07/01/2000 | Just starting up. |
07/02/2000 | Beginning page on Infrared Transmitter. |
| Compressed home page image. |
07/03/2000 | Added rudimentary links page. |
| Added floorboard background. |
| Added counter. |
| Added page headings. |
| Added legal notice. |
| Added contact information. |
07/04/2000 | Added thumbnail to Infrared Transmitter Project page. |
| Revised Infrared Transmitter Project (added a capacitor, swapped in a 7805BT). |
07/05/2000 | Organized links. |
| Added Stacey's web site! :) |
07/06/2000 | Added more content to the Infrared Transmitter Project page. |
07/07/2000 | Added logo (Thanks, Tom!) |
| Shortened legal notice. |
| Changed this history list into a table. |
| Started playing with fonts. |
| Added Safety Signs page. |
07/08/2000 | Added some more links. |
| Added some logos to the links page. |
| Added Alphanumeric LED Display Project page. |
| Replaced lactose-intolerant hazard sign with Dan's improved version. |
07/09/2000 | Added pages and pictures for LEGO MindStorms Chipmunk Chaser robot and Parallax Boe-Bot robot. |
07/10/2000 | Played with visited link color. |
| Added some links. |
| Added pictures to some links. |
07/11/2000 | Added text to the Parallax Boe-Bot robot page. |
| Added a new link. |
07/12/2000 | Added links and pictures for links. |
07/13/2000 | Added two more pictures for links to LEGO MindStorms' related pages. |
07/14/2000 | Developed new header/footer. |
| Added Newark's sale on MC68HC908GP32 microcontrollers. |
| Links now open on a new browser page. |
| Added resistor and transistor text to the Alphanumeric LED Display Project page. |
07/15/2000 | Removed a broken link www.ben2.ucla.edu/~frank/68HC11.htm. |
| Appended missing semicolons on named entities. |
| Fixed a few loose '&' characters. |
| Reduced file size of background image by two-thirds. |
| Prefixed # sign to HTML numeric color values. |
| Replaced valign values of CENTER with MIDDLE. |
| Created books page. |
| On the links page,
added pictures for Karl Lunt and Dave Baum. |
07/16/2000 | Started the Twofold I Robot page. |
| Added a picture of the 68HC908GP32CP and 68HC908GP32CFB microcontrollers. |
| On the links page, placed green LEDs next to the companies from which I've purchased components. |
| Ameritech ADSL SpeedPATH service is down once again.
I swear this internet service provider is down every few days.
24-7 my butt! |
| Added the AMP Hexadecimal Switch page. |
07/17/2000 | Ameritech.net SpeedPath ADSL is still down. |
07/18/2000 | Ameritech Speedpath DSL is still down. |
07/19/2000 | Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL is still down. |
07/20/2000 | Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL is still down.
I've been using different variations of the Ameritech ISP name so that potential customers
might find my opinion of Ameritech's service in a keyword search. My opinion is that Ameritech stinks.
If I had a choice, I'd switch to a cable modem just so I could cancel with Ameritech, which, in case
I haven't mentioned it, stinks.
In order to place this information on my site, I had to transfer these files from my PC
to my old Mac and upload them via AOL. How ironic is that? America Online's dial-up service
is, at this time for me, more reliable then Ameritech.net ADSL SpeedPath, which... stinks.
Ask me what the current speed of my Ameritech DSL connection is? It's zero.
0 Kbits per second upload, 0 Kbits per second download.
And it's not that easy to just drop Ameritech.
I've got my email accounts all set up.
I waited a month to get connected.
Five days of no ADSL ISP in a big, urban market such as Chicago?
Ameritech stinks. |
| Removed bold from Newark 68HC08 price table data. |
| Removed a broken link www.mitronet.com/2/mitronics/index.html. |
| Added logo for Avnet Marshall. |
| Added Imagineering On-line Magazine. |
| Added Why. |
07/21/2000 | Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL is still down. |
07/22/2000 | Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL is still down. |
07/23/2000 | Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL is still down. |
| Added half a dozen logos and new links. |
| Corrected a typo. Thanks Dan! |
07/24/2000 | Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL is still down.
I've called them four times since this started over a week ago.
They still have no idea how long it's going to take to fix the problem.
I understand that I’m calling into a national technical support center,
but with much of Chicago down, you'd think they'd tell the call takers a
little more information.
Is it a matter of months until the network is fixed?
If so, have the courtesy of letting customers know so they can make other plans.
Sad but true, Ameritech really stinks. |
| Added a new link and logo. |
| Colorized the Robot Room logo and inverted the banner. |
| Started experimenting with tables to clean up and annotate links. |
| Moved history, contact, copyright & disclaimer
to an independent page to speed up the loading of the home page. |
07/25/2000 | Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL is still down. |
07/26/2000 | Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL is still down. |
07/27/2000 | Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL is up!!
A worker visited our backyard poles yesterday and today and apparently fixed the problem.
