Pololu Blog (Page 85)

Welcome to the Pololu Blog, where we provide updates about what we and our customers are doing and thinking about. This blog used to be Pololu president Jan Malášek’s Engage Your Brain blog; you can view just those posts here.

Popular tags: community projects new products raspberry pi arduino more…

"Mr. Twitchy" project featuring Wixels

Posted by Ben on 8 July 2011

Mr. Twitchy is a project that uses two Wixels to wirelessly control an electrical stimulation device. The project was featured in Sparkfun New Product post.

"Blackbeard's Chest" animatronic display

Posted by Ryan on 1 July 2011

Blackbeard’s Chest by SkullTroniX uses two jrk motor controllers with feedback to control linear actuators as part of a spooky animatronic display.

Low-cost hexapod

Posted by Kevin on 24 June 2011

A Mini Maestro 24-channel USB servo controller controls three servos in each of this insectoid robot’s six legs. For more information, see this thread on the Trossen Robotics forums.

How an idea becomes a product

Posted by Jan on 22 June 2011
How an idea becomes a product

The Wixel Shield for Arduino that we released today represents a personal milestone because of what I did not do on it: the shield is the first electronic product made by Pololu that I did not design. That’s not to say I did not have some input on it or that other engineers here did not have substantial contributions to other products, but the Wixel Shield is a first because the basic product concept, the circuit design, and physical implementation (i.e. the PCB layout) were all done by someone else. We also just finished a big facility expansion that was taking up a lot of my attention this year, so I have some more time now to think about our design process and what it takes to go from a new idea to a finished product. Continued…

Instructable: Introducing the Wixel USB Wireless Module

Posted by Ben on 6 May 2011

This Instructable by customer Michael Oz introduces the reader to the Wixel through a series of basic projects.

RC servo speed control

Posted by Jan on 6 May 2011
RC servo speed control

It is often desirable to control the speed and acceleration of hobby RC servos. Understanding your options can be confusing since there are various speeds involved, many similar terms are used, and the terms are not used consistently by different companies or end users. You might also have an idea of what you want your servo to do without knowing what to call it or how to describe it or how to implement it. To get a good understanding of what is going on, it is helpful to picture the position of your servo in relation to the commands you are sending it. A simple first attempt might look like this: Continued…

Advanced hobby servo control using only a timer and interrupts

Posted by Jan on 5 May 2011
Advanced hobby servo control using only a timer and interrupts

In this last article about generating pulses for hobby servo control, I will present what I think is the best solution to controlling many servos or controlling some servos while still leaving enough processing time to do other tasks. It’s not that easy to make this approach work well, so my recommendation in most cases is just to get one of our servo controllers, which use this technique. Continued…

New Products

4.2-15V, 3.3A Fine-Adjust Step-Down Voltage Regulator w/ Adjustable Low-Voltage Cutoff D30V33MASCMA
ACS72981LLRATR-100U5 Current Sensor Compact Carrier 0A to 100A, 5V
RoboClaw 2x200A, 60VDC Motor Controller
Ribbon Cable Premium Jumper Wires 10-Color F-F 36" (90 cm)
4.2-15V, 3A Fine-Adjust Step-Down Voltage Regulator D30V30MAS
ACS72981LLRATR-100U3 Current Sensor Large Carrier 0A to 100A, 3.3V
9V, 2.9A Step-Down Voltage Regulator D30V30F9
ACS72981KLRATR-150U5 Current Sensor Large Carrier 0A to 150A, 5V
1.4-7V, 3.4A Fine-Adjust Step-Down Voltage Regulator D30V30MAL
15V, 2.7A Step-Down Voltage Regulator D30V30F15
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