Cat vs. Bubblesteen

Bubblesteen Bubble Machine

Is it a 3D Spherical Atmosphere Encapsulated Phosphorous Printer?

Is it a CNC Anti gravity Transparent Orb Machine?

No! Its The Bubblesteen Bubble Machine! The spherical miracle that kids and cats have been waiting for! It comes complete with edge detection(when a bubble hits an edge it pops, thus the edge has been detected).
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I had an Adafruit motor shield for an Arduino micro controller sitting around for a couple of months and started playing around with it when I came up with this idea. I saw a lot of tilt and pan stuff for servos and web cams and thought what can I do that would be really cool and really stupid at the same time.

Around the time of this project, I started to understand programming and writing code much better then ever before. Yes, I know to a programmer my code is really simple, hacked, hobbled, and not very elegant. But it mostly works. Below are some construction photos and I'll try to post the code if I can figure out how.

The Code for the Bubblesteen (not formated properly, but its the jist of it)

#include afmotor.h

#include servo.h

/*servo pan tilt using motor shield from Adafruit. Separate motor with
propellar uses its own simple power source for this sketch.

By Bernard Katz 4/24/10
www.bernardkatzglass.com
*/

Servo panServo;
Servo tiltServo;
AF_DCMotor motor(4, MOTOR12_1KHZ); // create motor #4, 1 KHZ

byte pos = 0; // variable to store starting servo position

void setup() {
panServo.attach(9); //pan servo on pin 9
tiltServo.attach(10); //tilt servo on pin 10
panServo.write(90); //added this for second sketch
tiltServo.write(90); // hoping to halt wild start up swing
motor.setSpeed(230); // set dc motor speed to 254 of 0-255 range
}

void loop() {
for(pos = 0; pos < pos =" 0;" pos =" 90;">= 1; pos -= 1) { // tilt servo raises and levels off
tiltServo.write(pos);
delay(15);
}
for(pos = 180; pos >=1; pos -= 1) { // pan servo swings wand around towards fan
panServo.write(pos);
delay(15);
}

motor.run(FORWARD); //turn on dc motor

delay(3000); // pan servo hold at fan for a couple of seconds

Servo refresh(); //refresh and begin again

motor.run(RELEASE); // dc motor to stop
}

Touch Circuit

This is a simple touch circuit and relay. I have been playing around with various touch circuits and I like the fact that this one has only one touch plate for on and off. I did not want to use a micro controller for a touch circuit to keep it cheap and simple. Eventually when I figure out how to solder surface mount components, I can use touch specific IC for reliability and keep the component count as low as possible.

There is a shameless plug for my studio in the touch circuit video below, sorry

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Sharpie Bot

I has been awhile since I have updated my blog. I have been doing a lot of book learning and not as many side projects. Though some aspects of these side projects have been spilling over into the glass shop stuff. I saw this in Make magazine by Tod E. Kurt, one of my physical computing heroes, at a time when I wanted to explore servo motors. The hardest part of this project was modifying the servo motors for continuous rotation. They are impossibly small and I killed a couple until I found the right pliers. Anyway, here is my version which is not far from Tod's version. One day when I get the time, I will play with the code a little more to make it do something more interesting.


Video of Sharpie Bot below

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