Collaborate Disseminate
Gyroscopes are perfect to damper short impulses of external forces but will eventually succumb if a constant force, like gravity, is applied. Once the axis of rotation of the mass …read more Continue reading Combining Gyro Stabilisation With Weight Shift Balancing
Hobby servos are great, but they’re in many ways not ideal for robotic applications. The good news is that [Adam] brings the latest version of his ServoProject, providing off-the-shelf servos …read more Continue reading Vastly Improved Servo Control, Now Without Motor Surgery
In the old days, building a quadcopter or drone required a lot of hacking together of various components from the motors to the batteries and even the control software. Not …read more Continue reading A Deep Dive into Quadcopter Controls
Reaction wheels are useful things, typically used by satellites to keep themselves oriented the right way up in space. Turning the reaction wheel creates an equal and opposite torque in …read more Continue reading Building Reaction Wheels With Python and LEGO
Watching a child learn to run is a joyous, but sometimes painful experience. It seems the same is true is for [James Bruton]’s impressive Sonic the Self-Balancing robot, even with bendable knees and force sensitive legs.
We covered the mechanical side of the project recently, and now [James] has added …read more
Building your own self-balancing robot is a rite of passage for anyone getting into the field of robotics. Master of robots, [James Bruton] has been there, done that, and collected a few T-shirts. Now he’s building a large Sonic the Hedgehog self balancing robot that can bend at the knees …read more
Continue reading Sonic The Hedgehog Self-Balancing Robot Can Bend At The Knees
Radio control cars have always been fun, it’s true. With that said, it’s hard to deny that true speed was unlocked when lithium polymer batteries and brushless motors came to the fore. [Gear Down For What?] built himself a speedy RC car of his own design, and it’s only got …read more
At Maker Faire Milwaukee this past weekend, [basement tech] was showing off his latest build, a PID controlled charcoal grill. While it hasn’t QUITE been tested yet with real food, it does work in theory.
PID (a feedback loop with some fancy math used to adjust the input to get a consistent output) controlled cooking is commonly used for sous vide, where one heats up a water bath to a controlled temperature to cook food in plastic bags. Maintaining water temperature is fairly easy. Controlling a charcoal barbecue is much more difficult. [basement tech] accomplishes this with controlled venting and …read more
Continue reading PID Controlled Charcoal BBQ – Put an Arduino on it!