The ServoCañon

Well, The ServoCañon is maybe the funniest project that I have developed.
I had always had very much interest in servos, so I finally end up buying a couple of Futaba to mess around with them.

After having programmed a fine routine for controlling a servo I got concentrated in building “something” with them.
I began joining two servos with metal pieces and screws and…, slowly the thing got in the shape of what it finally became: a servo-canyon.

The ServoCañon has three servos:
- ‘x’ axis movement
- ‘y’ axis movement
- trigger puller

The ‘trigger puller’ is just that: a servo that pulls from a spring that is tied to the trigger of a toy gun.

The ‘x’ and ‘y’ axis are controlled by means of respective potentiometers.

These potentiometers are arranged to create a home-brew Joystick made of a steel stick and a mouse’s ball.

To finish, I attached a cheap laser pointer on the gun’s tube, so I could easily aim my targets : -).

The ServoCañon draws everybody attention at once. Its nice ‘robot sound’ from the servos, its technological look, its anthropomorphic aspect, the laser …, everything is superb. There is not any genuine engineer can tear apart his eyes from it.

The final product is a very, very enjoyable toy that became quite popular at the office.
We even organized a TOP GUN contest in the breakfast during a week.

If you want to see the ServoCañon in action, there is a downloadable video at www.iearobotics.com

PIR Detector Project

I took the idea of this project on my last holidays. We were out of home for twelve days, and I set some automatic rotary switches to pretend life inside the house while we were at our vacation resort.

This, of course, is a rough try, but I think that is better than nothing.

The idea was to attach a pyroelectric detector (PIR) inside the door’s ‘surveying hole’, so when motion outside is detected it were pretended a more realistic events in the house. That is, noises, turning on-off some lights…, that’s all.

The second part of the idea was to have instant warn by mobile phone call if “too much” activity was detected by the PIR detector.

In that case, I could ask my neighbour to take a look in order to know the details of such suspicious situation.

Many mobile phones have AT-Hayes command set integrated. This means that the phone can be mastered as though it were a modem. It can be issued calls, SMSs, and other actions by sending AT commands through its serial port (when available ...).

Since I had to deal with the extended AT commands I went through all the documentation I could find on the web with regard to AT-Hayes and ‘Short Message Service’ (SMS). After a few days I became an expert : -).

The circuit is built around a PIC16F876, SMD version.

The operating method is the next:

Whenever the PIR detector detects any activity a phone call is issued to the pre-programmed telephone number.

When I receive the phone call from my 'alarm system', I hang the call so there is no cost for each of these warning calls.

If the battery of the alarm has been drained too much, a SMS with the text "LOW VOLTAGE" is sent to that pre-programmed phone number.

There is also a tilting sensor on the device for anti-tamping purposes. So, if the board is taken by any stranger the alarm sends a "PANIC!!" SMS to alert the owner.

After this , the system auto-protects itself by automatically switching off the mobile phone, and blocking the alarm.

Stockhölm

Around the middle of january (2006) I went to Stockhölm to attend a meeting at Bombardier.




It was 12ºC bellow zero, but that doesn’t kept me at the hotel.

I found spare time to take a city sightsee.
Stockhölm is a very beatiful place to go, I do reccomend it.

It is plenty of lovely places to take a coffee ...



I went to the Teknika Museum. There is a Robot Exhibition that deserves a visit.
The Teknika Museum is a very appropriate place to go with children. I missed a lot Jaime and Clara. They would have enjoyed it a lot.

Luxófono

The Luxófono is a musical electronic device.
It's a kinda Theremin stuff, but working from light instead of electric field.

It was specially designed for my beloved Gema Hassen-Bey, a performance artist.
She knows how to get the best of it, and so she has proved through many performance shows.

The device has a light sensor, a LDR (Light Dependent Resistor).
Depending on the light detected it outputs a pitch with deeper or downer frequency.

Gema process the sound with a personal computer creating wonderful effects.

Gema Hassem-Bey is now working in Onuba, an electronic flamenco group.

Reozen 

Hello everybody!

This blog is committed to show the projects that I’ve just finished, and also those which I am involved in.
I have found this to be the best and faster way to share and receive your comments.
So, enjoy your visit, and please let me know your ‘kind’ opinions :-).