Orbduino History
Orbduino, Tech Info, History, User Stats


Updates:

12/15/2010: Congratulations to Anything25 (Double A) for being the first person to push the target and get into the Orbduino Hall of Fame
12/14/2010: The Target is here! Press and hold the target to see something special. Then leave me a note above (and I'll verify with the logs) to get you name in the Orbduino Hall of Fame. It's not easy, and you can't do it with the arm alone. Good Luck!
11/01/2010: Added more documentation/detail to the Technical Details page, also the first public release of the Orbduino Source Code!
10/27/2010: Finally got around to posting a page showing user statistics and locations. Check it out here!
10/24/2010: There's been a lot of "behind the scenes" changes lately, the most noticeable is the addition of outdoor temperature. I know, doesn't mean a lot unless you live in an obscure part of Oregon (US).  :)   -Trav
8/31/2010: Changed to a single feed with ability to choose camera, intent is to reduce overall bandwidth. I assume this isn't a big deal? Let me know...   -Trav
8/10/2010: Added ability to turn off either camera view off/on to improve bandwidth usage/lag time.  Thanks to Rabbit67890 for the suggestion.
8/7/2010: The long awaited second camera is now in play, that should help with the perspective/depth issue!  Let me know if you see any issues. Thanks to Maxxy and Marky for the test drives!
8/1/2010: Completed some long needed maintenance. Did some cleanup on the base and finally put the brand new arm in to action, Enjoy!  The second camera has shipped and should be here next weekend.  :)
7/9/2010: The move is complete, the Orbduino now has it's own large closet and is located about 20 miles from where it was. You can't tell from the cam, but it's not sitting up off the ground and is much more stable & accessible. This will be a good foundation for what lies ahead...

05/15/2010: Orbduino 2.3
 Single user lock for arm control with 45 second timeout.
Two HP TIL311 Hexadecimal displays added for lockout timer
Switched to Ethernet Library update by Brett from Rogue Robotics. This was a HUGE help and
      solved problems with losing communication and obtaining IP addresses for the
      single user lockout feature.  Thank you Brett!



 05/09/2010: Orbduino 2.2
Added a simple chat/message engine to the (hosted) web page. Highly leveraged from this: Most Simple Ajax Chat Room
 
05/02/2010: Orbduino 2.1
Added main scene lighting control. Just a solid state relay for now, hope to have dimming control eventually.

04/25/2010:  Orbduino 2.0
The beast is growing! I started with a search for the most hackable looking "toy" robotic arm.  I ordered it from Amazon,
built the kit, played with it for a day or two, then began hacking!  There are lots of directions to go from here: Drop a block
in a certain cup to make something happen in the scene, Make the orb the color of the block being held, etc, etc.  If anyone
has other ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Hardware set:
	* Seeeduino Mega w/ Atmel ATmega1280 Microcontroller
	* Owi Kit Robotic Arm Edge (Hacked for direct control of direction and speed)
	* Custom motor control proto-board based on the L293D Quad Half-H driver
	* Custom I/O proto-board (Slider pots, buttons, LEDs) for manual/local control
	* Custom power distribution proto-board based on the V7805-1000 Switching Vreg
	* Arduino Ethernet Shield
	* Dallas/Maxim DS18B20 Digital Thermometer
	* Apogee Color Changing Ambient Light Orb CLB2U (Hacked for direct PWM control)
	* Panasonic BL-C131A Wireless Network Camera
02/28/2010:  Orbduino 1.0
What is Orbduino you might ask?  Well, you could call it interactive art, but it's mostly just me playing around with various 
hardware and writing software for it. My thought is that this can eventually be more of a "scene" where the user can control
aspects such as motion and light. Perhaps a bell to ring and drop a treat for the cat? I also thought about hacking a robotic
arm and setting that out with some blocks.
Hardware set: 
	* Arduino Duemilanove w/ Atmel 328 Microcontroller
	* Arduino Ethernet Shield
	* Dallas/Maxim DS18B20 Digital Thermometer
	* Xiamen Ocular GDM1602K 16x2 LCD Display
	* Apogee Color Changing Ambient Light Orb CLB2U (Hacked for direct PWM control)
	* Panasonic BL-C131A Wireless Network Camera

Contact: Trav