I had almost left this un-published . For last year robocon me and my friend had made one of these pick and place robots. The total cost i estimate was around 3.5K per robot. At the contest we encountered robots that were made for a Lakh of money. If you take up the cost to performance ratio i think We really were at the top 
Watch our test robot.
Madan
Call it internet controlled robot,Telerobot,Control vai TCP/IP,Home automation via internet. Remote robotic contol.. etc etc.
l draft this the moment i’m free
coming soon…. keep a watch!!!
Interupt: Well that literally means stopping you from doing something? well yes that’s precisely what an interrup signal does.When a processor keeps working on some program,You may execue a small emergency chunk of program in case you get a signal form a specified source to a pin.
This can be done by polling But will involve a lotof your processor time.Thus you dont spnd time looking for the signal all the time, instead you set that pin for an interrupt option. So your procesor will keep processing any other program without looking for the signal,But once there is a signal your program will be automatically redirected to a funcation called “INTERRUPT”.
In PIC16F877A the most basic interrupt in on Pin RB0.
The following program will make the interrupt program to execute once there is a pulse at pin RB0. The interrupt at raising edge or falling edge is configurable using software approach.
————————————————————————————-
unsigned short count,read;
char num[10];
void interrupt()
{
TRISC=0×00;
PORTC=0xFF;
INTCON.F1 = 0; /* clear the int flag */
}
void main ( )
{
count=0;
TRISB = 0xFF; /* set up port b */
PORTB = 0×03; /* turn off all and any LED’s on port b */
INTCON.f7=0×01;
OPTION_REG.F6 = 1; /* interrupt on rising edge */
INTCON.f5=0×01;
while(1);
}
————————————————————————————
NOTE: Any program here might have a problem with “X” dou to formatting on wordpress. they all are capital X.
The above program will make all pins of PORTC high once there is interrupt signal from some sensor (say) . Once the interrupt is executed ,the procesor will continue what it was working on prior to the interrupt.
Hey now this should be tried.Its fun and a very usefull tool.
Try it!
-Madan
Well it has been one of my long wish to make a Mp3 player for myself using a PIC. I had seen projects online dealing with voice recording on PIC to one that i hit today which talks about Mp3 player using a PIC. Well i dont own one so possibly i am inclided to make one. I Think i’l feel more comfortable listening to the only song in my Home – Made MP3 player than listening to many on a branded one.
Well this guy on this page called Jesper Hansen <jesperh@telia.com>has just put up a whole site calle YAAP on his Homemade Mp3 Player . I am amused as his copyright statement on one of his earliest codes on the site dates “Copyright (C) 1989, 1991“
I wonder Tehno guys just do it that fast. Alrite now i felt it was time for me to explore.
Soon i want to start working with this and come op with a beautiful INVOBOT Mp3 player!! Hmmm sounds too good already.
Well jesper has done all those with a AVR and DRAMs and since I Love PICs we’l have perfect cool PIC based MP3 player here.
Meanwhile i wanted to look into interfacing a DRAM and PIC. I found that too there and i thought i shall just pull it up here so that i don’t forget it later. I have not yet tinkered and explored those codes but its open for all. anyone try it and comment b4 me!!
I thing the code is pretty simple and you can get the explanation of this particular code and things on the site from where i hooked this up. The text is pretty small so make sure u feel comfortable reading it by pressing ctrl+”+” (i mean kepp control button pressed and press the “+” button to increase text size).
Cheers
Madan
Hi have you head about flying mechanical bird. Have u thot of a flyng machine that can flap its wings and fly high?? watch a video here and believe it.
This is a Flying machine built by Mr.Nanda Kumar (madrasnandu@yahoo.com) . The flying machine (ornithopter)has won him limca world record and lot of credits. He is my good friend and an amazing electronics enthusiast.Its a eight minute video . Just watch it (Its worth it!!).
This is a metal bird that can fly by flapping its wings. It is hieghts of accuracy!! it is remote controlled to fly up/down and right/left. cheers to him. He claims to be able to make a flying machine like that with a dimension of 6 inches which can make it a world record!!
He currently holds his record for India’s First Ornithopter
You can now contact Mr. Nandakumar at madrasnandu@yahoo.com and get more guidance about it.
-Madan
This is my maze solving robot project which worked out pretty well. I have put up my whole project report that i submitted to my college but i have chucked out the exact code. if i get a good response and demans then i will surely give you all the exact working code of my project.
If you are interested only to learn about the algorithm and not worried about the design pl skip to the section 5 of this text.
1 INTRODUCTION
Atonomous robots have wide reaching applications.From Bomb sniffing to finding humans in wreckage to home automation.Major problems facing designers are power and reliable sensing mechanism and unfamiliar terrain obotic competitions have inspired engineers for many years.Competitions are held all around the world based on
autonomous robots. One of the competions with the richest history is micromouse . The micromouse competitions have existed for almost 30 years in the United States and it has changed little since its inception. The goal of the contest is simple. The robot must navigate from a corner to the center as quickly as possible.The actual final score
of the robot is primarily a function of the total time in the maze and the time of the fastest run.The specificatons for the micromouse event is specified in appendix A.