I’m a lot more sympathetic if the issue was physical rather than software or server, but a week
and a half of downtime still seems like a lot. To be fair, if the system stays up
24/7 for the next thirty days straight, I'll remove all the remarks about Ameritech and what
they do with straws. |
| Added the P&E Bugs page. |
| Added the very cool Color Sensor page. |
07/31/2000 | Added Robotics and Electrical Engineering Webring to the links page. |
| Added links to Robohoo and Robot Cafe. |
| Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL failed twice today, although just briefly. |
08/01/2000 | Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL is down. |
| Wrote more information and updates to the Color Sensor page. |
08/02/2000 | Added 68HCXX Webring to the links page. |
| Added more pictures and descriptions to the links page. |
08/03/2000 | Changed the background from a floorboard to a green perfboard. I hope this makes the text easier to read. |
| Reduced the size of the ugly picture on the home page. |
| Moved the ugly picture from the home page to the new archive page. |
| Added a new picture of myself atop the home page. |
| Resized the project thumbnails so that they are all the same width (where appropriate). |
08/04/2000 | Created a new header/footer for the home page. |
| Add the new robot logo to the home page. Thanks Mot! |
08/05/2000 | Replaced all <B> with <STRONG> |
| Replaced all <I> with <EM> |
| Replaced all <BIG> with <FONT SIZE “+1”> |
| Added <LINK REV> to all <HEAD>. |
| Replaced all <P> with <BR> in the home page. |
| Made sure no spaces or returns appeared immediately after <A HREF...> in the home page. |
| Replaced all colored <HR> references with an image of a yellow breadboard jumper wire. |
| Copied the new header/footer to all pages. |
| Added a new page about Tiny Motors.
I’m really pleased with how well it turned out.
The pictures capture the aspects of the subjects as I intended.
And, my writing flows much more goodly. |
08/12/2000 | Removed Newark MC68HC908GP32 sale information from the home page because the sale has ended. |
08/13/2000 | Created a feedback page. |
| Added a picture and description to the link to Chiu-Yuan Fang's BEAM Photovore page. |
| Created the Appetizer Robot page. |
| Added pictures and text to Twofold. |
| Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL failed this evening. Oh, too bad!
Is Ameritech ever going to manage to get its bad reputation expunged from this page? |
08/15/2000 | Added a spinning logo to the links page. |
| Created the Mystery Parts page. |
08/16/2000 | Added Arrick Robotics to the links page. |
08/17/2000 | On the home page, added a prominent link to the books page. |
| Added three more books to the books page. |
| Added a few more links. |
08/18/2000 | Created the Mini-Sumo Robot Ring page. |
| Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL went down again today, although just briefly. |
08/19/2000 | Finished the Mini-Sumo Robot Ring page. |
| Added a favicon.ico so that people with Internet Explorer 5.0 and up that bookmark Robot Room get a cool picture. |
08/21/2000 | Added logos and green LEDs to two links. |
| Added a new link. |
08/22/2000 | Added a Sumo robot section on the links page. |
| Added some new links. |
| Simplified the introduction to the Infrared Transmitted page.
Appended a link to a similar article. |
| Ameritech SpeedPath ADSL failed again today. Stinky Ameritech! |
08/23/2000 | Ameritech DSL failed again today. P.U. |
08/24/2000 | Changed untraveled link color to yellow, at Stacey's suggestion. |
| One mystery part has been confirmed. |
08/27/2000 | Wow! I've been so busy working on my Sumobot, that I haven't updated the site for a couple of days. |
| Changed yellow link color back to green on feedback page, because Stacey pointed out that page has a white background. Thanks Stacey! |
| Jon has a new website address. |
| >Bill Ruehl had some good feedback on the mystery parts. |
| Kevin Sorenson takes a guess. |
| Added some new links. |
09/02/2000 | Added the Photocell Grab Bag page. |
| The web site provider appears to have gone down briefly today. |
09/04/2000 | Added the PLL Clock Generator page. |
| Ameritech DSL failed briefly today. |
09/14/2000 | Added the events section to the home page. |
| Corrected a missing </TR> in the header/footer. |
09/16/2000 | Ameritech DSL failed today. |
09/17/2000 | Added the ChiBots September Meeting page. |
09/20/2000 | Ameritech SpeedPATH ADSL failed today. |
09/21/2000 | Added David Wooden's meeting minutes. |
| Ameritech ADSL SpeedPath failed again today. |
09/24/2000 | Added the LEGO MindStorms Crown Gears page. |
| Toward late evening, Ameritech ADSL SpeedPath got very slow. |
