iHerr

Futurlec ATMEGA Board Edits

Administrator — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 04:29:53 +0000

I bought an ATMEGA board from Futurlec to use as a controller in my new robot I’m building, since it has the wonderful Atmel ATmega128 microcontroller and several 10-pin expansion connectors and RS-232 transceivers already on the board.

I was frustrated when I couldn’t get my brand new ATAVRISP mk II USB programmer to talk to the board (through a 6-pin to 10-pin adapter I made). I discovered that there was bus contention on the UART0 Receive Data signal because of the way the board is designed. The RS-232 transceiver chip on the board was always driving the PE0 pin, but this is a shared signal pin. Its other purpose is to be the Programming Data In (PDI) pin. My programmer couldn’t drive a low signal value on the pin because the RS-232 transceiver was always driving high. So I hacked the board to get rid of the bus contention and to allow my ATAVRISP mkII programmer to work with it.

Click HERE to view the PDF that shows the edits I made to prevent bus contention on RXD0 during programming.

Foam and Fiberglass Composite Robot Shell

Administrator — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 04:10:00 +0000

Click here to go to my robot shell project page. This is my first attempt at using fiberglass and foam to make a strong but lightweight shell for my new robot. I’m basing it on Robert Q. Riley’s excellent article One-Off Construction Using Fiberglass Over Urethane Foam.

Gimp Basics

Administrator — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 02:33:53 +0000

Click anywhere on this paragraph to go to the new tutorial on using the free Gimp program to do things like resizing images, adding drop-shadows, and making transparent backgrounds!

ARToolKit is a Cool “Augmented Reality” Toy!!!

Administrator — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 02:36:45 +0000

This is a really cool little toy (the research project is located at http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/) that superimposes a movable 3D object (a cube, a toroid, a sphere, etc.) onto a live video stream (like from a firewire-connected camcorder) in the place of a special template or pattern. On the video, the software superimposes the object wherever you have the special pattern (a black square with some writing in it). I’ve created a disk image (Mac OS X 10.3-10.4 compatible) with the test programs already compiled and ready to run.
Click Here to Download ARToolKit-2.71.2.dmg.
To run the programs, print out the patterns in the patterns folder, plug in your camcorder, and run the programs in the bin folder. Here are a couple of snapshots:

simpleTest

exview

How to Create a Stop-Motion Animation Short Movie on Your Mac Using Your Digital Camera and iLife

Administrator — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 19:30:55 +0000

We’ve added a tutorial on how to create your own stop-motion animation short movie using an inexpensive digital camera and the iLife software suite on a Mac. Click anywhere on this paragraph to view the tutorial!

How to Create a Podcast for Your Church

Administrator — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 17:27:17 +0000

Click on this paragraph to view the tutorial page on how I set up a podcast for my church, and also to show you how you can create a podcast for your own church’s audio content. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

How to Make Professional-Looking, Yet Inexpensive, Web Graphics

Administrator — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 21:18:27 +0000

As a web developer, it is important to me to have professional-looking web graphics on the sites I maintain. I’ve added a tutorial page that talks about creating graphics for websites using a relatively inexpensive digital camera and the freely available Gimp program. Click on this paragraph to go to the tutorial. Enjoy!

Hello world!

Administrator — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 20:20:01 +0000

This is a new look for the iHerr website. The tools have been put in place that will allow blogging. This will be used for adding tutorials and announcements. If you want to go to Laura’s pages, they’re HERE.