Orders, orders, orders

Big day for ordering.  Ordered:
(1) 300mm styrene dome  (hopefully this goes through before all the domes are gone seeing as I echecked the payment and it take 3-5 days to process)
(4) HP lights (one extra for spare)
(1) DroidConn 2011 DVD set
(1) Slave MarcDuino board and components
(1) Cake, oh wait that's for my Wife not my R2.  LOL

I'm really excited about the dome order.  I've got the brains ready (see Marcduino board) all ready to put into the actual head.  Not looking forward to all the sanding though to get the 2 layers to fit together right.  :(

Read back over the Marcduino board documentation again and realized I needed to order the slave board for the HP lights.

I think something moved?!!!

So for a small donation of $14.11 at the local MicroCenter I was able to obtain a Parallax Standard (Futaba) servo.  Thanks to this little gizmo I was able to successfully test all 10 servo connections respond to the R2 Touch app.  The servo only turns about a 1/4 turn and prsessing close twice makes it spin just that little bit more.  I suspect this is just the min/max settings that the Marvelous Marc set as default in the code.  I can always adjust this "throw" later once I have a dome and panels all cut out and hinged,  and the servos mounted.

WiFly Connected

It LIVES!

Ok so it's not that dramatic but I finally got the WiFly setup and connected to the MarcDuino and my iPad connected to them. feels like a big achievement but only because my Mac was being uncooperative.

Master MarcDuino default program loaded

I finally got my MarcDuino Master Controller Board firmware loaded to the board.  The AVR Burn-O-MAT refused to read the full avrdude.conf file to see the ATmega328p IC to program it.  I had to finally use the nice GUIs to build the avrdude CLI command strings and run them manually after editing the IC model approbriately.   What a mess that was but as you can see my clocking LED blinks 1/s as expected after the load completed.

As always, for more information on the MarcDuino or its code, go look at the its master's page @ curiousmarc.com

Arduino

Ok, so I broke down and picked up an Arduino Uno at Radio Shack today.  It was only $35.   I went to see about some connector cables to fit on the MarcDuino board pins, but alas Radio Shack doesn't carry them, at least in store.  I'm there looking through the micro-controller packages on the wall hoping for some cables, and there on the bottom shelf look so lonely was the Uno. No price tag so when asking the clerk what it cost I couldn't walk away.  Adafruit.com where most people I've seen buy their Unos lists it at $29.95 and shipping is another $3.99 so I basically paid for tax instead of shipping, and no waiting.  :D

WiFly part 2

My WiFly and accessory boards along with the AVR Procter programmer arrived yesterday.

 The board with the attached ribbon is the pocket programmer needed to program the MarcDuino board.  The USB board on the left is the WiFly programmer.  The board on the right is the socket for connecting the WiFly to the MarcDuino board.  And the lonely board in the middle is the actual WiFly itelf.

WiFly and accessories

After a long time of trying to get the AVRdude to see the USB port, I can finally read the fuses on the Marcduino board from the command line. I still have to get the Burn-O-Mat GUI to see it though. Seems to be missing the ATmea328p MCU in the dropdown list.

Trying to use cool term for programming the WiFly but that doesn't recognize the USB port yet.

To be continued..

CNC Routing

Day 2 of CNC routing class @HammerSpace. Introduced to the very cool process of letting Inkscape trace out a pic to get all the vector drawings done quickly. I'm trying to get it to trace the skin plans on the yahoo group which worked accept it seems to be the wrong size. Need to find the dimensions so I can scale it down correctly.

WiFly

Ordered the WiFly, the pinout board, and the USB pinout for programming board today.  Also ordered the AVR Pocket programmer.  This time next week I should be able to connect my iPad to the MarcDuino board.   It still won't do anything since I don't have any servos or sound board yet.  Think I blew my budget for the month though  :( . 

Hopefully the CNC classes will open up the frame building soon but I have the next month to dig through the Marc's code to understand what its doing and what I may or may not want to tweak.

MarcDuino part 1

My first MarcDuino board and components arrived yesterday. I actually got to "build" something and the master board is assembled! Still need to order the slave board at some point, it's pretty inexpensive ( cheap just sounds like poor quality which I do not wish to imply ) too, only about $13.50 plus shipping.

Parts

Assembled

Wow some of those look a lot worse here than in person

Not all the soldier joins are great, a little blobby at first but they got a lot better toward the end. If you can't tell the IC in the middle and LEDs were the last things done.  I am quite happy with my soldering  seeing as I haven't soldered anything in over 2 years.  Now only if I had remembered to order the PocketAVR I could install the code and run a system test.

First droid builder meet

So yesterday David and I went over to Mike's house for some building. It was great fun. Helped Mike and David start the cutting into David's Alu dome. Tin snips worked pretty well. I would have thought it would deform the inner dome when we trimmed the bottom edge to near size but no, no noticeable deformation that the inner ring wouldn't fix easily.

No work on my build yet. Not really anything to work on yet.

.
.
.
Still.

R2 Touch

Been eyeing the R2 Touch app by CuriousMarc. The demos look awesome. I want to use this interface so much I bought the app without anything to use it on. I figure I would hate to loose the chance of having it if for some reason it disappeared by the time I actually need it, plus any help for future development can't hurt.

OMG. Even with nothing to use it on its pretty cool to play with. Ordered the Marcduino board and components too.

Progress made even if its not practical yet.

R2 Touch/MarcDuino Info:
http://www.curiousmarc.com/r2-touch-r2-d2-remote-control-iphone-app