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October, 2010

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2010-10-31 10:24

Scavenging: Scanner

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by havard    in Scavenging

HP ScanJet 4500C

Why throw away things when you can keep them? Or at least get some useful parts!? :-) I recently found an old HP ScanJet 4500C which was about to be thrown away. After I had opened it and unscrewed every single screw, there was just some plastic left to get rid of. And some nice parts left for me.

The scanner included a document feeder as seen on the image above. Great, even more parts! In the end, I found two stepper motors, a two digit LCD display (with what seems to be a strange data interface), a few small IR blocking sensors, the scanning sensor, a very narrow focusing wide angle lens, lots of buttons, lots of plastic gears, and a unknown amount of screws. More details follow.

Mitsumi Stepping Motor M42SP-5

The stepping motor from the document feeder (right mote in the picture above) has the following text on its sticker:

Stepping Motor -  Mitsumi
M42SP-5        -  7.5° Step
3140-1093      -  10Ohm
T1C2522        -  Made in Taiwan

As far as I can tell from the various data sheets, it is a 24 V, 2 phase, unipolar driving stepper motor. There’s a bit of discussion about whether it has 4 or 5 wires or is bi or unipolar, however it it is difficult to tell when the controller board is mounted on top. Consensus seems to be to remove that though. The torque seems quite high, so I hope I can fit it into one of my projects.

Neocene Stepper Motor 2T4242

The second motor (to the left in the picture above) was from the scanner, moving the scanning head back and forth. As can be seen from the image above, it already has two gears neatly attached. I haven’t counted, however I’m guessing the gear ratio is more than 1:150 to the top gear. It has four wires coming out, and has the following on the sticker:

Neocene 2T424217
4 Ohm
22052201

The motor code number is explained on the Neocene web site. In this case, 2T indicates it is a PM-type stepper motor; 42 is the outer diameter; 4 is the step angle code; 2 is the hight code; and 17 is a serial number. It means it is 8.3 mm high, and has a step angle of 3.75. From the data sheet, it  is a 12 V motor with 4 Ohm resistance. The excitation is bipolar 1-2.

Penguin LCD

From the control panel of the scanner, I got a small two digit LCD. It has 9 legs, and by applying voltage to different pairs of legs, I can turn on what seems to be predefined segments of the two digits. I guess I’ll have to create the map of legs to segments, and see what I can draw. Maybe there is a more clever way to drive it. However, I don’t have any specific enough search terms to go on.

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2010-10-25 19:57

Building Robots: David Cook

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by havard    in robots

I just came across David Cook’s Robot Room. It includes several HowTos, tips & tricks. And he also has two books for sale on Amazon. I might pick up the  “Intermediate Robot Building”.

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19:49

Scavenging old computer mice

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by havard    in Arduino

Lately I’ve taken some old computer mice apart. There are a few interesting components which can be reused in there: On a ball-mouse, there are two pairs of infra-red emitters and collectors, and if there’s a scroll wheel, there’s a third set. On an optical mouse, there’s the optical CCD sensor. In addition, there are several micro-buttons, and over at the Arudino Playground, they suggest even the controller chip and PS/2 plug might be useful.

Looking at the IR sensors, I thought I’d try to make it trigger on hifi remote. I based my first tests on the excellent IR tutorial over at ladyada.net. The problem was that the sensors from the mice are not standard three-legged VCC/ground/output. Rather, as  Colin Fahey points out, the middle leg is VCC, while the two others are both output. The sensors in the mouse is in fact two detectors in the same package so the direction of movement can be determined. Makes perfect sense now, however I already melted to sensors before I found his article.

I also disassembled an optical mouse, and found the CCD sensor. Over at the EE Hompage, the have an extensive write-up on how it works. At Sprites mods, they have used the sensor as a crude scanner. Finally, Martijn The has successfully interfaced with an ADNS optical sensor using an Arduino. I guess I have another project waiting.

