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Month: March 2009

NhamNham

Published by Silveira on 31 March, 2009

A work under progress. A first monster for a big set of monster I want to create. This one is called NhamNham.

nhamnham animoted

NhamNham lives in forests and swamps and can be quite aggressive atacking with his forehead horn.

nhamnham

Here in this picture they organized a attack to a village and are been repealed by soldiers.

nhamnham atacking

My Free Tileset, version 8

Published by Silveira on 29 March, 2009

One more version of the my free tileset for game development. This little world is beautifully growing, now towards medieval themes. Now is already possible to imagine a typical day in a little rpg village:

tiny rpg village

And here the tileset, eighth version:

free tileset version 8

Changelog:

  • Medieval straw roof house and variations with and without signs, window, chimney and flowers.
  • Signs for weapons, potions and armor store and for hotel.
  • More vegetations.
  • A dirt road.

CEJUG Podcast #2

Published by Silveira on 18 March, 2009 
cejug podcast java
[audio:http://cejug.podomatic.com/enclosure/2009-03-17T08_20_43-07_00.mp3]

O Igo Coelho recebe neste episódio eu e  o Amaury Brasil,  falamos sobre o que é o CCT, PUJ e os temas do próximo encontro dia 23 de março de 2009 na UNIFOR. Apresentando o LWUIT com Daniel Valente e Introdução a programação em Java para a TV Digital com Amaury Brasil.

podcast

Fotos da gravação lá na Fortes.

Parabéns ao Igo Coelho mais uma vez pela iniciativa e a todos que contribuíram para fazer mais esse episódio do CEJUG Podcast acontecer. ;D

BumbaBot-1

Published by Silveira on 16 March, 2009

I got a simple motor from a broken domestic printer. It’s a Mitsumi m355P-9T stepping motor. Any other common stepping motor should fits. You can find one in printers, multifunction machines, copy machines, FAX, and such.

bumbabot v01

With a flexible cap of water bottle with a hole we make a connection between the motor axis and other objects.

bumbabot v01

bumbabot v01

With super glue I attached to the cap a little handcraft clay ox statue.

bumbabot v01

It’s a representation from a Brazilian folkloric character Boi Bumbá. In some traditional parties in Brazil, someone dress a structure-costume and dances in circular patterns interacting with the public.

776513346_c31db6843b_m

2246467684_49164d3397_m
Photos by Marcus Guimarães.

Controlling a stepper motor is not difficult.  There’s a good documentation on how to that on the Arduino Stepper Motor Tutorial. Basically it’s about sending a logical signal for each coil in a circular order (that is also called full step).

full step

Animation from rogercom.com.

stepper motor diagram

You’ll probably also use a driver chip ULN2003A or similar to give to the motor more current than your Arduino can provide and also for protecting it from a power comming back from the motor. It’s a very easy find this tiny chip on electronics or automotive  stores or also from broken printers where you probably found your stepped motor.

Arduino Stepper Motor UNL2003A

With a simple program you can already controlling your motor.

// Simple stepped motor spin
// by Silveira Neto, 2009, under GPLv3 license
// http://silveiraneto.net/2009/03/16/bumbabot-1/
int coil1 = 8;
int coil2 = 9;
int coil3 = 10;
int coil4 = 11;
int step = 0;
int interval = 100;
 
void setup() {
  pinMode(coil1, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(coil2, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(coil3, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(coil4, OUTPUT);
}
 
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(coil1, step==0?HIGH:LOW);
  digitalWrite(coil2, step==1?HIGH:LOW);
  digitalWrite(coil3, step==2?HIGH:LOW);
  digitalWrite(coil4, step==3?HIGH:LOW);
  delay(interval);
  step = (step+1)%4;
}


Writing a little bit more generally code we can create function to step forward and step backward.

My motor needs 48 steps to run a complete turn. So 360º/48 steps give us 7,5º per step. Arduino has a simple Stepper Motor Library but it doesn’t worked with me and it’s also oriented to steps and I’d need something oriented to angles instead. So I wrote some routines to do that.

For this first version of BumbaBot I mapped angles with letters to easy the communication between the programs.

motor angle step control

Notice that it’s not the final version and there’s still some bugs!

// Stepped motor control by letters
// by Silveira Neto, 2009, under GPLv3 license
// http://silveiraneto.net/2009/03/16/bumbabot-1/
 
int coil1 = 8;
int coil2 = 9;
int coil3 = 10;
int coil4 = 11;
 
int delayTime = 50;
int steps = 48;
int step_counter = 0;
 
void setup(){
  pinMode(coil1, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(coil2, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(coil3, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(coil4, OUTPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}
 
// tells motor to move a certain angle
void moveAngle(float angle){
  int i;
  int howmanysteps = angle/stepAngle();
  if(howmanysteps<0){
    howmanysteps = - howmanysteps;
  }
  if(angle>0){
    for(i = 0;i<howmanysteps; i++){
      step(i%4);
      delay(delayTime);
    }
  }else{
    for(i=0;i<howmanysteps;i++){
      backstep(i%4);
      delay(delayTime);
    }
  }
}
 
// tells motor to move to a certain angle
void moveToAngle(float angle){
  moveAngle(angle-actualAngle());
}
 
// actual stepper motor angle
float actualAngle(){
  return step_counter*stepAngle();
}
 
// angle made by each step
float stepAngle(){
  return 360.0/steps;
}
 
// backward step
void backstep(int coil){
  digitalWrite(coil1, (coil==3)?HIGH:LOW);
  digitalWrite(coil2, (coil==2)?HIGH:LOW);
  digitalWrite(coil3, (coil==1)?HIGH:LOW);
  digitalWrite(coil4, (coil==0)?HIGH:LOW);
  step_counter--;
}
 
// forward step
void step(int coil){
  digitalWrite(coil1, (coil==0)?HIGH:LOW);
  digitalWrite(coil2, (coil==1)?HIGH:LOW);
  digitalWrite(coil3, (coil==2)?HIGH:LOW);
  digitalWrite(coil4, (coil==3)?HIGH:LOW);
  step_counter++;
}
 
void loop() {
  byte val;
  if(Serial.available()){
    val = Serial.read();
    switch (val) {
      case 'A': moveToAngle(  0); break;
      case 'B': moveToAngle( 45); break;
      case 'C': moveToAngle( 90); break;
      case 'D': moveToAngle(135); break;
      case 'E': moveToAngle(180); break;
      case 'F': moveToAngle(225); break;
      case 'G': moveToAngle(270); break;
      case 'H': moveToAngle(315); break;
      case 'I': backstep(1); backstep(0); break;
      case 'J': step(0); step(1);   break;
    }
    Serial.print(val);
  }
}

In another post I wrote how create a Java program to talk with Arduino. We’ll use this to send messages to Arduino to it moves. 

captura_de_tela-bumba01-netbeans-ide-65

[put final video here]

To be continued… :)