09/26/2000 | Updated the Crown Gears page with answers provided by Dave Baum |
10/05/2000 | Corrected a link. |
10/06/2000 | Web site server went down today for quite a few hours. |
10/07/2000 | Beginning Bugdozer page. |
10/08/2000 | Added Bugdozer's Autonomous Motherboard page. |
| Ameritech ADSL SpeedPath failed as I tried to upload this latest page. |
| Added Bugdozer's LCD page. |
10/09/2000 | Added Bugdozer's Test Run Videos page. |
| Based on log examination, I added related links to some pages to improve click-through. |
10/10/2000 | Added Bugdozer logo that Sir Tom Zehner created for me. Thanks Tom! |
10/11/2000 | Added Bugdozer Line Detector page. |
10/12/2000 | Added Bugdozer's Body page. |
| Corrected various minor HTML errors throughout the site. |
| Added contact and home page links to the header/footer pictures. |
| Reduced the number of colors in the “David thinking” picture to reduce the file size to reduce the download time. |
10/15/2000 | Added ChiBots page. |
| Added ChiBots October 2000 meeting page. |
| Updated Bugdozer's LCD page. |
10/16/2000 | Added links to Robot Books, eBLOK, Serv-O-Link, and SDP/SI. |
10/17/2000 | Added David Wooden's minutes from the ChiBots October meeting. |
10/22/2000 | Inserted my concerns over Appetizer's Schematic. |
10/29/2000 | I noticed in the site log that Trinity College includes a link to this site, so I made sure to add them to our links page. |
10/30/2000 | Add a pumpkin to the home page. |
11/02/2000 | Moved the pumpkin to the archive. |
11/06/2000 | Started the CIRC 2000 Sumo 'Bot page. |
11/07/2000 | Updated Jon and Stacey's links. |
| Added Lynxmotion to the links page. |
11/08/2000 | Added more movies to the CIRC 2000 Sumo Robot page. |
| Updated Appetizer's page to show answers provided by Dave Hrynkiw! |
11/09/2000 | Andrew Black noticed that the ChiBots meeting time wasn't posted! |
| Andrew also provided information on the CIRC scoring system and the official results. |
11/10/2000 | Created a new page describing Bugdozer's line sensor bug. |
| Finished the CIRC Sumo robot contest page. |
11/11/2000 | Fixed some HTML errors, added a link, and added some emails to specific pages. |
11/12/2000 | Added a review of Robot Builder's Bonanza. |
| Added ChiBots November 2000 meeting page. |
11/17/2000 | Someone's home page linked to some of the graphics on my site -- using my bandwidth without acknowledging the source.
So, I unlinked my HTML pages from those pictures and modified those pictures to advertise Robot Room! |
11/18/2000 | Added meeting minutes and constitution to ChiBots November 2000 meeting page. |
11/21/2000 | Removed hit counter from index page; somehow it got reset. Anyway, I had been told hit counters are amateurish. |
11/25/2000 | I made my own printed circuit board! |
| Added a new link. |
| Ameritech ADSL SpeedPath failed today. Too bad, it had been a lot better for me the last few months. |
11/26/2000 | Edited and added additional pictures to the printed circuit board page. |
| I’m working on standard Sumo Robot Rules |
12/01/2000 | Added some more logos to the links page. |
12/02/2000 | Ameritech DSL failed today. |
12/03/2000 | I made my own double-sided printed circuit board! |
12/04/2000 | DSL from Ameritech failed again today. It's starting to stink again. |
12/10/2000 | Completed the printed circuit board series with a piece about using surface-mounted packages. |
12/11/2000 | Added Mario's surface mount tips to the printed circuit board series. |
12/12/2000 | Ameritech DSL Speedpath failed again today. |
12/17/2000 | Added Sweet, the candy-coated line-following robot. |
| Added ChiBots December 2000 meeting page. |
12/18/2000 | Added meeting minutes and a few updates to the ChiBots meeting page. |
| Ameritech DSL Speedpath failed again today. |
12/19/2000 | Per Bill's request, I've renamed his branch to Northwest on the Sumo Robot Rules page. |
12/22/2000 | Described my standard H-Bridge motor-driver circuit. |
| Updated the links page. |
12/27/2000 | Ameritech ADSL Speedpath down tonight. |
12/29/2000 | Ameritech ADSL Speedpath down. |
12/30/2000 | Ameritech ADSL Speedpath failed. |
| Moved ChiBots to a subdirectory. |
| Changed the banner robot to a photograph. |
12/30/2000 | Added Parts Express to the links page. |
| Added Robo Sapiens to the books page. |
01/01/2001 | Added constitution to ChiBots home page. |
01/09/2001 | Updated two schematics to remove technical problems. |
01/14/2001 | Added ChiBots January 2001 meeting page. |
01/18/2001 | Included David Wooden's meeting minutes on the ChiBots meeting page. |
01/19/2001 | Removed Robot Science & Technology Magazine from the links page.
It's been a long time since they've actually published an issue.
