Ok, so it was time to field test the shiny new IR sensors! after a liberal application of hot glue and some questionable soldering technique, I mounted the IR sensors to the beast.

After some program tweaks, it powered up and found its way around the room without touching anything, the sensors are remarkably effective and are directional enough to not effect each other. They activate at roughly 3 cm from the obstacle.

I am sure you have already seen this, but its too cool to not have a direct link as motivation. I am of course talking about the Arducopter by ‘gizmobits’. While it is still in Beta testing, the concept of having a self leveling RC helicopter seems like a brilliant challenge as far as Arduino code goes!

I have been putting together an IR sensor based on this circuit:

Using a very small handful of cheap components, it seems to be an effective proximity sensor.

Here it is on the breadboard:

Testing showed that the sensor will detect objects within around 10 – 15 cm which should be fine for colision avoidance.

Due to the small number of components, it was easy to join them into a more compact in-line arrangement:

Finally, I heatshrinked the whole setup and added a 3-pin plug to make the unit more versatile and easy to change to multiple applications.

Using these sensors in place of the microswitch approach should enable the robot to navigate a space without having to constantly crash into objects. The IR will be affected by sunlight and other IR light so a more sophisticated circuit may be necessary in the future.

I have been having a look at various circuit simulators available and am currently testing the trial version of livewire (found here). One aspect that looks exciting is the simple user interface and also the abilty to animate the circuit functions … have a look at the video tutorial here.

It also has a large library of transistors, shift registers and other often used components! Time will tell if it is the solution we are looking for.

Found this little site, allows you to simulate basic circuits without breaking things, burning yourself or losing an eye!

http://www.falstad.com/circuit/

It may take a while but we will eventually post all the required steps needed to take over our pretty little Planet… The first hint is that you need to put an  awful lot of thought into the colour scheme of your evil henchmen/women uniforms! Spandex is generally to be avoided if your ultimatums to world leaders are to be taken seriously.

Well, here we are, the first post of a Blog chronicling the projects we get up to when not being productive members of society!