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2010-10-23 18:32

Arduino Shield List

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by havard    in Arduino

Jon Oxer has launched a site to catalogue all Arudino shields: Arduino Shield List (shieldlist.org). At the time of writing, there are “pin usage details for 166 shields from 70 makers, and counting!”

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09:50

Motors and robotics

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by havard    in Arduino, robots

Looking at the 12 V stepper motor at SparkFun, I came across a few other fun links. Including instructions for stepper motor wiring, a DIY surveillance camera, and an example project for the Arudino, using an EasyDriver Stepper Motor Driver. Also interesting, were the hardware suppliers: here’s some clamping shaft couplers from ServoCity, and lots more from McMaster-Carr.

Finally, I was eyeing up on of the robotics kits at SparkFun: “The POP-BOT is an Arduino compatible, mobile robotic platform. It comes complete with wheels, motors, sensors, software, documentation, etc. The POP-168’s pin-out is similar to the Arduino Stamp“.

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2010-10-21 08:54

3 TB disks are here

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by havard    in Storage, Tech

Western Digital just announced their new additions to the Green Series: 2.5 and 3 TB disks. Here’s the WD Caviar Green, 3 TB, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache.

The price for the 3 TB disk might start at 220 Euros. That is about 7 cents per GB, or 13.6 GB per Euro. Compared to 4 cents / GB for the Green 2 TB, it is still not on top of the list, but will probably be there within a year.

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2010-10-20 21:55

Lego Robots

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by havard    in Tech, robots

Two Lego robots are making their rounds on the hyper links. I’ll just repeat them here:

A Lego felt tip printer, including CUSP / OS X printer driver
http://www.b3ta.com/links/Lego_printer
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/06/02/the_genius_of_the_lego_printer/
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/06/02/1819230/The-Genius-of-the-Lego-Printer

And a Lego Maker Bot, or MakerLegoBot
http://www.battlebricks.com/makerlegobot/
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/10/legobot/?pid=652
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/10/20/1348206/A-3D-Lego-Fabricator-Made-of-Lego

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2010-10-17 11:08

First code for the Button Pad Controller SPI

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by havard    in Arduino

I recently got the Button Pad Controller SPI from SparkFun. Today I had some time to play around with the code, and got it working. Currently, it is only blinking all the lights, however the code should demonstrate the basics. The user guide from SparkFun documented the details of the interface. Add a few delayMicroseconds() calls, and it’s up and running.

Download the sketch here.

// The wires
#define CS 10
#define MISO 11
#define SCK  13

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  Serial.println("setup");

  pinMode(CS, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(MISO, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(SCK, OUTPUT);

  digitalWrite(CS, LOW);
  delay(1);
}

int lights = 0;

void loop() {
  Serial.println("loop");

  // "The Button Pad Controller SPI will begin listening
  //  for a data set once the CS input has been brought high."

  // "(HINT: It's best if the SCK signal is set high before
  //  setting the CS pin high)."
  digitalWrite(SCK, HIGH);
  digitalWrite(CS, HIGH);
  delayMicroseconds(15);

  // Blink the lights.
  lights = !lights;

  // Four frames (3 for lights input, 1 for button output)
  // (Here, it is writing to output on the 4th as well, which
  // is wrong, but seems not to cause any issues).
  for(int f = 0; f < 4; f++) {

      // Each frame has 16 * 8 = 128 bits of data.
      for(int i = 0; i < 128; i++) {

          // "The data on the MISO line should be set while the
          //  clock is low. When the SCK signal goes high the
          //  Button Pad Controller locks in the data currently
          //  on the MISO line."
          digitalWrite(SCK, LOW);
          delayMicroseconds(5);

          digitalWrite(MISO, lights);
          delayMicroseconds(5);

          digitalWrite(SCK, HIGH);
          delayMicroseconds(10);
      }
  }

  digitalWrite(CS, LOW);

  Serial.println("end");

  // "The CS signal should remain high for the duration of the
  //  data set, at which point it should be brought low for a
  //  minimum of 400 μs before sending the next set of data."

