Hacking a ridiculously cheap laser.

I bought a couple of really cheap lasers off of eBay for a project I wanted to try at codeclub (Mission impossible style burglar detector using LDRs and lasers). They were about £1.50 each from China. Like this one but cheaper.

They were not easy to use in the chassis they came in, having a momentary push button switch, and eating batteries, so I set about taking one apart.

The chassis needed a bit of hacksaw work to split, and then the controlling chip and laser came out as one. I jammed on the switch with a cable tie, and taped the +ve wire to the body with insulating tape. The spring on the chip is the -ve:

Not quite sure of the power requirements but I think I would power it through a ULN2003 and an external battery supply if I was to include it in a project. Claims to be 1mW with 3V input. My multimeter read 25mA being supplied from the arduino 3.3V pin.

Not sure what project to include it in.

Robot Chassis - PoliceBot project

My son and I spent a bit of time this evening trying to get a robot chassis working.

My daughter and I built it a week or so ago:

This evening my son and I had a go at programming it to do something:

We used my new favourite programming tool - ardublock:

My son found some blue and white LEDs in my kit box, so we decided to make it into a police car.

It was really easy to get going.

I had a few problems with dodgy connections so we ended up soldering the power connections from the battery to the motors.

The next step is to activate the ultrasonic sensor on the front of the chassis.

Dodgy HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Distance Sensors

I've had a few issues trying get ultrasonic sensors working recently.

I'd had no problems previously when I'd used Flowol software to get one working with the boat project, so initially I suspected it was me trying to use Ardublock that was the problem, or just lack of skilled wiring on my part.

Turns out it was 4 dodgy HC-SR04 I'd bought through Amazon from China.

I built the circuit and tried the Newping sample sketch on one of the Amazon HC-SR04s. No reading on the serial monitor when using the Newping (well actually a continous zero reading)

I tried each of the sensors in turn, and as soon as I put an older SR04 I had lying around in the circuit, I immediately got good numbers in.

God to isolate the problem, but sucks to have to either return the parts or write them off and buy more.

At least knowing I had a good sensors let me try out the Ardublock program again, this time with some success, although it wouldn't read above 20cm.

Arduino with Bluetooth and ArduBlock

My daughter has a holiday project to build a robot, so we are adding Arduino controlled features.

I've tried to get bluetooth working with the arduino before with the boat project. But failed for whatever reason.

I recently discovered Ardublock, which is great way to get a program working without getting bogged down in the typing. It tops S4A because you can upload to the Arduino, and see the actual code it is creating:

This worked well and had the pin 13 LED blinking.

I attached the HC-06 bluetooth chip to the arduino and loaded up the Bluetooth Serial Controller App.

Once the HC-06 was paired (easy to do if you're used to pairing speakers and stuff regularly) the app was able to send '5' to the Arduino and get the LED blinking.

Now do do a few more adventurous things with the robot.