I don't feel it's appropriate to send them any more potential subscribers until they resume regular operations. |
01/21/2001 | Created the Tach, Temp, and Count project. |
01/24/2001 | Thanks to Peter Campbell, I've corrected Larry Kruzan's last name on the CIRC Sumo 2000 page. |
| Created a page regarding a tool that finds the center of a circle or wheel. |
02/08/2001 | Ameritech was down some of today. |
02/09/2001 | Ameritech was down some of today. |
02/10/2001 | Ameritech was down some of today. |
02/11/2001 | Created the Comparator example page. |
| Created the ChiBots February 2001 meeting page. |
02/12/2001 | Added information about Brian's 4-inch Numeric LED Display. |
| Added some missing names to the ChiBots February 2001 meeting page. |
02/22/2001 | Added feedback and separators to the Mystery Parts page. |
| Connecting to Ameritech DSL has been particularly unreliable this week. |
03/05/2001 | I had a growing list of links that I kept meaning to add to the links page. Now I have! |
| Added the last missing name to the ChiBots Feb meeting. |
03/08/2001 | Eliminated all SuperStats code. They're abandoning their free tier web site statistics. |
| Added the meeting minutes to the ChiBots Feb meeting. |
| Added another link. |
03/10/2001 | Oops! It turns out that megaohm is spelled megohm and kiloohm is spelled kilohm. Who would of thought? |
| Bugdozer uses 22 kilohm resistors as voltage dividers with the phototransistors, not 2.2 kilohm. |
| I've been using 10 kilohm resistors as pullups, which works just fine.
However, the circuits can have identical function with a savings of almost half a milliamp of current for each connection to CMOS inputs by using 100 kilohm resistors instead. |
03/11/2001 | Revisited the Infrared Emitter 555 Circuit. |
03/12/2001 | Paul pointed out some mistakes in my description of H-Bridge power usage. |
| Created the ChiBots March 2001 meeting page. |
03/15/2001 | Added Elliot Goodman's name to the ChiBots March page. |
| I’m not sure of the technology used in NE555 chips, but I know it can't be TTL because of the voltages allowed. |
03/20/2001 | Added Acroname to the links page. |
03/28/2001 | Created Second-Generation Tachometer. |
04/01/2001 | Added the meeting minutes to the ChiBots March meeting. |
| Added a new picture and some text to the tachometer page. |
04/07/2001 | Created an Illustrated Guide to American Robot Sumo. |
| Added an animated GIF to indicate new articles. |
| Moved past events to a section towards the bottom of the home page. |
| Updated some text on various pages. |
04/08/2001 | Created the ChiBots April 2001 meeting page. |
| Fixed a broken link on the Mystery Parts page.
The problem was reported by seventwentyfour.com. |
04/09/2001 | Modified the Robot Sumo rules and artwork based on some suggestions. |
04/13/2001 | Added Audubon Robotics to the links page. |
| Restored link to Bill Ruehl's site. |
| Added link to NePARS. |
04/14/2001 | Changed the Links page into a text index.
Not only does this speed up access (since the page is so much smaller), but
hopefully will delay crossing of the 4-gigabyte bandwidth limit that
this site is rapidly approaching. |
04/16/2001 | Described Bugdozer's battery sampling technique. |
| Fixed a couple of link errors. |
04/17/2001 | Described the math for controlling current through the IR LED. |
04/23/2001 | Added David's meeting minutes to ChiBots. |
05/04/2001 | Added a link to the Atlanta Hobby Robot Club. |
05/06/2001 | Corrected the distance between starting lines on a Robot Sumo ring. |
| Replaced references of OMSI (the location) with PARTS (the organization) in the Robot Sumo rules. |
| Created all-new instructions on making a high-quality mini-Sumo ring. |
| Updated PARTS website address. |
05/22/2001 | Created the ChiBots May 2001 meeting page. |
06/03/2001 | Answered a question regarding range on the IR circuit. |
06/06/2001 | Corrected a couple of mistakes on the comparator page. |
06/10/2001 | Created the ChiBots June 2001 meeting page. |
06/28/2001 | Updated the main links page.
Now, when you click a specific name in a category, you're taking directly to that site.
If you want to see all the links and pictures in that category, click on the category title or “more”. |
| Corrected typos on the Sumo Ring page.
Thanks Dave! |
| Added a background color to each page so that the links are still readable while the background picture loads.
Thanks again Dave! |
08/12/2001 | Added a link to Fairchild Semiconductor. |
| Added a link to Electro Tech. |
09/08/2001 | Added official meeting minutes to the end of ChiBots May 2001 meeting page. |
| Added official meeting minutes to the end of ChiBots June 2001 meeting page. |
| Created ChiBots July 2001 meeting page from official meeting minutes. |
| Created ChiBots August 2001 meeting page. |
09/21/2001 | Added LED to pcb manufacturer link
since I purchased and received some wonderfully made custom circuit boards from them. |
| Added link to Electronic Goldmine |
10/04/2001 | Robot Room is about to overrun the 4 GB bandwidth limit of the web host provider.
So, Dan is now graciously serving most of the graphics on the home page.
Thanks Dan! |
10/14/2001 | At Dodd's request, added a solderless breadboard picture and a movie of the 4427 H-bridge. |
10/16/2001 | Created the ChiBots Logo Contest page. |
11/22/2001 | Created the Robot Building for Beginners page. |
| Added RadioShack to the links page. |
| Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! |
11/24/2001 | Created the N-Size Rechargeable Battery page. |
11/25/2001 | Split the home page into a more page. |
11/26/2001 | On a couple of pages I mistakenly referred to silicone adhesive as “silicon” adhesive. |
12/03/2001 | Ouch! The Infrared Transmitter page had an error stating that
resistors R3 and R4 were in the megohm range, but they should be in the kilohm range.
