mikal – Page 58 – Made by Mikal

The Beer Fridge saga continues

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 2, 2010
Post category:Arduino

Since the last update on the beer fridge, we've had to do some murdering of the original PCB to get it to fit in a case. In addition, we'd failed to take into account the startup power draw for the compressor (5 amps), and had to upgrade the relay we're using from a 3 amp solid state relay. Luckily Doug had the beefier relay just sitting around in his shed. That means we've lost our opto-isolation because the new relay is a simple mechanical one, but we have a relay coil doing the same thing now. A new PCB will make the world a lot neater, which will be nice. Oh, we've also been mentioned on Hack a Day, which has generated some interesting comments on their site. I've observed that sometimes the relay doesn't turn on, even though the arduino thinks it has done so. An example can be seen here: (Note that graph is a Google chart server image, generated by a simple visualization program I wrote in python. If you're that way inclined, the visualization software is in my public SVN repository). At first we thought this was a software problem with comparing ints to floats, but…

Buy Jupiter Short Stories

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 2, 2010
Post category:Book

This is another Asimov short story collection. The following stories appear in the book, although I have already read a couple as part of either the Robot short stories or the Nightfall collection of short stories. To be honest these stories aren't Asimov's strongest. They entertaining, but they're not as amazing as some of his other stuff. I guess its hard to be a genius all the time. The following stories appear in this collection: Buy Jupiter1975 The Complete Robot1982 Robot Dreams1986 Darwinian Pool Room Day of the Hunters Shah Guido G. Button, Button The Monkey's Finger Everest The Pause Let's Not Each an Explorer Blank! Does a Bee Care? Silly Asses Buy Jupiter A Statue for Father Rain, Rain, Go Away Founding Father Exile to Hell Key Item The Proper Study 2430 A.D. The Greatest Asset Take a Match Thiotimoline to the Stars Light Verse [isbn: 0575041994] [awards: nominee nebula_short_story 1965 (Founding Father)]

Books read in December 2009

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 2, 2010
Post category:Book

Bolo Strike Dragonsdawn The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern Last Human Bolo! Saturn's Children Foundation's Friends Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Humanity Colony

Thinking about arduino as a prototyping platform

Post author:mikal
Post published:December 30, 2009
Post category:Arduino

So, I've mentioned in earlier posts about arduino projects that I consider the arduino to be a prototyping platform, and a damn good one at that. Hack a day seems to think of it in similar terms. It was really Doug who got be thinking in this direction with the initial PCB design for the fridge controller project, which includes space for an Atmega CPU right on the PCB, thus eliminating the need for a relatively expensive arduino board to be permanently consumed. So I started to wonder how hard it would be to build a simple arduino replacement board. It wouldn't need the complicated USB hardware, as you could program the Atmega on a full arduino board before installation. It would just need a time source, perhaps a LED, and a voltage regulator. You can see in the picture above a version I quickly whipped up on a breadboard to prove this is possible. I didn't bother with a voltage regulator in this version, and the wires off on the right go off to a power source. This quickly turned into a PCB prototype board design, which has a voltage regulator, and exposes all of the arduino digital pins…

Colony

Post author:mikal
Post published:December 30, 2009
Post category:Book

The Times is wrong about this book. Its not "cruel, cynical and very funny", its cruel and cynical for sure, but it lacks hope and is overall just depressing. I certainly didn't feel it was funny. Its strange, I loved the Red Dwarf series, and this book is very similar. I think the problem is that this book lacks all the hope and charm of the Red Dwarf books and TV show. Its a book entirely comprised of Rimmers, and that's hard to take. [isbn: 0140289755]

Arduino with the kids: Cricket Noise Door Bell

Post author:mikal
Post published:December 29, 2009
Post category:Arduino

When I was a child, I had a doorbell at my bedroom door to ward off uninvited guests. My six year old, Matthew, has always been pretty enthused about building things, and so he wanted to give an electronics project a try. I thought this would be a good project to start out with for the kids, because its relatively simple, and there is a tangible result at the end (you press a button and something happens). Matt liked the idea. Because this project involved a fair bit of soldering, it turns out that Matt spent most of his time taking photos of the work, although we talked about what was happening at each step. I need to think harder about how to get him involved in the construction process -- I think that will be easier once the bread boarding stuff from ebay arrives. The design is relatively simple. I took the sample debounce circuit (a button, 10k resistor) and software and ran that first. Then we put a peizo buzzer across pin 13 and ground. That meant that with the sample software we had both a light and a noise when you pressed the button. Unfortunately, the pin…

The Robot City, Robots and Aliens Series

Post author:mikal
Post published:December 27, 2009
Post category:Book

This series follows on from the Robot City series set in Asimov's Foundation Universe but written by other authors. Overall that first series was weak, and I think the same is true for this series as well. There are a few here that are better than the others, but I'd only recommend this series for those who are obsessed with Foundation universe completeness. 1989: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Changeling by Stephen Leigh 1989: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Renegade by Cordell Scotten 1990: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Intruder by Robert Thurston 1990: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Alliance by Jerry Oltion 1990: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Maverick by Bruce Bethke 1990: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Humanity by Jerry Oltion

Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Robots and Aliens: Humanity

Post author:mikal
Post published:December 27, 2009
Post category:Book

This book is actually the best one of the two robot city series (Robot City and Robots and Aliens). Unfortunately I had to wade through 12 not very good books to find it, and its still not stellar. I'd recommend giving both these series a miss unless you're obsessed with completeness in Asimov's Robot universe.

Caliban Series

Post author:mikal
Post published:December 26, 2009
Post category:Book

These are books written in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Universe by Roger MacBride Allen. These books are actually better than the Robot City Series, in that they at least explore issues that Asimov himself touched upon. 1997: Caliban 1998: Inferno 1999: Utopia

The Robot City Series

Post author:mikal
Post published:December 26, 2009
Post category:Book

These are books written in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Universe by other authors. They don't progress the overall plot of the Foundation series, they just use some of the concepts and characters to tell similar stories. The books in the series are: 1987: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Odyssey by Michael P Kube-McDowell 1987: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Suspicion by Mike McQuay 1987: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Cyborg by William F. Wu 1988: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Prodigy by Arthur Byron Cover 1988: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Refuge by Rob Chilson 1988: Isaac Asimov's Robot City: Perihelion by William F. Wu To be honest these books aren't fantastic and I wouldn't recommend them unless you're trying to get exhaustive coverage of Asimov's Foundation universe.