hardware drivers into the PIC32′s Flash memory, then loading individual executable files from an SD card and executing them from RAM. Of particular note, the project includes a BASIC compiler and a MIPS assembler and linker in the default filesystem image, so development for the system can happen on the system itself. While the source for a C compiler is included, it is too large to run from RAM and is currently not operational. Still, to say that the Retro BSD project is impressive is an understatement.
Due to the hard work of Serge Vakulenko, who started the PIC32 Unix effort, modifying the project to run on new hardware is as simple as editing a couple of Makefiles. After doing so, using MPLAB to download the kernel to VoIP32 was pretty straightforward.
The project includes drivers for an SD card connected via SPI, and supports the use of serial or USB for the console connection. Over the weekend, I was able to modify my existing HD44780 LCD driver and graft it onto the Retro BSD kernel. The LCD appears as ‘/dev/lcd’ in the Unix filesystem, and writing to it is as simple as piping text to that file. As time allows, I would like to add simple networking functionality using the board’s onboard PHY.
Retro BSD is an extremely impressive project, and I think having a real operating system like Unix running on our hardware has the potential to greatly increase its value. We’ll be sure to write more about future successes with this software. It’s awesome!
MPLABX v1.0 Released
by George on Dec.22, 2011, under Software
We’ve covered Microchip’s MPLABX IDE over the course of the year, and were very excited to see the news that MPLABX is finally out of beta! MPLABX v1.0 has been released, and is available for download here, along with release notes and the latest copies of the various Microchip compilers.
Among other things, MPLABX offers the following features:
- Java-based, cross platform GUI: Program PICs on Mac, Windows, or Linux
- Refreshed, improved graphical user interface
- (Most of) the same great functionality from MPLAB 8
We are very excited about this project. MPLABX represents the first official cross-platform compiler/IDE (that we’re aware of), and we hope other chip companies follow in their path.
(via Dangerous Prototypes)
The Nice Guys at Farnell Part 2: Flux Remover
by George on Dec.19, 2011, under Misc
Introduction:
Previously, the guys at Farnell gave us some flux pens to try out to help out with our SMD soldering abilities. While the flux pens are no-clean flux, they still leave behind a residue that is visible on the board:
The Nice Guys at Farnell Part 1: Flux Pens
by George on Dec.17, 2011, under Misc
Introduction:
Near the beginning of November, the NBitWonder staff was contacted by the community outreach team at Farnell. From their email:
Great site. Loved some of the builds you have put together and
wondered whether you’d be interested in the following to provide
parts for any up and coming builds?As a key pillar of the electronics blogging community we have
indentified your blog to road test some of our new products we
currently have on sale. If you are interested in this scheme then we
will happily send you products which will be yours to keep, free of
charge in exchange for a review of the item.
As a high service distributor across the world, Farnell strive to
gauge feedback from those within the industry with an online presence
in order to make the necessary improvements to our products to delight
our customer base.
A “key pillar of the electronics blogging community”? Thanks Farnell, we’re flattered by the offer!
(continue reading…)
Fun with Software-Defined Radio
by Ben on Dec.12, 2011, under Experiments, Projects, Software Defined Radio
As you may know, one of the projects in the pipeline here at NBitWonder is a software-defined radio receiver, loosely modeled after Jeri Ellsworth’s receiver published earlier this year. As of this past weekend, NBW-SDR (as we call the project) is operational!
The video features a live reception of WWV, one of the United States’ atomic clock stations (much more information here). The station is located near Fort Collins, Colorado, some 2000 miles from the receiver’s location in Virginia.
There is much more work to be done on the software, as you can tell from watching the video. For instance, only AM reception is implemented right now. The signal processing functions still need some work, and more appropriate gains should be chosen for the entire signal chain. Still, it is rewarding and reassuring to see the project working at some level.
Be sure to watch the github repository and the forum for much more information as project development proceeds.
Adventures in Open Source: Dangerous Prototypes and the BusPirate
by George on Dec.05, 2011, under Projects
Introduction:
Dangerous Prototypes is a fantastic open hardware community that we at NBitWonder follow closely. One of the most unique, compelling features of Dangerous Prototypes is their free PCB giveaways. They produce a large number of PCBs for their prototypes, and give away the leftovers for people to try building their own versions of the Dangerous Prototypes projects. Some of these are through weekly events, some are to incentivize people to do things for the site (such as coming up with T-shirt designs, etc.), and still others are offered to “dedicated developers”.
I was curious exactly how Dangerous Prototypes determined what a “dedicated developer” was, so I sent them an email (some time ago, now) asking how they implemented this.
