iRobot published the 500 series (New Roomba) open interface specs, this is GREAT news and I’m thrilled that iRobot keeps opening up the interfaces for their fantastic robotic vacuums – Link (PDF). Related: HOW TO – Roomba Bluetooth Interface – Link. HOW TO – Make a Roomba Serial Interface – Link. iRobot 500 series – […]
This one is new to me, the OpenFire soft processor project – The OpenFire soft processor is an open source Verilog implementation of the Xilinx MicroBlaze processor. Like the MicroBlaze, the OpenFire is a 32-bit RISC processor based on the DLX architecture by Hennessy and Patterson. The OpenFire was developed by Stephen Craven, a PhD […]
The folks from Bug Labs just sent word that they’ve posted photos of their soon to be shipping open source hardware platform … BUG is a collection of easy-to-use, open source hardware modules, each capable of producing one or more Web services. These modules snap together physically and the services connect together logically to enable […]
Critter and Guitari have released their boards… …We are releasing all PCB schematic and layout files, including Gerber files for everything in the Critter Boards category. All designs are done in Cadsoft’s Eagle layout program — a free version of this program is available. This good news comes with some bad. For a variety of […]
Chris writes in – With all the chatter about open hardware lately I wanted to let you know about Surveyor Corporation. They are a very open company and provide Eagle schematics for their products including the soon to be released Blackfin based robotic controller. I hope that more companies continue to operate with an open […]
I asked Todobt for some advice on using motors with Arduninos without a motor shield, his answer was great and makes a good post to share, so here it is… – For normal motors, just about any surplus DC motor that’s rated something like “1.5VDC – 6VDC” will work. Add a transistor like a TIP120 […]
Todbot writes – The Boarduino’s small footprint made me want to see how small of a device I could whip up in an hour from some fairly complex components. So I decided to see how small the combination of a Boarduino, a Wii Nunchuck, and a hobby servo motor could be. Here’s a little video […]
