Hasta La Gadget!

Playing with apps on an Android phone is fun. Building your own apps, even more so. But what about using the phone to operate a moving, talking bot? Tim Heath and Ryan Hickman have done exactly that.

The bot they recently finished building — Truckbot — is still relatively simple. It’s got an HTC G1 phone for a brain, riding on top of a chassis with some wheels and treads. All it can do is roll around on a tabletop, turn and head off in a specified direction. When I visit the workshop where they’re building it, Heath and Hickman show how it can use the phone’s compass to make itself point to the south. But the duo have much more ambitious plans in mind.

“I knew I could build this thing. I just needed a phone,” explains Heath, a Python web engineer. He posted on various e-mail lists looking for one, including that of Hacker Dojo, a Mountain View, California, hackerspace. Hickman, who works for Google’s Doubleclick division, but has no connections to the Android people, saw Heath’s pleas.

They got together and started building. The first bot they built was made out of plastic. They just finished constructing their second bot, called Truckbot, which is lighter and cardboard-based.

They could have purchased the pricey $175 Oomlout kit, which includes wheels, motors and an Arduino-based brain. Hickman and Heath opted for making their own chassis. Here’s a full list of parts they used:

• $16 Bare bones Arduino
• $3 Micro servo
• $0.25 Hex inverter (handled 3.3v to 5v conversion)
• $4 HTC USB breakout board
• $3 Mini breadboard
• $4 miscellaneous cardboard, strap ties, wires, rear wheel

Total: $30 (plus shipping). To be fair, Heath and Hickman had access to a local workshop, the Tech Shop in Menlo Park, California, which helped tremendously in terms of having the tools to build some parts, like laser-cutting the cardboard chassis.

Their bot is more impressive for its potential than what it currently does. “Unlike most people out there,” says Hickman, as he types commands on the screen of his laptop, “we don’t want to use the phone as a remote control. Rather, it becomes the brain of the operation.”

This means they could utilize every hardware and software component of an Android phone, programming the bot to avoid obstacles, recognize faces and voices, pinpoint its location and go places. An Arduino board, which basically serves as a software-hardware link, is not smart enough to handle that, but an Android phone can.

For example, Arduino can detect when the bot bumps into something, but has to rely on the phone to decide on what to do next. As we’re wrapping up, the bot turns towards me and says, “Hello, Miran. Wired is awesome.”

Thanks, Truckbot! I like you too.

Wanna try building your own Android bot? Here is their five-step process:

• Laser-cut pieces in cardboard or acrylic using PDF file
• Attach breadboard, rear caster, 9V battery, servos, and Arduino using strap ties and glue
• Glue servo arms to wheels and attach with the small servo screw
• Connect wiring for servos, Arduino, breadboard, HTC USB board and battery
• Mount phone with large strap tie and insert USB plug to bottom

To get it to work, you also need to do the following with the OS:

• Load Cyanogen on Android phone*
• Download the Android Scripting Environment application from code.google.com
• Copy cellbot.py file to phone’s SD card /sdcard/ase/scripts/
• Load Cellbot code on Arduino board
• Run the Python script and telnet into the robot from a remote machine to control it.

* For the commercial version of Android, an additional BlueTooth module is required.

If you get stuck, go to Heath and Hickman’s bot development blog for more tips. Enjoy experimenting, and let us know how it goes.

See Also:

• DIY Freaks Flock to 'Hacker Spaces' Worldwide
• The Droid Has Been Rooted — Now What?
• DIY Robotics: The Rise of Open Source Hardware
• How Wired.com Built Beer Robot, Our DIY Kegerator

Photos: Miran Pavic / Wired.com

We’re absolutely loving what all the cool kids are doing with Arduino hardware — the robots, the instruments, the fashion — but when it comes to getting stuff done, well, let’s just say we’re not giving up our smartphones yet. A new project from Skewworks could change that, an Ardiuno-based operating system called Pyxis. It provides a UI for launching applications, easy access to microSD storage, and graphics routines that make creation of apps and games much more simple. If you want to code in anything other than assembly you’ll need to pay up for the professional edition of Pyxis Studio, but we’re thinking you can scrounge up the $10 to make that happen. There’s a quality video demonstration after the break, but we’d recommend turning down those speakers before clicking through — unless you’re really ready to rock out.

Continue reading Pyxis OS demo video sports high production values despite DIY Arduino hardware

Pyxis OS demo video sports high production values despite DIY Arduino hardware originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look, Physical Computing can be a drain. Particularly when your Summa Cum Laude status is hinging on you acing the final. We’re guessing that one Ryan Raffa managed to pull off a pretty decent grade, as his final project is nothing short of delectable. In a (presumably successful) attempt to wow onlookers and professors alike, Ryan cooked up an audio controller that utilized an ADXL 335 accelerometer (for motion sensing) and an Arduino board that communicates serially with Max MSP. The controller itself boasts inputs for five tracks and the sixth button applies a delay to all of the tracks; he was even kind enough to host up the Max MSP and Arduino code (it’s there in the source link), and if you’re interested in hearing what all the fuss is about, be sure to hop past the break and mash play.

Continue reading Arduino and accelerometer harmoniously come together in DIY music controller

Arduino and accelerometer harmoniously come together in DIY music controller originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen LED-laced dresses before — though sometimes we’d rather we hadn’t — but this one here is almost refined enough for us to consider wearing. Stitched together using conductive embroidery, hundreds of LEDs are connected to a CO2 detector and react to its input with anything from a slow pulsating glow to a blinking signal of doom. No mention of Morse code messages, unfortunately, but this is run by an Arduino chip — which means programming malleability (read: near-limitless possibilities) should be built in. Just know that when you see the next Bond girl communicating with Daniel Craig via her haute tech outfit, we had the idea first. A closeup of the dress and processor awaits after the break.

Continue reading Diffus pollution dress is turned on by CO2, prefers a clean environment

Diffus pollution dress is turned on by CO2, prefers a clean environment originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As if Twitter weren’t already full of utterly bland, mindless codswallop, researchers from Hasselt University in Belgium are about to add the random, idiotic bleatings of a baby to the stream of nonsense. Worse, the baby won’t even know it is broadcasting its brainless, repetitive activities to the world.

Twoddler is a modified Fisher Price activity center, the kind that toddlers have tweaked and poked for what seems like generations. The difference is that this one has its activities monitored by a computer and the activities are translated into Tweets. The example uses a baby called Yorin, and if he spends, say, a few minutes playing with a picture of his mother, this Tweet will be forced on the world: “@mommy_yorin Yorin misses mommy and looks forward playing with her this evening”. Further, if he annoyingly bangs on the bell, over and over, for far too long, the computer will translate this to say “Yorin is showing off his music skills with a new tune”.

The Twoddler uses sensors hooked up to an Arduino circuit and sends the information via the wireless ZigBee protocol to a nearby computer. This is where the signals are converted into human-readable (or at least parent-readable) “words” and sent off to the web using the Twitter API.

We imagine that these incessant, repetitive Tweets will swiftly become as annoying as the behavior which triggers them, negating the whole point of sending Yorin off to the day-care center. There is one advantage to Twoddler over having an actual toddler in the room with you. It may be a bit of a moral conundrum, but at least mom always has the option to un-follow her offspring.

Twoddler Project [Hasselt University via Mashable]