It is not a good sign when I look things over and over again and again and don’t find any bugs. Not that I have trouble to keep the few things in my head, no, now I really suffer from concentration deficits and that is a big indicator for an overdue holiday. Why you ask? I ordered a new Roboduino from China. I couldn’t track any bug and logical solution seemed to order a new one to sort out potential failures on the board.

My inital test with the mutli-color LED failed right away and so I gave it a shot with LCD. Heureka! The LCD works as it is supposed to, showing a “hello world!” and counting the seconds. Mhhh… so why does the LED still not work. Maybe I am too blind to see. So I put the LCD back to the old roboduino and voila, it works too. It looks like I mixed cables or something… anyway, I found a nice little example of how to create custom chars on the LCD and made pixeled the Omnibotlogo. Here’s the link to the tutorial.

LCD check: go… LED check: no go… too stupid to wire three four cables in the right order. I really need some days off…

Bad news, everyone. All parts arrived, even the lost LCD was found in the post office. I came right on time before it got send back to Poland.

Taking the first steps with my Roboduino was real fun. I strated with the simple LED Demo and worked my way up till I got one RGB LED blinking through all the colors of the rainbow and even fading was easy. Next up was the LCD. I did all the soldering but before exposing it to the wrong current I wanted to messure the pins. Not a big thing, but I was a little too shaky that morning and made a short circuit.

My beautifully colorcycling LED went out, my Mac stated that the USB Device had been removed improperly and I was cursing. A quick reflash of the original demo that blinks the onboard LED showed, that flashing and some circuits still seemed to work. But neither could I get the LCD nor the RGB LED to work again properly. The absolute electronics noob got busted!

At first, I thought it would be the the regulator that went bust, but the more I test around it seems to be the processor itself that has some flaws with the PWM pins now. Pulsing works but my former setup and code just isn’t. Learning by burning is always a hard lesson.

I keep my fingers crossed that I am just too muddled to see the bug and so should you. If I will have to order another Roboduino from China, I will probably have no time when it arrives. Let’s just hope and enjoy the sun…

Searching through ebay I found most of the parts I would need to get my Omnibot running again.

First off all I choose a roboduino board – found one on ebay, origin:China, so keep your fingers crossed that this will hit my doorstep.

Further I got a big 6v motorcycle battery that has the same size as the original from Tomy. Luckily it was already charged and ready to run, as I don’t have a charger right now.

LEDs, Multicolor-LEDs for the eyes – ebay was my friend again.

And a tiny LCD for the front to select programms and as debug screen.

During the last week the majority of the stuff arrived. I don’t know wether the LCD or the Roboduino got lost in our post office. I found the notice that the postman tried to deliver something and I was not at home. In the post office the guy searched for 30 minutes without luck. Now I am waiting for a call… and waiting… and waiting….

Meanwhile I spent some time on the new front panel that would sit in robots balley where the old tape deck and clock was placed. Björn provided me some old forex board (some kind of thin plasic board) that I cut and shaped till it now fits perfectly. I tried to stay close to the original look of the old panel – very 80s and so it fits the overall look.

Considering the eyes I wired up the LEDS . I choose to hook them up parallel and the non-electronic guy that I am, I just burned the first one because of a forgotten resistor. But as the saying goes “Learning by burning” I got it working now. Both eyes are lit up equally and look really great.

I tested the drivetrain and first I was shocked as nothing moved. At work we have a big power supply and in the end it showed up that every motor (Omnibot got two) sucks a full Ampere. No chance for my tiny power supply to comply those needs. The battery, I got now does have 4Ah and this works just fine.

Hopefully the missing parts pop up soon and I can go on.

Back to ebay searching for sensors.

Resurrection of this blog… or call it just a new project. Time has become a rare good and so I did not write much lately. Around xmas I finished my big Hellomat cab. Now it is powered with an old xbox, a special vertical version of Coin-Ops (thanks BB) and it is running perfectly. It took me two controllers till I finally managed the soldering, but no one is perfect and this is another story that I will pick up when adding a spinner to it.

Since I was a kid I wanted an Omnibot. When it first came out around 1980, I wanted it so badly that it was the only entry on my xmas wishlist and I remember taking part in a contest held by German cartoon mag “Fix & Foxi” – main price was a Tomy Omnibot in all its glory. Guess, that week I did not catch much sleep, thinking about me winning this robot. Off course I didn’t win, but thanks to ebay I found one, some 25 years later and I tell you what: I am still as exited as I was back than.