That page has been up a long time (over a year).
I wonder why nobody told me about that error before? |
| Removed www.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/audubon/Pages/audubonrobotics/index.html from the links page because the link appears to be broken. |
| Added MachineBrain to the links page. |
| Uppercased all lowercase references to LEGO. |
12/04/2001 | Added a movie of Sandwich, the line-following robot. |
12/14/2001 | Micro$oft Internet Exploder was messing with my tables, centering text rather than flushing it left. So, I added align="left" commands. |
12/27/2001 | Created the Sandwich, the line-following robot, page. |
12/28/2001 | Created the secret page for owners of Robot Building for Beginners. |
12/30/2001 | Moved up some of my more favored sites in the retail links page. |
12/31/2001 | Transitioned all of the ChiBots material to www.chibots.org. |
01/15/2002 | Added picture of N cell adapter. |
01/17/2002 | The first printed copies of my book have arrived. |
02/22/2002 | Added some new links, removed some that were broken. |
| Added a letter to the feedback page. |
04/30/2002 | Switched from Barnes and Noble to Amazon. They offer better commissions on linked items and I suspect they have a larger customer base. |
05/07/2002 | Updated the photoresistor page based on the purchase of two additional grab bags. |
05/09/2002 | 1+3+3+4=10? Nope. Thanks George! |
05/12/2002 | George caught a couple of mistakes on the H-bridge page. First, there isn't a TC4424A chip, just TC4424.
Second, the breadboard example was missing a connection to +V from D1 and D3.
I've also added a few part labels to the breadboard picture to make the association to the schematic a little more clear. |
05/14/2002 | Removed a vendor from the links page. |
| Added a detailed page about Sandwich's circuit board and the parts that go on it. |
06/09/2002 | Added XS Boost robot. |
| Removed Mystery Parts page from index. |
06/27/2002 | Added Sandwich Printed Circuit Board which is available at Solarbotics. |
08/18/2002 | Added Microscopic View of PCB. |
| Removed the glowing reference to National Semiconductor on the XS Boost page.
They started quietly refusing me free samples, even after I followed up with references to the designs and positive publicity I had generated.
I've since switched over to Texas Instruments parts, so ha ha. |
12/23/2002 | Added field-effect experimental results to the Sandwich PCB page. |
| In my review of Mechanical Devices For The Electronics Experimenter,
I made a snooty remark about I=VR being all you need to know in robot electronics. Unfortunately, the correct formula is V=IR. Oops. Thanks to Marcus Evans for pointing that out to me. |
| Updated the N-cell page to reflect the disappointing news that the batteries no longer appear to be available at RadioShack. |
| Removed the link to Bill Ruehl's site. Someone seems to have purchased the domain rights and posted ummmm.... uhhh... a different kind of content. |
| Updated the link to Duracell's OEM page. |
12/24/2002 | Updated the link to Nashua Robot Building Club. Thank you Michael Pettengill. |
| Updated the link to Dave Baum. |
| Added a link to J.P. Brown's Serious LEGO. |
| Updated links on Sumo Rules. |
| Removed Hobby Robot link. |
| Added a link to International Rectifier. |
| Added a link to Maxon Motor. |
| Added a link to Portescap. |
| Added a link to MSC Industrial Supply. |
| Added a link to Invention & Technology magazine. |
01/18/2003 | Updated Sumo Rules to include permissions, micro-Sumo sizes, ChiBots rules, and to correct typos. |
| Added a spreadsheet of Sandwich's part list and prices on the resource page. |
05/16/2003 | Updated N Cell page to reference a RadioShack in Ontario that has the batteries and adapters. Thanks Joel! |
| A movie file was missing from Sweet's page. Thanks Sam! |
07/13/2003 | Removed all HTML references to images on the Chibots site in preparation of turning the club webmaster reins over to someone new.
That way, they can modify the site as they please without it breaking any Robot Room pages. |
07/27/2003 | Updated the H-Bridge page to warn about the fairly low current limits of the 4424 and 4427A chips. |
08/19/2003 | Corrected a typo in a link on the Links page. |
09/10/2003 | Updated the Tach page to correct a broken link. |
01/04/2004 | Updated the PLL page to reflect the revision 5 documentation. |
01/14/2004 | Updated the Color Sensor page with some color sensor links. |
01/25/2004 | Added a description of my second book Intermediate Robot Building! |
01/27/2004 | Updated the text for Future-Active to remove the reference to their local retail store, which was unfortunately closed. |
| Updated the text McMaster-Carr to recommend their online material selector. |
| Pruned the links to dead sites:
w3.one.net/~hughesj/technica/technica.html (Jim Hughes Technica Site),
home.flash.net/~sevcik/IRschem.htm (IR Proximity Detector Schematic),
www.gernsback.com/poptronics/ (Poptronics)
|
| Updated the links to: Portescap |
| Added links to
ENCO,
Robot MarketPlace,
Joe's Mindstorms Gallery,
Bert's Quarter Shrinking and Can Crushing Gallery,
Home Shop Machinist and Machinist's Workshop,
Learn-C,
Grizzly Industrial,
Faulhaber,
United States Plastic Corp,
Think Labyrinth
|
03/07/2004 | Updated the Legal Mumbo Jumbo to match standard text. |
| Added four books to the Books section, including
Intermediate Robot Building,
Junkbots, Bugbots, & Bots on Wheels,
Robot Sumo: The Offical Guide,
and Building Robot Drive Trains
|
| Updated the introductory text for the Intermediate Robot Building book.
