Arduino lab series?

Will be at Space tomorrow and will toss in the large Steam Pressure Gage I spoke to about. Hopefully, axles on my car don’t bend … really need to clean it out.

1 Like

I must share a story…

One beautiful afternoon my friends and I were deep in the woods practicing our four-wheel-drive skills. While climbing an especially rocky trail we came upon what appeared to be part of a vehicle. We stopped, climbed out, and sauntered over. Yup. Sure enough. There lay a back axle with tires still attached. We pondered what could have brought such a crucial part to lay just there in the middle of our path.

Upon closer examination we realized the axle was broken in half. This dramatically heightened our curiosity. What happened? Where was the rest of the vehicle? Was alcohol involved. Etcetera.

We wandered back to our vehicle, got in, and continued our journey up the hill. Upon reaching the crest we found one answer: Where was the rest of the vehicle? At the top was a Suburban sans rear axle.

After discussing our amazement that somebody had somehow…

  • Broken the rear axle of their vehicle
  • Torn the rear axle free of their vehicle
  • Managed to climb a very rocky trail with just one axle
  • Climbed the very rocky trail with just one axle in a vehicle as heavy / awkward / large as a Suburban
  • Not ended up in the obituaries when the significant other found out what happened to the rather expensive family vehicle

…we continued on our merry way.

2 Likes

Occam’s razor says they lost the axle at the top of the climb and it rolled down to the bottom.

2 Likes

The class has been submitted for July 23 at 3 PM. https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/3024

We will cover controlling a servo as well as a gentle introduction to programming. We will need to be out of the room at 5 since there is another class in there.

2 Likes

I’m sorry for the late notice, but I’m not going to be able to teach this class today. It will be rescheduled soon.

4 Likes

After being sidelined by a bout with dehydration, I’m back.

The Servo edition of the Arduino Lab Series has been submitted for Sunday Sep 24.

But the Interactive Classroom is not available most Sunday afternoons, so I scheduled the Purple Classroom with a limit of 10 persons.

4 Likes

Glad to see that Bill! It should be a fun class.

I am waiting for parts to arrive on the slow boat from China and will be announcing a class a couple of weeks later. It will be a free class, probably limited to eight. Everyone will have a kit with several sensors and actually a mini servo. Attend Bill’s class to learn about servos because I will only spend a couple of minutes on it. My emphasis will be having fun with sensors.

1 Like

Thanks to all who came to class.

I am leaning toward scheduling the next one on Sunday, October 8.

Possible topics include:

  1. Infrared detector
  2. Ultrasonic rangefinder
  3. Temperature sensor
  4. 7 segment LED
  5. I can repeat the class I taught in Embedded Workshop on controlling lots of LEDs with the limited number of pins in an Arduino
  6. Something clever with several switches and some LEDs

Please indicate your preference in the next several days so that I can put it on the calendar.

2 Likes

Bill - I’ve attended your shift register and servo classes and they were excellent and well received. You stayed above the how-to-program level but drilled down on how servos work, PWM, val() and the servo library and functions. All suggestions above should work well. Those new to microcontrollers would be more interested in the first three on sensors. More experienced folks would appreciate the last three.

My classes are a different but hopefully very complementary approach. I will use some of the same sensors but will cover more devices at a higher and less detailed level. It will be more of plug this in, run this program, examine results, move on to the next device, now lets combine those. For details take Bill’s course.

Do we have an Arduino intro course? I think we could use a regular, maybe monthly, class with slides which could be presented by different instructors. I would be glad to help develop and teach this.

1 Like

A few tidbits from the last class.

The Arduino servo library can handle more than one servo. I had thought so, but did not know for sure. The number is actually really high, 12 on the UNO and 48! on the Mega. But you will want to use an additional external power supply for more than one or two servos.

Another consideration is “On boards other than the Mega, use of the library disables analogWrite() (PWM) functionality on pins 9 and 10, whether or not there is a Servo on those pins.”

https://www.arduino.cc/en/reference/servo

I admire all of you for sticking in there. I threw a lot of electronics and some programming at you in the first two classes and you hung in there. I am determined to teach you to program the Arduino. In the next class, I will try to use some visual aids to better explain the programming than merely talking through the code.

There are a couple of systems which permit programming the Arduino using Scratch, a graphical drag and drop method instead of writing code. If you have ever used Lego Mindstorm robotics, it is similar. If you would like, we can try using that until you become accustomed to the concepts of programming. Let me know if this is of interest.

Another topic of discussion was rotation of the servo through more than 180 degrees. In the early days of DIY robotics, people had been modifying a servo by removing the rotation stops. Today, I recommend buying a continuous rotation servo specially made for this purpose.

Remember that a standard servo has a potentiometer on the output shaft to determine its position. On a continuous rotation servo, the potentiometer is replaced by a fixed resistor to make the servo think it is always at 90 degrees. Trying to set it to 0 degrees makes it spin on one direction at full speed; 180 degrees, full speed in the opposite direction. 90 degrees is stop and intermediate angle values give reduced speed.

Jordan @creaturecarousel , you had a specific question about this. If controlling only the direction and speed is sufficient, a continuous rotation servo is what you need. If you need to control the particular direction angle and need more than 180 degrees of movement but not continuous rotation, use a standard servo with custom linkage or gearing to expand the range from 180 degrees to whatever you need. Otherwise, you need to go with a stepper motor.

Edit: Clarify my answer.

4 Likes

I taught an intro class: https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/2765

The slide deck is short: IntroductionToArduino.ppt (24 KB)

I moved on from the brief lecture to a tour of the Arduino IDE and some hands-on time with the Blink sample app and using the serial port.

My intent was to put some screenshots and pictures into the deck, but the first attempt crashed Powerpoint so badly that it refused to start up again. After I managed to get it working again, I was gun-shy and just used the Arduino IDE and Frtizing for my visuals.

1 Like

I put up the next class for Sunday October 22 at 3 PM.

https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/4115

We will be covering 7-segment displays.

I also recommend Brady’s class on sensors, Saturday October 21 at 2 PM: https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/3900

1 Like

Thanks @Bill, the recommendations go both ways. I always recommend your classes as well as the other microcontroller classes. Almost any related subject could get deep and theoretical but DMS classes seem to always find a way to pick out the good stuff and show hobbyists how to understand enough to have fun. Its like going through a cafeteria line and getting only the desserts - all the desserts!

2 Likes

Is that like “just desserts”? :thinking:

1 Like

DMS classes are sweet :yum:

1 Like

I just submitted the next class. It is 3 PM, Sunday November 5. The topic is ultrasonic rangefinders.

2 Likes

Great topic Bill! They are the cutest sensors around and fun to play with.