This emotion has got a slight setback, when I opened the package from ebay. On the auction picture the little bot was looking good and the text said it need some slight fixes and it would be a real collectible. The reality was something else: cracks, wrong screws, moved bodyparts, black color on the bottom, missing rubber band… the list goes on; in short a complete wreck that looked as if it was kicked down the stairs to the basement. I was about to send it back but Nadine saw it and told me that I could not throw out a little, helpless creature like that. Guess she was right. The lady who sold it got a negative feedback for robot abuse (and not seeing anything wrong about her description) and I started to take it apart in order to fix things.

First off all some paint would be good to get rid of the yellowing parts. So this morning I took apart the arms and sprayed them with whit auto body paint. Now those look good and the complete body will be next up.

The transparent dome on Omnibots head got scratches all over and fat crack in the center. Probably I will take it to caos place tonight as he has a lot of experience with scratched plastics. He already suggested to grind it with fine sandpaper and use some special paste that will softly abrogate the plastic and polish it with at the same time. If everything works fine all scratches should be gone. Considering the crack… well, I think I can’t make this disappear but was thinking about putting a band-aid over it, in order to show what he has been put through.

There are a ton more things that need to be done.. did I mention that he (from now on he is male) is constantly screaming when turned on? I am no electronics guy but maybe it has something to do with the shielding of my used powerplug (battery was missing – off course) or an old capacitor is defect. Well,  I guess I will swap the old internas with something new, like an Arduino board or roboduino. Pinter75 has done it already and the outcome looks really good. The hardest part to replace will be the missing rubber band on Omnibots foot. Maybe I can use t-molding or something similar. If you got an idea feel free to post a comment or contact me directly.

I am new to the Arduino stuff and will first up concentrate on getting him optically sane.

One link that no Omnibot owner should miss is The Old Robots.com - tons of information, manuals, schematics and and and.

So happy Robanukka…

My little eeePC had been a good companion druing the last month, but I could’t stand XP anymore. I worte all posts of our trip to Norway on it and when I finally found a hotspot to c&p it to my blog, all was gone. It is a fact, that I hate windows and windows hates me. I grew up with my Amigas and compared to windows the structures on AmigaOS were far superior to windows. Amiga is long gone and I switched immediately  to Apple whereas the whole world got those Peecees and still rings me up in the middle of the night asking me stupid questions why their computer won’t do this nor that. My default answer should be: Get a mac! But I am too helpful too just say that.

I watched those attempts to get Leopard to run on standard PC hardware for some time and was really amazed when a good friend of mine showed me his hackintosh. There’s a way to run OS X on eee but the FSB is not recognized correctly and every second on the systemc clock is 2.5 seconds in reality… try to watch a movie with this!

So I sold my eee, with a strange feeling of losing a good friend in my stomach and switched to Acer. The all new One 150xl it is and guess what: Leopard runs like a charme. I had to replace the wificard though, as there are no drivers available. Still a few things are not working properly. The most anoying is sleepmode, but I hope that those guys at insanley mac will fix it anytime soon. Right now this is ok, but in general thers’s still nothing better to get than a mac, except you are looking for a computer to twiddle around, but than you can get a pece with xp, as well.

Here are some helpful links for every Aspire One user that is fed up with XP, like me:
good instructions: http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=1505
the forum of all hackintoshs: http://www.insanelymac.com/
os x on acer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU3h_OI94l0

Next, I will have to get rid of that windows key! Stay tuned…

Yesterday, at our weekly “Herrenabend”, caos brought his brand new Asus eeePC. At first I was thinking “Nahhh.. neat, but it is just another pc” and than I learned about what can all be done with that little thing. At around midnight I hat spend about all emvening in front of that tiny screen and I just wanted to take it with me. So today, after work, I wen straight to my favorite electronic discount and grabbed one.

Actually, I am just typing this post on it, while sitting relaxed on my sofa, hargin my new fellow.

So tonight is hacking night. There are tons of thing to be tested… first of all the other operating systems like Unbuntu, WindowsXP/Vista and Mac OS X (Yesss!!!)

Meanwhile I am back at caos hq and here’s a little impression what’s going on tonight. 4 eees ready to be stripped apart and tested. What can all be done, you ask? Take a look…

Off for some testing and installing.