DorkbotPDX people doing strange things with electricity

This week I'll review my two circuits and make parts lists for both. Once they are completed, I'll put the order through for the Powerduino shield and its mate the Relayduino shield. The good news is that for the most part are easy to solder by hand. The bad news is the parts are a little expensive, but not by much. Maybe around 50 bucks for all the parts for both shields. So if I ended up selling these boards, I'd have to sell them for a little more to break even. I'd probably end up selling the boards individually, and include a parts list.

The Relayduino has the following specs:

I recently got involved in helping with the electronics+software for Hand-Eye Supply's Starlight Parade float, designed by Laurence Sarrazin. It won the Parade's "Sweepstakes Award - Best Illumination"!!! Here's more news coverage and Core77's announcement, detailed announcement and Behind-The-Scenes build story (with time lapse video).

The lighting wasn't very bright, but there were 114 computer controlled circuits. It was really the only float in the whole parade where the lights "did something" (Robin's description). Indeed they blinked and faded in lots of complex patterns.

"Read more" for technical details and source code behind this float's lighting, and the crazy story of its construction....

I had originally planned to send my Relay Shield to the Fab shop this week, but I ran into a snag. Neither Mouser nor Digikey stock the relays I need, and theyre backordered with a 20 week lead time. =( So Im left redesigning my board to be able to take relays with any power requirement (specifically the 12V relays). What that entails is that the power requirements wont be on-board. There will be a shield (which it plugs into) that will convert the regulated 5V of the Arduino into 9, 12 or 24V depending on the power requirements of the relays used.

I've been using my arduino as an ISP for the Attiny 45's, but now i actually need to set some fuses. As far as I can tell, you must use a real ISP to do this. Anyone have an extra they want to part with?

Edit: Finally figured out i was just plain wrong. AVRISP does what i need it to. Nevermind!

Update, July 14, 2011: Sparkfun contacted me... they're planning to fix these problems.

Over the last week, Mykle and I have been helping the Hand-Eye Supply folks with a float for the upcoming Starlight Parade. It has 114 El Wires from Coolneon! We're using the only off-the-shelf el wire sequencer available, made by Sparkfun (a new 10 channel board has recently been announced by Coolneon... and perhaps if you're reading this after 2011, maybe I'll make a better one someday).

Sadly, the Sparkfun El Wire Sequencer board has been nothing but trouble. Mykle insisted I write up a list of all the problems, so anyone else struggling to use these boards might find this info. Click "read more" for the ugly details...

My colleagues tell the story of continuous integration at AboutUs with a post to their new developer blog. They describe the centrally located alarm that warns whenever unit-tests fail after pushing updates to the staging server.

Build Failure Warning Triggered Through Teensy

The Mac Mini polls the integration server. Should anything have gone wrong it alerts the whole company. Paul's serial demo offered the register manipulation commands needed to signal a solid-state relay that controls power to the flasher.

As promised, I brought my tricked out robot to Monday's meeting with my digital SLR attached and a 365-degree scan of me looking through the viewfinder.

Scan of Ward Topps Photobot

I hooked a Teensy up through the camera's remote control jack. It's pull-to-ground signals are shared with the push-to-focus-shoot button on the camera. Here is the Txtzyme I included in the click.cgi script:

      1b0o 500m 0b0o 1500m 0bi 1bi

This says, focus, wait 1/2 second, shoot, wait 1-1/2 seconds, then tri-state to let the control lines go. Here is a typical result:

Dorkbot Attendees Mug for Photobot

An instance of Apache runs on Photobot to offer anyone on the LAN a dozen similar control scripts and a directory full of photos taken through the evening.

The nice thing about blogging is that you can remember what you've done. I'm doing exactly that for my other friends at Portland's own open-source conference. Here's how I describe my talk:

Txtzyme Talk at Open Source Bridge

I'll be dragging some hardware to the conference for live demos. That got me thinking, what else could I throw together? So ...

Yesterday I got the urge to hack a Staples Easy Button....

Read on for details + code....