  //delayMicroseconds(400);
  delay(500);
}

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2010-10-10 16:58

Storage History

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by havard    in Idle, Storage, Tech

As a follow up to the storage prices I just posted, here are some interesting history. Ivan Smith has collected a long list of prices, going as far back as 1956, and including every major disk since then. While at Wikipedia, there’s an interesting article about general history of hard disks. Finally, Techxilla has some old and funny ads.

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16:45

Storage Prices

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by havard    in Storage, Tech

About two and half years ago, I collected the prices of various storage media, and calculated the cost per GB. Since then, there have been big movements, and as expected the storage continue to get cheaper and cheaper. With the 2 GB disks, the price is 4 Euro cents per GB.

Optical storage also gets cheaper, and in recent years bigger spindles of Blu-ray disk have been made available. They are still beaten by DVD-R, however the margin is no longer significant. Two years ago, it was three times more expensive to store on Blu-ray than DVD-R. Also interesting is the DVD DL 8.5 GB prices. They are now almost as expensive to use as DVD 4.7 GB. That might be interesting for backing up bigger files.

New to the list is the Solid State Disks. At 40x Euros / GB, they are still very expensive compared to spinning disks, but given some time, maybe it might drop. However, looking at the professional CF Cards, it does not look promising for solid state. Although the get faster and bigger, high end Sandisk CF cards have not move significantly in terms Euro / GB. Of course, there are slower chips which are cheaper, but you might not want that technology in your SSD.

Media Type Product Capacity Price CHF Price Euros Euros / GB GBs / Euro
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB 1500 GB 89.00 66.41 0.04 22.59
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB 2000 GB 119.00 88.80 0.04 22.52
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB 1000 GB 73.00 54.47 0.05 18.36
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar GP 1TB 1000 GB 99.00 73.87 0.07 13.54
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar GP 750GB 750 GB 91.00 67.90 0.09 11.05
Harddisk Western Digital Caviar GP 500GB 500 GB 73.00 54.47 0.11 9.18
DVD-R Verbatim 16x DVD-R 100 @ 4,7GB 470 GB 100.00 74.62 0.16 6.30
Blu-ray Verbatim BD-R SL 25 @ 50GB 1250 GB 280.00 208.93 0.17 5.98
Blu-ray Verbatim BD-R 25 @ 25GB 625 GB 146.00 108.94 0.17 5.74
DVD+R DL Verbatim 8x DVD+R DL 25 @ 8,5GB 213 GB 55.00 41.04 0.19 5.18
CD-R Verbatim CD-R 100 @ 700MB 70 GB 31.00 23.13 0.33 3.03
SSD Corsair P256 SSD MLC, 256GB 256 GB 558.00 416.38 1.63 0.61
SSD Intel X25-M G2 160GB 160 GB 449.00 335.04 2.09 0.48
Compact Flash Sandisk CF Card 32GB Extreme 32 GB 215.00 160.43 5.01 0.20
Compact Flash Sandisk CF Card 16GB Extreme 16 GB 119.00 88.80 5.55 0.18
Compact Flash Sandisk CF Card 64GB Extreme Pro 64 GB 665.00 496.22 7.75 0.13
Compact Flash Sandisk CF Card 4GB Extreme III 4 GB 70.00 52.23 13.06 0.08

Exchange rate: 1 CHF = 1.340136 Euros.

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12:18

Gardena products

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by havard    in Random, Tech

I got some questions about how to put together the automatic watering system I posted about yesterday. Here are the links to similar products on Amazon. I could not find the exact same product, however they should do the job just fine.

It turns out there are very many different “water computers”. The simplest I could find is the “Gardena 1860 Classic 3-Cycle Water Timer T 1030 Plus – $83“.

