Next move......

I have now widened the template and altered a few minor items, there may well be more to follow but please let me know via a comment if you like or dislike any changes.

Changes in the pipeline

Several changes will be happening to this blog in the next few months. The first is the change of name as now seen above. The old name changed when I moved on from just Arduino to Raspberry Pi as well. Now I am also taking an interest in the Cubieboard I decided that just adding the new product to the name was a board too far. So, after a moment of epiphany  yesterday evening, we now have the name of Tech That!. I won't apologize for the pun as I have loved them all my life and this was just the opportunity I was looking for to insert another one into my life. The second change should happen soon, the old icon will disappear and a new one will arrive. This is only a stopgap until I am able to think of something more suitable than a caricature of me. The third change I would like to make is a bit more fundamental, as I know that a lot of people who read this blog don't have a modern widescreen monitor. Since it's beginnings, this blog has always catered for standard screen monitors. However, with such a lot of new information available, I would like to make use of a different template in order to maximize how much can be seen without scrolling down. If you have any strong concerns about this please contact me as I would like to take this step with your agreement. 

So, to restate the obvious, this  blog now covers Arduino, Raspberry Pi and Cubieboard products and may well also take on other home and educational products as time passes. As an example, I am currently playing with EL wire and hope to be able to interface it with an Arduino in order to produce a copy of a neon sign.

As always, if you would like to contribute to this site please email me and we can work it out.

English: Diagram of electroluminescent wire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Close up of El-Wire of a variety of colors (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Comin' up to speed again...............

It's been a while and I'm sorry for that but life has been..............complicated for the past few months. I'm hoping that it might return to normality now. Since my post about the Cubieboard, I have played with it a bit and begun to realise it's potential. In the same way that the Raspberry Pi will never replace an Arduino, the Cubieboard will never replace the Raspberry Pi. They are different animals and have very different capabilities. I have spent a couple of days playing with some Adafruit Flora RGB LEDs and most impressive they are. In addition, the software is so easy to write for very clever results. I am also currently playing with some EL Wire on Sally's behalf with some thoughts to making an illuminated logo for her.

And now.........The Cubieboard!

I have been away for a while and then began a painful interlude with my back. I am, however, mostly back to the task in hand. I found, by a very strange route, a new board that seemed to promise more than anything else yet tried. So I bought one. The supplier is Cool Components and The Cubieboard is the board. It is small, well made, inexpensive and very powerful for the price. It arrives with Android 4.1.1 pre-installed and  runs straight out of the box. Imagine a Raspberry Pi that is capable of almost everything that a smaller PC can do and you have the right idea.

Yes, that is a sata connection you can see. What you cannot see is that this board also has a line in and headphone out capability as well. Click on the photo to take a closer look.

It's late, and I'm very tired, but........................

I finally persuaded my sketch to run correctly. I now have my two TagBot 3s reacting to obstacles and 'bouncing' when they can't move forward. I'm using the new type of IR detector that simply outputs HIGH when it detects something at a pre-set distance. Coupled with the Hub-ee wheels,this is a very self contained and simple mechanical set up and the script becomes almost as simple too. The basic sketch is as below, the various movements are in functions (forward and bounceL in this instance). Now I have the basic system working to my satisfaction, I will begin to refine the functions first and the loop next. It goes without saying that the sketch at present is very crude and not much more than a proof of method but I would ask you to remember that I am teaching myself this language as I go from books that don't always explain what I need to have explained so I am working on a hit and miss method of writing my code. Nonetheless,I am learning!

#include <HUBeeBMDWheel.h>

  HUBeeBMDWheel leftWheel;
  HUBeeBMDWheel rightWheel;
  int leftSpeed = 0, rightSpeed = 0;
  int outputPin = 7;
  int inputPin = 4;
  int val = HIGH;
void setup()
{
  pinMode(outputPin,OUTPUT);
  pinMode(inputPin,INPUT);
  leftWheel.setupPins(8,11,9);
  rightWheel.setupPins(12,13,10);
  leftWheel.setDirectionMode(1);
  rightWheel.setDirectionMode(0);
}
  void loop()
{
  val = digitalRead(inputPin);
  digitalWrite(outputPin,val);

if (val =HIGH)
{
  forward();
}
else (val = LOW);
bounceL();

}

void forward()
{
   leftWheel.setMotorPower(150);
   rightWheel.setMotorPower(150);
   delay(5000);
   leftWheel.setMotorPower(0);
   rightWheel.setMotorPower(0);
}

void bounceL()
{
  leftWheel.setMotorPower(-50);
  rightWheel.setMotorPower(-50);
  delay(2500);
  leftWheel.setMotorPower(-50);
  rightWheel.setMotorPower(50);
  delay(2500);
  leftWheel.setMotorPower(0);
  rightWheel.setMotorPower(0);
}

If you have got this far and understand what I am doing, you will also have noticed that there is at least one line of code here that is unnecessary. It's a hang over from some earlier testing and will be removed before I produce the next version.