New Articles at Robot Room:

Aug 29 An eight-wheel drive robot with a drop-down spatula-style scoop for competing in mini-sumo.
Aug 29 A mini sumo robot that is hard to see, but struggles due to narrow sensors and spinning wheels.
Aug 15 Chicago mini line-following robot that runs on solar power which charges up ultracapacitors.
Aug 15 Carefree robot explores rooms using a variety of obstacle avoidance sensors and unique motor driver.
Aug 14 How to measure milliohms on a ordinary multimeter by using a 220 ohm resistor and 5 V supply.
Aug 09 Retrieving a wayward rocked from a branch of a pine tree using a coat hanger and a balloon?
Jul 25 Building a robot playing field with painted hinged wood walls and polarized beacons for scoring areas.
Jul 24 Inside a 12 V illuminated pilot switch, and how to hook it up to a 5 V microcontroller.
Jul 18 Test points, copper files, wider pads, and added holes improve PCBs with little effort.
Jul 10 Pinouts and logic traces for reading data from inexpensive imported digital calipers.
Jul 10 Electronic components and tools that David Cook is searching for to use in the Robot Room.
Jul 05 Launching model rockets using a custom controller with a relay, thick cable, and lead-acid battery.
Jul 04 Problems and results in a backyard weather station and data logger. Uses a 4 MB serial flash chip.
Jul 03 Solar-powered device with rechargeable battery backup. Plus, power supply monitoring.
Jun 13 How to take close-up photos (macro photography), including a remote shutter control circuit.
Apr 25 Feature comparison and accuracy testing of a dozen inexpensive digital multimeters.
Apr 18 Solderless breadboards in various sizes (such as 5x5), colors, and even transparent!
Jan 04 Advantages of extra copper on PCBs, stacking motor driver chips, and DIY heatsinks.
Dec 27 Controlling a motor in both directions (and on/off) with a single physical switch.
Dec 26 STK500 helper and adapter boards for Atmel 8-pin, 14-pin, and 20-pin microcontrollers.
Dec 26 Making shapes and bonding materials using low-temperature melting plastic (ShapeLock).
Dec 15 What's inside an Avatar McDonald's Happy Meal toy? A blue led, some coin cells, speaker, and more.
Dec 27 Breadboard and soldering tips including perf board patterns, inline resistors, and alligator clip repair.
Dec 26 I2C multi-master bus issue on the Atmel AVR microcontrollers.
Oct 19 Convert between various metric prefixes and units of volts, amps, ohms, and watts.
Oct 12 A visual resistor calculator. Select from the resistance color chart or type numeric values (ohms).
Oct 06 A teeny-tiny line-following robot in an amusing Monkey Mints candy container.
Sep 29 A robot that runs line mazes. Includes nine floor sensors and homemade quadrature wheel encoders.
Sep 27 Robot with obstacle-detecting bumpers that drives forward and reverse without a microcontroller.
Sep 15 Adding an AC-to-DC power adapter and a microcontroller to a desktop traffic light novelty.
Sep 08 A laser-activated on/off circuit for remotely-controlling a robot or other device.
Sep 01 Inside light-up sneakers reveals movement detection sensor and the epoxy-encased battery.
Aug 31 Soldering circuitry together using a magnifying glass lens and the sun.
May 12 Adding a gearmotor to a shear to cut printed circuit boards (PCBs).
Mar 02 Front-mounted power switch with indicators for battling robots. Halts power when target is hit.
Feb 27 Sorting tiny electronic parts using a video camera and a rare-earth magnet.
Feb 10 Wireless video and data dead-reckoning navigation robot with speech and remote programming.
Jan 24 Some things are surprisingly transparent to infrared. Simple tests to perform with a remote control.
Jan 21 Electronic counter for pulses or quadrature motor encoders. Explains rotary dials and interrupts.
Jan 15 Making a miniature ring light with surface-mount LEDs for a wireless camera and magnifying loupe.
Jan 08 An LED can both produce color and sense color. Use an op amp to amplify and digitize the signal.
Jan 05 Is there any truth that a pencil eraser can prepare a board for soldering? Look into the microscope!
Dec 22 Three different methods to attach wheels to motors, and motors to robot bodies.
Dec 21 An alphanumeric, numeric, and icon LED display with drivers for $1.
Dec 18 Machining a beautiful brass cover plate and brass pushbuttons.
Dec 17 How to make a digital quadrature optical encoder for measuring motor speed and direction.
Dec 17 Pinouts and specs of a great gearmotor with encoder and right-angle drive.
Nov 28 Test apparatus, oscilloscope traces, and graph for Sharp GP2D12 infrared distance measurement.
Nov 26 Updated the color sensor page with info and photos about TAOS sensors and RGB LEDs.
Nov 25 A Sharp sensor and LED bar graph monitor the salt levels in my water softener.
Nov 18 Machining a semi-complex pop top cleaner on a lathe and milling machine.
Nov 07 How to straighten a bent rod or bolt using a steel pipe, nuts, and a vise.
Oct 20 Remote control of a robot using a joystick.
Oct 14 How to connect a Lego wheel to a gearhead motor.
Oct 06 Pulse width modulation to adjust motor speed or LED brightness.
Sep 29 Robot navigation using polarizing filters to create beacons.
Sep 23 Holiday lighting using a variety of LED colors and animation.
Sep 15 Silica gel and plastic cut-to-length tubes protect machine tools.
Sep 10 Hand methods to covert between binary, octal, decimal, and hexadecimal.
Sep 10 Powering a motor using discrete bipolar transistors arranged in an h-bridge.
Sep 08 A novel way of attaching a motor to a robot or device using a split-block clamp.
Sep 08 Replacing a plastic LEGO wheel hub with a stronger aluminum hub.
Sep 04 Adding a digital tachometer to a mini-mill to monitor cutting speed.
Sep 02 Replacing a battery with a capacitor when switching a caliper to wired power.
Aug 26 A winning sumo robot that uses pencils to strong-arm the competition.
Aug 21 Test tool for LED brightness, color, and polarity using constant current.