Butler the Robot
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Voltage Differences Cause Issues
I should be receiving it on September 3rd, 2013 so as of right now I'm on hold till then. All I have to do is run some wires connections between the two to this converter and my problem will be solved. Apparently, some others have came across this issue and have developed a board to switch between a 3.3V and 5V tolerance. Very smart idea and something that Arduino should put in place on their next board that they develop.
After this implemented into the project, hopefully by then I will have a new video to post up of the progress. I hope everyone enjoys the progress and possibly encourage someone to start their own robotic project. If you decide to take one on, use our forum to post your progress and make a blog. BizSol Systems Forums It's neat to see your progress as you go along and easy to follow up to see what you've done so far.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Silly Mistake and a New Piece Added
I wake up in this Morning to check on the batteries and they are fully charged. Perfect. Let me remind you it was late the night before and apparently I wasn't thinking straight. To get the Arduino Mega 2560 to boot up properly with external power, you need at least 7V. I only had 4.8V coming in. So I had to put this to the side till I make another run later today to get some more supplies.
While I made my late night run, I grabbed a cheap soldering iron to do some minor work here and there while I troubleshoot and get everything laid out for Butler. When I start putting the final project together, I'll get the proper tools to do the job correctly. When I ordered my wireless WiFly module, I almost got the Electret microphone to use for Butler to hear the voice commands. I soldered on three different colored cables to connect to the breadboard and adjusted my previous sketch and BitVoicer program to listen to the external microphone rather than the laptop's microphone. I wanted to get this done ASAP as for some reason the microphone on this laptop was not doing the project justice. With no issues at all, the microphone is working perfectly. I even tried it from a distance and no flaws! Once I get the external power setup, I will create a video to show the last three things done to the Butler project. Maybe tomorrow I'll have a video for you all to view.
Here's a few photos in the meantime:
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
When There's a Will, There's a Way
Now that I was finally able to overcome that obstacle, I can move on to setting up the separate power source and test uploading sketches wirelessly with the new setup. I will post my update on this once I go get some new rechargeable AA batteries to put in my AA holder that I bought.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
It's a hard knock life...
Not much of an update to give this week. I had to finish up my school work as this was the last week for these classes. Also, working on improving my career so working as much as I can to keep cash flow coming in to pay bills and survive.
With budgets, new policies, and hour cuts at work, it makes it hard to fund your hobbies you enjoy doing so much. All I can do is work with what I got at the moment. There is so much potential here but as always money puts a limit on everything that we do. In the meantime, I will be doing research and looking for new parts to get once I'm ready.
Monday, August 19, 2013
BizSol Systems Official
BizSol Systems is the official group's name developing Butler. With so much required for this project, we have been working on putting together a team to help keep up with all that is going on.
Based out of Orlando, FL, our team will be made up of all different ages and lifestyles to help develop new ideas for the future with Butler being the first project. We are currently working on our site to involve the community more in our projects and get feedback from you all as well. Thanks for reading and keep checking back daily for more updates on what's going on.
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Troubleshooting to its MAX
Now, I'm having troubles with connecting to my Belkin wireless router. I've given the right settings to the module so it can connect but something isn't adding up. I'm most likely going to do some research on what type of router I best need to use for flawless connectivity. I want to figure out though why I can not connect to current router. If I was to mainstream this product, it would need to connect to any router without any issues.
So, the new task at hand is to research wireless connectivity and the best approach to take. I've had others ask why I'm not doing Bluetooth or other forms of connectivity. The main reason is distance and being a strong wireless connection that can send lots of data if need be. Bluetooth is short range at the moment and is more expensive.
I'm not giving up on the project and have started asking questions to the community to get some feedback as not much material is out on the web for research purposes regarding what I'm trying to accomplish.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Not a Good Day
Well yesterday, 8/7/2013, I spent a good 11 hours working on the wireless connectivity of Butler. After spending all that time retracing my steps, I come to find out that I had a Dead on Arrival (DOA) part. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty upset and by the end of the day, I had a headache coming on from all the head scratching trying to figure out what I was doing wrong. So, now I have to wait for the supplier's response to see how to resolve this issue in a timely manner.
In the meantime, I'm going to work on doing a video about the Butler project. This will be about a week long project I'm assuming for what I'd like to have in the video. Thanks for reading!