Current Projects
ArtBot
This robot is made from various components I had laying around plus the odd bit of computer salvage donated by Access Space.
ArtBot wanders around, dips his brush and paints what he feels. As you can see from the paint on the wheels, ArtBot is in his blue period at the moment.
To see pictures of ArtBot at work check out this Flickr set.
Arduino
Not wanting to get left behind, I've jumped on the Arduino microcontroller bandwagon. Physical computing is really floating my boat after studying information systems this year. Anyhow, the first thing I made was a LED light chaser. Learning the C based language is not too difficult but I don't find the syntax as easy as other people say it is.
Wow, all that code just to do what a 555 timer (the greatest invention since round wheels) and a few bits from the junk box can do.
I guess I will have to learn how to make something useful like a robot with strobing eyes and plays the theme tune to Knight Rider.
CAD
After spending some time looking at open source CAD programs for designing electronic circuits I found TinyCAD and KiCAD to be the easiest to get going with. KiCAD is obviously the more commercially orientated but TinyCAD is exactly what I was looking for.
It sticks to just doing drawings but can export to circuit board layout programs and realtime simulation, if that's what you want. One of the best things I've found is the ability to quickly modify symbols and export them to your own libraries. I've used it to redraw all the circuits on this site.