Gardena 1860 Classic 3-Cycle Water Timer T 1030 Plus

Then there is the drip systems. These includes a thin supply pipe of 5 meters (which you will cut to fit your needs), the drip heads (usually 15-20 pieces) , and small plastic pegs to stick into the soil in the flower pots. There are very many boxes for this as well, and some of them even claim to include the watering computer. On Amazon, the product description says all of them do, however, I suspect that is a copy/paste mistake, and that only the most expensive of them (USD ~100) includes a computer as mentioned above. At least that would match the pictures on the boxes.

Gardena 1399 Micro-Drip Multiple Application Drip Irrigation Starter Set – $40
Gardena 1399 Micro-Drip Multiple Application Drip Irrigation Starter Set

Gardena 1402 Micro-Drip Starter Set For Flower Boxes – $40
(I think this might be the one I got).

Gardena 1402 Micro-Drip Starter Set For Flower Boxes

Gardena 1398 Micro-Drip Watering Starter Kit With Timer – $100

Looking at the picture and the price, this is mostly likely the only kit which actually includes the watering timer / computer as well.

Gardena 1398 Micro-Drip Watering Starter Kit With Timer

Gardena 1403 Micro-Drip Starter Set For Greenhouses – $90
Gardena 1403 Micro-Drip Starter Set For Greenhouses

If your system is outside, there should be no problem plugging this into your garden water supply, and you’re done. However, if you set it up inside, you want to limit the amount potential water spill. So you’ll need a water container of some sort. 10 liters should be fine, and make sure it has a tap as shown in the picture below. Also, make sure the nozzle on the tap is long enough, so that you can attach it to a hose or quick connector.
containercontainer nozzle

Finally, to connect it all together, I used a garden hose between the water container and the computer, as seen in this picture. I needed three of the orange hose quick connectors: One for each end of the hose, and one (in my case the larger version) for the water container nozzle.
Gardena 36917 Garden Hose Quick Connector

And very finally, to connect the hose to the water container, which now had two orange “female” quick connectors, I needed a male-male piece. I cannot find the exact product right now, but it was something similar to the picture below, but in grey.
quick connector

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2010-10-09 12:56

Automatic Watering System for Our Plants

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by havard    in Random, Tech

For our last two weeks holiday, we wondered how to save the plants while we were gone. Asking somebody to look after them was an option then, however might not be in the future. Thus started a quest for watering system. The Gardena T1030 fit the bill perfectly. It runs on four AA batteries, and can be programmed to water on specific intervals, duration, and time of day. Perhaps the best feature, is how the programming is implemented. You slide some small plastic levers, which covers holes in a hard plastic card. Once done, the card is inserted into the watering unit, read and programmed. In effect, it is old punch-card technology making a robust, waterproof and easy to use solution.

And here, some pictures of our set up. Oh, and the Heineken keg? Turn out it had a useful form which fit the watering unit nicely. Also worth noting is the attachment to the water tank. It was not purpose made, and was leaking on the first try. Some Sugru took care of that.

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12:13

Controlling RGB Matrices with Arduino

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by havard    in Arduino

SparkFun just put a new tutorial on controlling their 8×8 RGB matrix with an Arduino. It includes a new library, so things should be easy to set up. Hopefully, I will be able to report back on my own project using this later.

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2010-10-07 12:50

Firefox 3.6: Open New Tabs at the End of the Tab Bar

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by havard    in Tech

Since Firefox 3.6, new tabs open next to its parent. This is probably one of the features written most about after the new release. Or rather how to disable it, that is. I’ll just add it to my notes, so I can perform the fix on every new install.

  • Type about:config in the address bar.
  • Type browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent in the Filter bar.
  • The the value to false, by double-clicking or right-clicking.
  • Done.
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2010-10-01 16:14

500 mW Green LASER

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by havard    in Tech

Here’s some pretty impressive LASER.

500 mW green LASER popping balloons and lighting matches! :-D
http://laserpointerforums.com/f52/cni-portable-green-500mw-multimedia-41663.html

http://www.youtube.com/v/eRq1UgXSZqo
http://www.youtube.com/v/680xwwEs7Lg
http://www.youtube.com/v/8WBgdF6uCFc

For more:
http://laserpointerforums.com/

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