An interesting side note, I wrote more pages and took more pictures for this book, but the final number of
printed pages are less than the first book. It appears to be due to multiple photographs being combined
per figure and perhaps (?) the figure sizes or text being printed smaller.
So, more content in less space. |
| Added notes to the email section to direct students
to helpful sources and to set expectations on replies. |
03/20/2004 | Updated all three Homemade PCB pages to match the things I've learned since they were originally written. |
03/21/2004 | Updated the cover for Intermediate Robot Building. |
04/07/2004 | Intermediate Robot Building is now shipping! |
| Created the secret resources web page (see page xxii of the book). |
| Updated the HBridge Motor Driver, Photocell Sensors, and Infrared Emitter pages with corrections and references to further information in the book. |
04/18/2004 | Added a link to Bufbotics, a new robot club in Buffalo, NY. |
| Uploaded complete 6808 (MC68HC908KX8 HC08 KX8) assembly source code for the 68HC908KX8 microcontroller to the resources page for Intermediate Robot Building. |
04/25/2004 | Created the Roundabout page with robot videos and DIP switch instructions. |
| Created the KX8 ICG Trimming page. I've been busy today! |
04/28/2004 | Added a link to Dave Hylands website. |
| Fixed the link to the 68HC908KX8 source code. |
05/01/2004 | Created the Roundabout PCB instructional page. |
07/15/2004 | Updated the email help lists. |
| Corrected a few links. |
| Added pi to a diameter-based linear formula. |
| Corrected the part numbers for Roundabout's PCB. |
| Added a link to Theodore Gray's Periodic Table of Elements. |
08/22/2004 | Removed the Amazon Honor System Donation link from all of my pages. After 100 days, I received only $0.67. |
| Updated the Pager Motors page to include the latest prices and part numbers. |
10/13/2004 | Added a MOSFET PWM H-bridge schematic to the secret IRB web page. |
10/16/2004 | Created the Robot Repair web page. |
11/22/2004 | Updated the Sandwich PCB web page to include v2.0 features. |
| Posted to the secret page a simple change to make if your Sandwich robot is underperforming due to higher resistance photocells. |
| Added a link to Wright Hobbies Robotics. |
| Added a link to BudgetBot. |
12/08/2004 | Updated the secret page for the Robot Building For Beginners book to “clarify” instructions for testing transistors. |
12/17/2004 | Created the Big Trak page! |
12/20/2004 | Updated the Big Trak page to disclose the discovery of a Big Trak that includes a 3906 transistor for the IN command. |
12/25/2004 | Merry Christmas, everyone! Created the Jet ultra-fast line-following robot page. |
01/02/2005 | I've made a lot of changes to the website over the past couple of days. Including... |
| Added my name to the site banner. |
| Removed the background image (it made it more difficult to read the text.) |
| Consolidated all the link pages into one page and eliminated the logos. |
| Eliminated all links to low-value sites that aren't linked to Robot Room.
In other words, either the referenced site has to be of value to my readers, be of value to me, or reciprocate in kind with a link. |
| Eliminated links to links (now the articles directly link to a company, person, or product being discussed). |
| Fully converted the XSBoost page over to standard Robot Room style. |
| Noted that N-Cell page and the AMP Hex Switch pages are obsolete because the parts are no longer available. |
| Moved the N-Cell page off the index page. |
| Removed all references to Motorola microcontrollers, since they are now out of that business. |
| Updated some component prices. |
01/30/2005 | Chuck Kutscher has been kind enough to put together this extensive
errata page for Practical Electronics for Inventors. |
02/22/2005 | Fixed typos and clarified remote control language in Sumo Rules. |
03/20/2005 | Thanks to Pablo Bleyer Kocik for sending me pictures and information on the REV E board for the Big Trak. |
09/03/2005 | A lot of updates to the Big Trak page, including serial numbers (thanks to James Unger and Tim O'Connor), trailer switch information (thanks to Rich Harman), and information from Ed Levy. |
09/03/2005 | Added a sneaky link to my Storm Impact days. |
12/11/2005 | Created the Dual Fan Controller page. |
08/06/2006 | Updated the Photocell Grab Bag page to include results from Electronic Goldmine grab bags. |
08/12/2006 | Revised the order and details of instructions on the Sandwich PCB page to make it easier for people with manufactured boards, since most people choose that route. |
| Revised the secret Sandwich page to suggest an alternative IC1 for dealing with higher resistance photoresistors, trying black paint markers, and to eliminate PCB version information for boards that can't be etched. |
| Revised the Homemade PCB page since the PCB manufacturer now seems to allow printing without background or grid interference! |
09/05/2006 | Revised the Homemade PCB page again, to better explain the need to mirror the image of the top layer. |
09/07/2006 | Added links to the Microscope page, thanks to Charlie Wallace. |
10/20/2006 | Revised the Big Trak page with new pictures, data, and mysteries. |
01/09/2007 | Removed four dead links (Trenton Henry, Phil White, If I Had A Robot, Nerd Rock), but added ten new links (JRobot, Brick Link, eMachineShop, Fortal.biz, Little Machine Shop, Atmel, Imagecraft, AVR Freaks, Hack A Day). Thanks Mario Camarillo! |
01/13/2007 | Moved web site hosts because my prior host was too lame to add SPF records. I got sick and tired of spammers forging email addresses and making me look bad.
