Pololu Blog (Page 86)

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…

Simple 3pi Projects for the Arduino IDE

Posted by Ben on 8 August 2011

These projects by Daniel J. Sullivan are intended to introduce novice users to all the components on the 3pi robot and how they can be used while programming with the Arduino IDE. Each project builds on the one before it, and comments within the programs are used to provide background information when new items are introduced.

Continuous-rotation servos and multi-turn servos

Posted by Jan on 26 July 2011
Continuous-rotation servos and multi-turn servos

As I discussed in the introduction to servos, one of the consequences of hobby servos’ intended use is that rotation range is limited to about 180 degrees. In this post, I will talk about two exceptions to this general rule: continuous-rotation servos and multi-turn servos. Each of these products loses some features in return for increased rotational range, so none of them are the ideal actuators many would like them to be. There are some specialty servos developed for robot applications that get around the limitations, but those servos are not as standardized and do not really fit into the hobby servo category, so I am not going into any more detail on those beyond mentioning that they exist. Continued…

"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…

New Products

Dobot MG400 Desktop Cobot Robotic Arm
ACS72981ELRATR-200U3 Current Sensor Compact Carrier 0A to 200A, 3.3V
ACS72981ELRATR-200B5 Current Sensor Large Carrier -200A to +200A, 5V
ACS72981KLRATR-150U5 Current Sensor Large Carrier 0A to 150A, 5V
150:1 Micro Metal Gearmotor MP 6V with 12 CPR Encoder, Side Connector
VL53L4CD Time-of-Flight Distance Sensor Carrier with Voltage Regulator, 120cm Max
4.2-15V, 3A Fine-Adjust Step-Down Voltage Regulator D30V30MAS
A5984 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier, Fixed 750mA@5V / 500mA@3.3V
1.4-7V, 3.4A Fine-Adjust Step-Down Voltage Regulator w/ Adjustable Low-Voltage Cutoff D30V30MALCMA
A5984 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier, Fixed 1.5A@5V / 1A@3.3V, Blue Edition (Soldered Header Pins)
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