Radio-Control-RC

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It’s a 360 degree multifunctional programmable sensor that has a bundle of cool features for sensing for your Maker, Robot and Kinetic art type projects.

Infrared Control Freak 360 - ROBOTmaker

The sensors is also packed with two ambient light sensors (for light tracking experiments or line following) and IR remote control functionality so it can can read and transmit Sony SIRC IR control signals.

Infrared Control Freak 360 –  ROBOTmaker

The sensor is designed to fit onto micro sized robots (50mm x 50mm) where 360 degrees of proximity sensing, ambient light sensing and basic inter-robot communication is required, such as robot swarms, robot research, robot gaming and robot sumo competitions.

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This project, called “Simple-Timer” is a programmable Timer and electronic switch with an integrated LiPo Battery Monitor that is based around a PIC microcontroller.

Simple-Timer

The “Simple-Timer” includes a fairly accurate timer that is programmable (via pushbutton) by the user and can be programmed to time a 5, 10, 15, 20,25 or 30 minute event. When the timer/switch is enabled (tap small pushbutton), the onboard LED indicates the output is active by lighting solid (the circuit also outputs the same voltage as your supply/battery voltage using a PN2222 NPN transistor or a high current MOSFET).

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An accelerometer is a device that measures non-gravitational accelerations. These are accelerations produced by mechanically accelerating the accelerometer via its casing. – Accelerometer Wikipedia

Accelerometers in Electronics

Sci-Spot.com – Accelerometer – An accelerometer is a device which measures acceleration; how fast it’s speeding up. In the past an accelerometer could be a complex, bulky piece of equipment, but in
today’s world, accelerometers are available as single ic’s and use complex microscale machining technology.

MMA7260Q is a 3-axis accelerometer from Freescale Semiconductor. This accelerometer can be used with an extension Library Mma7260q which simplifies some initialization values and tilt detection.

ADXL105 Lower-Noise Wider-Bandwidth Accelerometer – The ADXL105, a near-ideal kind of vibration sensor, eliminates significant problems with existing vibration sensors, such as piezoelectric and bulk capacitive sensors. Primary benefits derive from much lower cost, stable sensitivity as a function of frequency and temperature, ruggedness, and ease of use. Besides machine health and condition monitoring, it is particularly well suited for noise and vibration cancellation applications.

Read Full page at – Accelerometers in Electronics

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Need some help here. I want to build a cheap wheel encoder by myself. Now, my idea was to use a photodiode and a LED. What i don’t know is how to use the output from photodiode to put on a GPIO on my MCU board. Do i need some resistors or something. Aaaa, i need a high level of 5V for my GPIO. I

Read More at my page – I want to build a cheap wheel encoder by myself.

Answer

Please study Links Below

Optical Encoder Project – “Many years ago, I competed in MASLab, an MIT competition to build an autonomous robot. A year or two after that, I was on the MASLab staff, helping prepare the hardware for the year’s competition. One of the projects I worked on was an optical encoder.”

About Encoders and How to Make an Encoder Wheel

“A typical encoder uses optical sensor(s), a moving mechanical component, and a special reflector to provide a series of electrical pulses to your microcontroller. These pulses can be used as part of a PID feedback control system to determine translation distance, rotational velocity, and/or angle of a moving robot or robot part.”

Make your own rotary encoder

Make your own rotary encoder

“In the first and second post of this series you saw the basics of how to use photointerrupters. Now it’s time for practice. We make a rotary encoder. Here we take a single photointerrupter that gives us the pulses we can count.”

Make Your Own Encoders chat – “I’m starting a·dedicated·thread on the specific encoders I used on my Homebuilt platform. I had great results. A word about the encoder disks: they must be mounted PERFECTLY to achieve consistency. Perfectly flat, true, and concentric.

Incremental Optical Encoders

Here is a method for making an encoder with two sensors for your application. If you only need speed sensing, you may want to skip down to the construction section. The important variables are the radius of the circle (r), the distance between the two optical sensors (s), and the number of divisions in the wheel (d). …..

Incremental Optical Encoders

Use a photointerrupters, even from an old wheel mouse if you want or build one. Then you need a Wheel with stripes and a Schmitt Trigger Gate or Comparator