Fortunately, the new host offers so much more bandwidth and web space that I can merge in the content that I had previously split onto LineFollowing.com to stay under the old limits. |
| Created the Debounced Counter page. I know it's lame. But I had it written up anyway so I figured I'd post it. |
| Reordered the index page a bit and cleaned up some text on some other pages. |
01/14/2007 | Updated and added gear puller content to the Tiny Motor page. |
02/04/2007 | Updated the part number, supplier, and price list for Sandwich. |
03/18/2007 | Created the Machining page. |
07/06/2007 | Added a picture of Tom O'Toole's satellite radio mounting bracket installed in the vehicle at the Machining page. |
08/21/2007 | Created the LED Tester page. |
08/26/2007 | Created the Number Two sumo robot page. |
08/27/2007 | Joey caught a typo on the Number Two sumo robot page, where I referred to brinklink instead of bricklink. Thanks! |
| About 1/3 of my readers use the Mozilla Firefox browser. That's pretty cool. Anyway, my friend Tom Zehner found the new CSS pages weren't working correctly in that browser. I made a few changes to the pages and style sheet to get it to look the same on both IE and FF. |
09/02/2007 | Created the Caliper Capacitor page. |
09/04/2007 | Created the Mini-Mill Digital Tachometer page. |
09/08/2007 | Created the Aluminum LEGO Tire Hub page. |
09/08/2007 | Created the Clamping Motor Mounting Block page. |
09/10/2007 | Created the Bipolar H-bridge Motor Driver circuit and transistor-comparison article. |
09/10/2007 | Created the Numeric Base Conversion web article. |
09/12/2007 | Cleaned up the books page and added magazines such as Scientific American, Circuit Cellar, and Home Shop Machinist. |
| Restored the old ChiBots pages. The club has a new website now, but it seems a shame to discard all that wonderful old content. There are lots of fun pictures of people and robots. And, there are even some movies. |
| Added Google Search to the site. |
| Added robots.txt to the site. |
| With the help of archive.org, I restored a couple of old .gif images from the original site. |
09/13/2007 | Moved the contact page. |
| Moved the legal page page. |
09/15/2007 | Created the Silica Gel page. |
09/23/2007 | Created the Pumpkin LED Candle page. |
09/27/2007 | Updated the Pumpkin LED Candle page with the completed soldered PCB. |
09/29/2007 | Created the Polarized Beacon and Sensor page. |
09/30/2007 | Fixed a couple of typos thanks to an email from Dustin at Rooster Robotics Institute. |
10/06/2007 | Created the Pulse-Width Modulator Motor Control page. |
10/09/2007 | Changed the press-fit LEGO drill size from #11 to #14 on the Machining page. |
| Added Sky Coyote, SparkFun Electronics, and BoingBoing to the link page. |
10/14/2007 | Created the Lathe Coupler page. |
10/18/2007 | Announced contest winners, cleaned up links on all of my pages, and noted that LittleMachineShop has a carriage lock available. |
10/20/2007 | Created the Robot Joystick page. |
11/03/2007 | Remade the home page with a white background and sorted categories. |
11/07/2007 | Created the Screw Straightening page. |
11/18/2007 | Created the Aluminum Can Cleaning Device page. |
11/25/2007 | Created the Water Softener Display page. |
11/26/2007 | Significantly updated the seven-year old Color Sensor page with references to trimpots, TAOS Inc, and multicolor RGB LEDs. |
11/28/2007 | Created the Sharp Distance Measurement Sensor Testing page. |
12/06/2007 | Fixed an error in the schematic on the LED Tester page thanks to Barry Walker. |
12/17/2007 | Created the Faulhaber Gearmotor page. |
12/17/2007 | Created the Optical Encoder page. |
12/18/2007 | Created the Brass Cover Plate and Brass Pushbutton page. |
12/21/2007 | Created the Multi-Segment LED Display page. |
| Fixed an error regarding gear order on the Roundabout robot page thanks to Joey. |
12/22/2007 | Created the Mounting Motors and Attaching Wheels page. |
01/02/2008 | Updated the Multi-Segment LED Display page after receiving the official LiteOn datasheet via Marty Beem.