The Bus Pirate:
As a result of that email, the nice folks at Dangerous Prototypes sent me a free PCB code to try building my own project. I opted for the Bus Pirate project, as it’s an extremely useful tool that I could get a lot of mileage out of prototyping and developing NBitWonder projects. For those unfamiliar with the Bus Pirate, think of it as a logic emulator — a device that can pretend to be one side of a given interface (USB, I2C, etc. etc.). (continue reading…)
Happy Thanksgiving!
by George on Nov.24, 2011, under Site News
Happy Thanksgiving from the folks at NBitWonder! Have fun, celebrate with family, enjoy yourselves. We’ll be here when you get back 
EagleUp v4.3 Released
by George on Nov.12, 2011, under Software
We’ve covered progress on the Eagle/Sketchup plugin EagleUp before, and it looks like v4.3 is ready for use. Via EagleUp:
After more than 3000 downloads, it’s time to improve eagleUp and add to new features.
- fixed curved board outlines (see below the note on outline curves)
- eagleUp now supports 1:1 scaling as well
- eagleUp also includes functions for scaling and measuring the final circuit
- automatic resizing of models during import, you can mix scale indifferently 1:1 and 1000:1 objects
- add support for sub folder ! keep your work folder clean, all eup, png, log files can be placed in a user defined sub folder. Check the settings window.
- add an option for simplified vias (no drill) for faster import of large models.
- add a board thickness unit selection, you can enter 1.6mm as well as 60 mils
- add a log file of the missing parts during the import in Sketchup, the log file is saved next to the eup file
- add support for an attribute-defined part name (see below)
- add possibility of minor modifications of the part (rotation, board side) directly from the Board
- added option to create top and bottom images as jpg files (necessary for some renderers, do not use otherwise)
- Eagle installation < 5.9 (including 4.xx) should use a simplified legacy exporter available here. It keeps most of the features of the full version.
- new PCB colors available, like a white solder mask (Winter is coming !)
The download page for EagleUp v4.3 is available here. In addition, installation and tutorial pages are available. What are your thoughts on the new version of EagleUp? Write your experiences in the comments below.
NBitWonder Open Documentation System (OpenOffice)
by George on Nov.09, 2011, under Documentation Templates, Software
Introduction:
Over the course of the past year, NBitWonder has been undergoing an effort to improve the way in which we document and share projects.
It started almost a year ago with our initial documentation post. From there, we moved forward, releasing a set of Open Documentation templates, written in LaTeX, and available in our github repository. Those were used for quite some time, and provided a nice, standardized layout for all NBitWonder projects.
Further Refinements:
As nice as writing project documentation in LaTeX is, however, it suffers from a steep learning curve, and can be quite challenge to coerce into providing a particular desired output. Writing project documentation in LaTeX is somewhat akin to writing a dynamic website in notepad; it can be done, but arguably better (or at least more productive) methods exist for creating the desired end product.
With that in mind, we set out searching for a more powerful software package to write documentation in. The stipulations were that the software had to be open source (free as in speech and free as in beer), cross-platform, and easy to use, allowing many end users to adopt our work in their own hobbyist projects and allowing our work to be easily accessible for everyone. After review of the narrow list of softwares available that met these requirements, we settled on OpenOffice.org. The NBitWonder open documentation system, written in OpenOffice.org (OOo) is available here, and all existing NBitWonder projects at the time of this writing have been converted to use this new OpenOffice documentation.
OpenOffice: Pros and Cons
There are a number of advantages to using OpenOffice, as detailed below:
- Powerful User Interface:OpenOffice is an office suite, rather than a typesetting program. As such, it has a vastly more intuitive graphical user interface than LaTeX, and documentation output can be seen live without requiring compilation.
- Extension Support:As of version 3.0, OpenOffice.org supports the writing and development of extensions and macros written in a number of programming languages (python 2.6.1, in particular). As such, documentation improvements for the Open Documentation system can be developed and distributed in the form of OpenOffice extensions. This is a marked improvement over LaTeX, which doesn’t (in our experience with it) provide a particularly interface for user macros, as well as a considerable improvement over packages such as Microsoft Office, in which macros are only supported in various flavors of Basic.
- Open Source and Cross-Platform:OpenOffice is well known and truly cross-platform, including a Linux version, which is less than can be said for Microsoft Office or many other open source office programs.
Of course, with all of these advantages, there are a handful of disadvantages as well:
- Support for Developers: OpenOffice started out as the proprietary software package StarOffice, which was then purchased by Sun Microsystems in 1999. Sun Microsystems was later acquired by Oracle. Recently, however, Oracle parted ways with OpenOffice, setting it adrift without major corporate support for the system or funding for the top level developers. In spite of this, the OpenOffice project has been picked up by the Apache Foundation and is currently being hosted and supported there, and future stability of the project remains strong.
- Advanced Typesetting Capabilities: When it comes to formatting sophisticated mathematical equations in beautiful textbook style, LaTeX is the unquestioned king. Support for formulas in OpenOffice is there, though not nearly as good as LaTeX-based documentation. This is a secondary concern, however, and it is our belief that the advantages of OpenOffice over LaTeX outweigh this small disadvantage.
More work on NBitWonder’s documentation and software tools will be made available soon, but for the time being, feel free to try out our latest efforts by grabbing the Open Documentation System from our github repository.
