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Mar
16

Lonely? Build Yourself a Chess Robot!

arduino hacks, chess, chess robot, computer chess, hackaday.io Commenti disabilitati su Lonely? Build Yourself a Chess Robot! 

[Oriol Galceran] has constructed an interesting robotic chess player for his end of school project. It’s called the ChessM8, and is an impressive feat considering [Oriol] is only 17!  He’s using an Arduino Mega that connects to the host PC via a Python script.

The AI can be any chess engine that uses the Universal Chess Interface protocol, which [Oriol] points out that most of them do.  We’ve seen other chess robots here before, along with others that you can play on your wall and uses Nixie Tubes. But [Oriol’s] build is the largest of them all.

He says there’s a network of REED switches under the chess board to detect when a piece is present or not. It would be interesting to know how he dealt with debouncing issues, and if Hall Effect sensors might have been a better choice. Let us know in the comments how you would detect the chess piece.

And be sure to check out the video below to see the chess robot in action.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks
Feb
21

Cheap USB Control for your Telescope

amateur astronomy, arduino, arduino hacks, ASCOM, hackaday.io, st4, telescope Commenti disabilitati su Cheap USB Control for your Telescope 

There’s many complex systems for automatically pointing a telescope at an object in the sky, but most of them are too expensive for the amateur astronomer. [Kevin]’s Arduino ST4 interface lets you connect your PC to a reasonably priced motorized telescope mount, without ripping it apart.

The ST4 port is a very basic interface. There’s one pin per direction that the mount can move, and a common pin. This port can be added to just about any motorized mount with some modification to the controller. To connect to an Arduino, a TLP521-4 quad optoisolator is used. This keeps the Arduino and PC fully isolated from the motor circuits. but lets the Arduino take control of the mount.

With the hardware in place, [Kevin] cranked out some software which is available on Google Code. A simple Arduino sketch provides the USB interface, and a custom driver allows the ASCOM Platform to control the mount. Since many astronomy software tools support ASCOM, this allows the mount to be controlled by existing software.

With the interface in place, the mount can be used to find objects (GOTO) and automatically follow them with high accuracy (autoguiding). You can watch the telescope move on its own after the break.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks
Gen
24

Trinket uses RF to track you through the house

arduino hacks, contests, hackaday.io, radar, Radicalization, Trinket EDC contest Commenti disabilitati su Trinket uses RF to track you through the house 

If you carry a cell phone with GPS, you always know where you are on the planet. But what about inside buildings or even your own home? Knowing if you’re in the kitchen or the living room would be a great feature for home automation systems. Lights could come on as you enter the room and your music could follow you on the home audio system. This is exactly the what [Eric] is working on with his Radiolocation using a Pocket Size Transceiver project. [Eric] started this project as an entry in the Trinket Everyday Carry Contest. He didn’t make the top 3, but was one of the fierce competitors who made the competition very hard to judge!

The heart of the project is determining Time Of Flight (TOF) for a radio signal. Since radio waves move at the speed of light, this is no small feat for an Arduino based design! [Eric] isn’t re-inventing the wheel though – he’s basing his design on several research papers, which he’s linked to his project description. Time of flight calculations get easier to handle when calculating round trip times rather than one way. To handle this, one or more base stations send out pings, which are received and returned by small transponders worn by a user. By averaging over many round trip transmissions, a distance estimation can be calculated.

[Eric] used a Pro Trinket as his mobile transponder, while an Arduino Micro with it’s 16 bit counter acted as the base station. For RF, he used the popular  Nordic nRF24L01+ 2.4 GHz transceiver modules. Even with this simple hardware, he’s achieved great results. So far he can display distance between base and transponder on a graph. Not bad for a DIY transponder so small if fits in a 2xAAA battery case! [Eric’s] next task is working through multipath issues, and testing out multiple base stations.

Click past the break to see [Eric’s] project in action!


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, contests
Dic
12

Arduino is one of those boards that has become synonymous with hacking and making. Since its introduction in 2005, over 700,000 official Arduino boards have been sold, along with untold millions of compatible and clone boards. Hackers and makers around the world have found the Arduino platform a cheap and simple way to get their projects off the ground. This weeks Hacket focuses on some of the best Arduino based projects we’ve found on Hackday.io!

drawingbot[Niazangels] gets the ball – or ballpoint pen – rolling with Roboartist, a robot which creates line drawings. Roboartist is more than just a plotter though. [Niazangels] created a custom PC program which creates line drawings from images captured by a webcam. The line drawings are converted to coordinates, and sent to an Arduino, which controls all the motors that move the pen. [Niazangels] went with Dynamixel closed loop servo motors rather than the stepper motors we often see in 3D printers.

tape[Peter Edwards] is preserving the past with Tapuino, the $20 C64 Tape Emulator. Plenty of programs for the Commodore 64, 128, and compatibles were only distributed on tape. Those tapes are slowly degrading, though the classic Commodore herdware is still going strong. Tapuino preserves those tapes by using an Arduino nano to play the files from an SD card into the original Datasette interface. [Peter] also plans to add recording functionality to the Tapuino, which will make it the total package for preserving  your data. All that’s missing is that satisfying clunk when pressing the mechanical Play button!

infinity

[Dushyant Ahuja] knows what time it is, thanks to his Infinity Mirror Clock. This clock tells time with the help of some WS2812B RGB LED. [Dushyant] debugged the clock with a regular Arduino, but when it came time to finish the project, he used an ATmega328 to create an Arduino compatible board from scratch. Programming is easy with an on-board Bluetooth module. [Dushyant] plans to add a TFT lcd which will show weather and other information when those power-hungry LEDs are switched off.

alarm2[IngGaro] built an entire home alarm system with his project Arduino anti-theft alarm shield. [IngGaro] needed an alarm system for his home. That’s a lot to ask of a standard ATmega328p powered Arduino Uno. However, the extra I/O lines available on an Arduino Mega2560 were just what the doctor ordered. [IngGaro] performed some amazing point-to-point perfboard wiring to produce a custom shield that looks and works great! The alarm can interface with just about any sensor, and can be controlled via the internet. You can even disarm the system through an RFID keycard.

Want MORE Arduino in your life? Check out our curated Arduino List!

That’s about all the millis()  we have for this weeks Hacklet. As always, see you next week. Same hack time, same hack channel, bringing you the best of Hackaday.io!


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Hackaday Columns


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