I had mixed up GND and Enable (now Reset) because they were both grounded during my usage. |
| Updated the Water Softener Display page based on the results of using the device for a couple of months.
I needed to average the sensor reads, add a capacitor to the sensor signal, and I made a mistake with the strain relief hole that prevents the connector from fitting through it. |
01/05/2008 | Created the PCB Tarnish Eraser page. |
01/08/2008 | Created the Reversed LED Color Sensor page. |
01/15/2008 | Created the SMD LED Ring Light page. |
01/21/2008 | Created the Electronic Counting Device page. |
| Added a part number to the edge detector on the Miniature Milling Machine Speed Sensor page. |
01/24/2008 | Created the Infrared Testing with a Remote Control page. |
02/10/2008 | Started the StreamHawk Wireless Robot page. Lots more work left to do. |
02/15/2008 | Updated the robot links page to match the new look of the site. Removed dead links. |
02/16/2008 | Increased the description meta tag for several pages and revised the Safety Sign page to match the new look of the site. |
| Added two more pages to the StreamHawk Wireless Robot article. |
02/17/2008 | Added another two pages to the StreamHawk Wireless Robot article. |
02/18/2008 | Created a page to ask for support from loyal readers. There's a funny easter egg associated with that page if you can find it. |
| Added subject links to the top of the web pages and moved home and other standard links to the bottom of the pages since that's commonplace at the end of articles. |
02/19/2008 | Finally got done with the StreamHawk Wireless Robot article. Wow! That has got to be the longest article on the site. |
| Created the What's New page to free up space to move the Google Search button up on the home page. |
02/23/2008 | Converted Appetizer to the new page format and added some updates to the voltage trigger sources. |
02/27/2008 | Tips on creating your own video inspection system for sorting small components. |
03/02/2008 | How to make a power-switch target for less destructive robot combat. |
05/12/2008 | Created an article about adding an electric motor to power shear. |
| Updated the Faulhaber Gearmotor page with hex key information, a revised connector picture (-M), and to note that BG Micro sold out. |
| Added another errata link for the book Practical Electronics for Inventors. Thanks Marty. |
| Corrected a couple of typos and added a suggestion to the StreamHawk pages. Thanks Dustin and Joey. |
08/02/2008 | Added downloads and read me files for the Storm Impact software. |
08/07/2008 | Corrected the most-significant (leftmost) and least-significant (rightmost) phrasing on the Number System pages thanks to John Peel. |
08/10/2008 | Updated the pricing on the photocell grab bag page thanks to Tuomo Tanskanen. |
08/31/2008 | Created the page on How to solder using the solar power. |
09/01/2008 | Wrote the page on spring-switch sensors to detect movement. |
09/08/2008 | Created the laser sensor power control circuit. |
09/15/2008 | Made the article about the stoplight modifications. |
09/27/2008 | Created the Flip-Flop Robot. |
09/29/2008 | Wrote the article about my old Robot Maze Solver. |
10/06/2008 | Built the robot in the Monkey Mints container. |
10/12/2008 | Coded a resistance code table, just like every other electronics site in the world. |
10/19/2008 | Wrote a slightly-more-complicated-than-it-looks Ohm's law converter. |
12/26/2008 | Created the Multimaster TWI issue page. |
| Added a photo and description of the bipolar motor driver on a circuit board. |
12/27/2008 | Created the Perforated board and soldering suggestions page. |
| Replaced the MCP1700 with the MCP1702 voltage regulator on the Pumpkin and Mini Mill pages.
The MCP1700 is limited to a maximum of 6V input and therefore shouldn't be used with a 9V battery.
It actually works on the projects I've built, but I may be getting lucky since I don't stress the device. |
12/28/2008 | Added “low power” information to the multisegment LED page. |
01/25/2009 | Included calculations of maximum throughput on an I2C bus on the multimaster page. |
03/14/2009 | Corrected units on the distance sensor text. |
08/15/2009 | Updated the prices for the photocell grabbags. |
08/30/2009 | Corrected a spelling error and cleaned up the code on the calculator pages. |
| Improved the instructions for Sandwich PCBs so that they’ll be clearer when printed in the Solarbotics kit. Also added a hook loop photograph. |
12/15/2009 | Cracking open a kid's meal toy to find a number of salvageable components. |
12/26/2009 | Playing with ShapeLock plastic to create motor couplers, LED bulbs, and circuit board covers. |
| Ah ha! The Jake Sully Avatar toy uses the speaker to measure vibrations. |
| Added an article about ATtiny adapters for the Atmel STK500 programmer. |
12/27/2009 | Created instructions on simple motor control with a physical switch. |
01/01/2010 | Updated the format and some content on Robot Building For Beginners, Second Edition as part of the release of the second edition. |
01/04/2010 | Make a chip temperature sensors by burying a thermistor in a DIP socket. |
04/18/2010 | Created a page dedicated to the choices of solderless breadboards available, including clear. |
04/25/2010 | Massive article that compares and tests the accuracy of cheap DMMs. |
04/25/2011 | Removed Amazon as they ended their affiliate program in Illinois. |