Tom – Page 2 – Tom Archer

PCBs

PCB Pin Badges – Clamps

Posted on 14th February 201816th September 2018by Tom

Having the Perturbator and Meeple pin badges under my belt, it was finally time to try something a little bit more complicated.

Inspired by Day of the Geek badge that I own, I thought I’d try a memorable robot from Futurama: Francis X. Clampazzo.

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PCBs

PCB Pin Badges – Meeple

Posted on 1st January 201816th September 2018by Tom

Over Christmas I stumbled across a cute Meeple lapel pin, which I of course bought. While it works well as a tie pin, I’d like something a little closer to the real Meeple size for my coat, so as soon as I got back to my PC I had to try my hand at making a PCB version.

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Raspberry Pi

Network Accessible Bookshelf Lighting: Update

Posted on 8th December 201716th February 2018by Tom

Since the first post I’ve ended up tinkering with the code for this project every night.

Some notable additions:

A smarter homepage,
A new sound-reactive mode,
An improved Manual mode,
Behind the scenes tidying to the API.

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3D Printing
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- Raspberry Pi

Network Accessible Bookshelf Lighting

Posted on 27th November 201716th February 2018by Tom

Confession, in moments of inspiration I tend to buy electronics kit and then end up leaving it unused for ages. I’ve had a Pimoroni Mote kit and a Raspberry Pi Zero W sitting around for some time now, and whilst I originally intended to mount the LEDs in my PC case, I eventually decided to add some much need lighting to my Ikea Kallax bookshelf. Rather than settle for a static display I decided to completely over-engineer this project and make them controllable over the LAN.

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PCBs

PCB Pin Badges – Perturbator

Posted on 25th August 201710th March 2018by Tom

Having seen this cool lapel pin made from a PCB, I thought I’d put my newfound PCB design skills to use and make one myself.

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Raspberry Pi

Google Voice Kit and Google Music Integration

Posted on 14th May 201716th February 2018by Tom

Here’s a plugin I’ve been working on this weekend that integrates Google Music with the Google AIY Voice Kit. Simply speaking, “play playlist” will stream the playlist from your Google Music account and display the current track artist & title on the display.

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3D Printing

Google Voice Kit Case

Posted on 9th May 201716th February 2018by Tom

So Google recently released their first AIY project on the cover of the MagPi magazine. The kit itself allows you to add voice interaction to your Raspberry Pi and in typical Google fashion it came with a cardboard case to keep all the bits in. Well that was the plan, but unfortunately my kit didn’t come with the case. Nevermind, I have access to a 3D printer! (more…)

Arduino
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- PCBs

Optical Odometry (Part 2)

Posted on 19th February 201716th February 2018by Tom

This is the second part of a series investigating the use of optical sensors for robot odometry.

In part one of this project I pulled apart an old Microsoft Intellimouse for the optical chip and managed to extract some readings using an Arduino Uno. The aim now is to repackage those components in a way that they could be mounted underneath a small wheeled robot. (more…)

Arduino

Optical Odometry (Part 1)

Posted on 11th February 201716th February 2018by Tom

For the last few years I’ve taken part in the local Rampaging Chariots competition along with a group of graduates. One of our most recent challenges has been to get a rover to autonomously navigate the assigned assault course. So lately I’ve been thinking a lot about odometry, that is, estimating the position of a robot over time. Typically, a cheap method of tracking the position of a rover is by attaching rotary encoders to the output shaft of the drive wheels. Unfortunately as the traction of the drive wheels isn’t perfect, they will slip occasionally and introduce errors into the estimated position.

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