The Design incorporates various techniques to simplify the approach and make an effecient automated robot.
2 MICROMOUSE DESIGN AND HARDWARE
The Major criteria of micromouse design remained the size of the robot which will allow smooth 90-degree turns and U-turns possible. After detailed analysis regarding the maximum dimensions of the robot the initial dimensions to start with were
finalised as 10cm x 10cm.
The Micromouse hardware required two stages.
1. Choosing the type of motor
2. Building the chasis
Read more…
Well came accross this project. Actually aims at making a lawn mover to get your lawns cut automatically , but i don’t think it came out pretty right. Still gives begginers a pretty good idea of an automated bot.have a look.
I guess most of you would have read about HAM radio operators. Not yet?? well its actually a hobby persued by many around the but often is one that makes a difference especially during emergency and disaster situations.
By becoming a HAM You will actually build your own amateur transmitter and reciever and will be able to communicate with other HAMS around the world. I am not a HAM yet but will soon be one hopefully.
I went through the details about joining and things that you can do being a HAM… Man truly worth it. Becoming a HAM is not too difficula a job. Just write few tests and learn a bit and get your Tx trasmit and communicate. The most interesting thing that i came accross was Connection you HAM to your COMPUTER (Hmmm) and talking to astronaut. What… talking to an astronaut. Ha he doesn live nextdoor. Chill even i felt so. Well you can as there’s a HAM up there on the sattelite and astronaut there do communicate to HAMs on earth the claim.Cool. Now i reali wana know how rhis is done and get going!!
You must read more here:
http://www.hamradioindia.org/amateur_radio/index.php#amateurradio
You can join the forum there and discuss the issues. Its good and Fun
–Madan
P.S:-
–>If you are a HAM around chennai please le me know bout you,I need to get a better idea about what you do!! Mail me at madankumar.t@gmail.com
Well Gates doesn’t want you to make any bot to count his money nor his associates around the world. The contest is to make a bot for MSN messenger. Hey wait did MSN sound to you like an internet messaging service.. yeah you are right. Then what Bot to make??well you’l understand if you do this.
–>Open you msn messenger: all window versions will have one installed.
–> now if you donot have a hotmail id get it registered (you’l need it anyway to comtest) then once you have signid in into MSN messenger with your Id just add these contacts:
samplebot@hotmail.com
secretarybot@hotmail.com
alice@worldofalice.com
cox@mamute.org
recipesfinder@hotmail.com
processbot@hotmail.com
xboxRobot@hotmail.com
santa.robot@hotmail.com
dubyabot@hotmail.com
chat@insidemessenger.com
and talk to them!!!
–>Hi, found them talking stange?? Well don’t get surprised , They are the robots microsoft wants us to make.
I wondered if this was about robots at all ?? do you. (leave a comment about this. A topic to be diuscussed) . Wellthis is a contest that can fetchyou upto 20 laks in INR and $40,000 if you win. Microsoft gives lnk to three robot builders to write up you code. suggestions of the extent to which they would want that robot to work for you to make your winning chance better is all discussed in their webpage. Link upto them here
http://www.robotinvaders.com/main/default.aspx
Try it out. I found that the best part in creating it is to decide your response for various question. I wrote up one to make the user say “sorry” before the bot ever responded to him, he he he… it was FUN. i crated and tested it only on my computer and not on the network. i downloaded the ‘Conversagent™ BuddyScript SDK‘. but will soon download Akonix® L7 Builder™ SDK but its about a 102Mb 
.
You’l have to download the IDE’s and create your bot and set it up in a place which they provide at http://www.improvcenter.com/ and then submit to the contest. Registration essentiually means submiting your dfinished robot.
Try it out . Its open for students an professionals and just about anybody, Who knows you can chill out with some cash at the end of it.
–Madan
P.S:-
–>In case you are contestint pls comment it here so that you can help people who do not know what to do further once they are stuck somewhere!!
–>I personally have nothing with MSN or microsoft but i think this contest is just about a great stategy to get more people sign up with MSN and popularise the IDE’s.Hey don’t get suspicious, do try it.
This is one cool software that very robotic engineer must have. All credits to Konstantin Zeldovich . Its working is quite simple,just connect the probe to your sound card and watch the wave on your monitor. Its an amazin oscilloscope for budding roboteers than buyin a 20Ghz oscilloscope for about 20K which you'l nerver be using that high frequencies.For most newbie application the range that it offers that's 20Hz – 20Khz is quite enough. it gives variable gains, XY mode. and then its so handy and comes in a small ZIP package.
Is this not enough to try this FREE software?? well then have a look at this
Trust me its awesome. Follow the link for downloading it above and make your personal oscilloscope in seconds.
—Madan
P.S:- It comes along with a readme file and a 55kb help file.Just have look
