Day 8 - Evaluate hacking toy and 555timer, Oscilloscopes and Servos

While we are doing the  555timer handout
Professor mason needed to evaluate our first project, Hacking a toy

Overall, the score of my robot was pretty high
and I'm really surpised



Later, we were introduced a new chip, the 555 timer

It a very comment chip that it is still using in these modern day

The function of this chip is just control the timing of the output


Follow the schematic

After you are done with it
we replace either R1 or R2 with a 10K pot
and you will get

Later, we change the LED to a sounder
If the LED flashes too fast, we were not able to observed by our eye, but we can observed by the ear

Next, we are going to learn how to use an oscilloscope
After finishing the basic learning function of the oscilloscope

We need to connect the oscilloscope probe to the 555 circuit at pin 3 and another end at the negative leg of the sounder

we are suppose to get this reading on the oscilloscope

and here is the video for changing the pot effect the oscilloscope

Day 7 - Hacking the toy

Day 7

It is a simple day
We were just need to finish our first individual project

For mine toy, a music talking toy
I just need to learn how does the sounder work and connect to the circuit

Project 1 : Toy Hacking

The purpose of this project is to combine all the techniques which we learned from the previous classes

The main goal of the toy need to be
1. Control by the microcontroller
2. Need to have some forms of input from user to toy
3. Using software to control the general movement of the toy


Here is my toy

For the toy, I am using a PC with a serial port connect to the microcontroller to control the movment of the toy
I also make the sounder connect to the microcontroller so I can play the music


With the serial input mode of the microcontroller, I am able to send a letter to the microcontroller and it can response the input with a certain action that I programed such as playing a music with action of the toy at the same time
I can also seperate the movement so the toy can either just play the music or just have some kind of action


Unfortuentely, the toy I have has two motoer, but for some reason the motor that controls the body movement does not work
So, I am only able to control the mouth movement, which is open or close


I also add one song that is not build-in in the microcontroller

Day 6 - Interfacing to a Microcontroller and Hacking a Toy

Yesterady, we learned about how to use and how does a microcontroller do

today, we change a little bit on the circuit board

this time we use a 200mA incandescnet bulb instead of the LED

It took me a while to figure out how it works
I switch the direction of the transistor, and that cuase the transistor got really hot after letting the light up

after this, we were introduced a more powerful transistor so we can use the circuit for our hacking toy

we just took out the light build, and it will become like this

now we just need to hack the toy
the main goal of hacking a toy is to find the wires for the motor and extended so we can control the motor in the toy

after putting the wires into the circuit board, we were able to control the motin of the motor no

Day 5 - Introduction to Microcontrollers and Disect toy

What is a microcontoller?

A microcontroller is like small computer that was made on a cheap
It is a low-cost circuit that contains many functions such as memory, processing units, and in/out put in a single unit

For the circuit we are going to make today
we need
1. PicAXE 08m(PIC 12F683)
2. BreadBoard
3. Wires
4. Femal Din9(serial) connector with wire soldered on
5. 2 LEDs
6. 2 resistors b/w 200-500 ohms
7. 5V power supply
8. 10K Ohm & 22K Ohm resistor

Here is the schematic

After building it
you should get

The purpose of the Din9 connector is so we can format the data inside fo the microcrontroller by using a computer
here is the baic lines we should type
mian:
high 1
pause 1000
low 1
pause 1000
goto main

the 1 means output 1
pause 1000 means pause for 1 second since it's measure in milisecond
high and low means turn on and off
goto main just make the program to run again

We can also upgrade this circuit into multi-LED

Here are the details of pins of the M series microcontroller

 There are also other commands we can use to make the program better
such as the syombols, Comments & White-Space
you can type
symbol LED =1

this mean we change the name of the output1 into LED
when we type in the program we type LED instead of 1
this makes the program look for readable

the Comments ;
allows us to type describtion on the side and the program will not run it
high LED ;LED on


 Using Digital Inputs
Common digital sensor are
1. microswitches
2. push and rocker switches
3. reed switches

adding this part to the circuit
Result

we can control the light to start to light up for 1 second and shut untill we press the bottom again


Next step, we will change the switches into a LDR (light Dependent Resistor)
follow the schematic shown below

we will get

Day 4 -Transistor Switching and Build a Logic Porbe

The first 20 min are trying to finish the squarebot

Doesn't have battery on

After finish, we just put the kit and the bot aside and move onto the next part, transistors

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Transistor Switching

We had introduced new surplus call transistor

A transistor can switch a flow of electricity


After learning the function of transistor, we were told to build a circuit  as shown below

And the final look is

And we did some change on the circuit
we took out one of the resistor and the pushbottom and put two wires in
now we use our fingertip to work as the push bottom

_________________________________


Now we were told to build a logi probe
A logic probe can determine the logic states at a particular point in an elctronic circuit
We can buy one like this for $20

But we also can build one by ourself for a very resonable price

first, we need to build the circuit on the breadboard first
and here are the schematic

This one is not a very difficult circuit to build since we had some practice on the transistor before

After familiar the circuit, we moved to the fabrication room to do the soldering

It took me a while to figure out the picture which show how the connection goes
But, I did figure out and finish the logic probe!!

Unfortunately, my positive wire(the red one) is too short, so I need to go back to get a longer one and solder it

Since we were in the fabrication room, we also made a part for the next project
A DB9 connector

Day 3 - Switches and Relays and squarebotInstructions

We started with introducing switches

Basically, switches has three pins
When you use the switch, it connects the center terminal with one of the outer terminals.

When the switch is pressed, the light goes off

There are many different kinds of switches 

some require wires and some can just put into the breadboard

For the push bottom switches, there are two kinds

Off-(ON): Only have connection when you press it

ON-(OFF): Disconnect when you press it

And we always can use a multimeter to check the swtich by doing the connectivety test

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Relays

Next, we learned about what is a relay

A relay has lots of coil of wire wrapped around an iron core, when there is electricity runs throught, it will generate a magnetic force which pushes or pull a springy strip of metal around two contacts.

Inside of a relay

A is the coil
B is the lever which being pushed
C is the to pushes outward to the poles of relay,D

After learning about relays, we needed to build a relay driven LED

Schematic

The result I got

It took me a long time to figure how this thing works and actually building it

But it worth to see the light was switching in between XD

After this one, we were told to add a Capacitance so the light can switch even faster!!

Schematic and example

The result is

It didn't took me as long as last one, but still used about 10 to 15 min to figure out how to let it work

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After the relays (took me 3/4 of the class time to do it)
we were given to build the squarebot

with the introuction manual, it was going fine, but still didn't have enough time to finish it

I'll say its about 70% done, and hope it can run  LOL