Pic Dem 2 Plus Clock and Message

Hello everyone, it’s Jose again,

Second-Hundreths Mode

Today I’m bringing you a part of the PIC course that I made last summer. Using the PICDEM 2 Plus Board, a PIC18F4520 and some 7 segment LEDs as an output I created a multifunctional display. There are three modes, through which you can change by only pressing a button (If you are familiar with the PICDEM 2 Plus, I used the RA4 button). The three consecutives modes are:

• Moving message: the displays shows a moving message which is “HOLA JOSE” (it means Hello Jose).
• Clock (HH-MM): Clock that shows the hours and the minutes, with a pair of blinking hour separators.
• Clock (SS-HdHd): Clock which displays more precise unit measure, using the seconds and the hundreds of seconds.

All the programming is done in C++ and Assembler, using a library (LED7S.c) and a header (LED7s.h) used in the main code (main.c) , all of which I created specifically to manage the 7 segments displays. Here I put I video where you can see it working.

Trism

Hello again readers,

Today I will show one of the most ambitious projects that I have ever done. I had to made it for my Technical Drawing/Arquitecture class. Everyone had to design a restaurant and draw to scale all the views (front, back, up, side,etc…) and obtain at least 4 conical perspectives of it. All these blueprints had to be made in DINA3 paper with stylographs and black ink. At the end of the project we had to do a miniature of the restaurant, with every single detail of it.

My idea of the restaurant was quite innovative. It was located in the beach and it had three separate buildings. the main one was a cube, the second one was a pentagonal prism, and the last one was a triangluar prism. All of the  were rotated in two axis and intersected with an horizontal plane to create a construction which reminds of a stone halfburied on the beach. I think some pictures will explain it better :).

Line-Following Robot

Hello everyone,

Today I’m bringing you all a project I had to do in the second semester of 10th grade in my technology class.

The idea was to develop a robot able to follow a black line in a white background. I developed a circuit which used two optocouplers which were situated at both sides of the line, so if the line turned, one of the optocouplers would receive black instead of white, stopping the electric engine to which it was associated.

So the general circuit was made out of two almost identical circuits, one for each pair of optocoupler-e.engine. In each of these cirucits, the optocoupler is connected to a potentiometer and a LED (just to visualize which engine is working at every moment) and a geared motor. In the back of the robot a idler wheel is used to enable it to turn. All the circuit works in 4.5 Volts.

You can see a schematic of the circuit here,  and the Bill of Material here.

I also leave you some pics and videos to show all the mechanism more clearly :).

Traffic Lights

Hello again,

In this post I want to show you a project that I made while I was in 10th grade. It’s a set of four traffic lights, two for cars and the other two for pedestrians, located in the crossing of two streets. All of them are synchronized to work perfectly, even flashing when they are about to change.

The mechanism is a little bit difficult. It is a integrated circuit which uses a 555 timer circuit, a  HEF4020B 14-stage binary counter and an EEPROM memory. There are 10 outputs (10 LEDs, 3 in the car lights, and two for the pedestrian ones), all of which receive the state from the EEPROM, in which all the 64 configurations of each LED has been set.

To sum up, the 555 timer circuit generates a pulse which is slowed down by the binary counter and then, used in the EEPROM memory to change between the 64 different states. From the EEPROM the pulses are sent to the LEDs, all of which light accordingly.

In the integrated circuit can also be seen 6 LEDs which help to visualize the current state.

Here I leave you some images and videos to see it more clearly. You can find also the schematic of the circuit, the board and the Bill of Material. 

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Quiz Button Game

Hello everyone, how is it going?

Today I going to show you a project I developed in 9th grade, specifically on the second semester. The idea was to build a machine with buttons that could be used in a quiz game, so the first player to push his or her button would have the corresponding light switched on no matter if the other players had pressed any button afterwards. The requirements of the project were to build this mechanism for two players, instead of that, I developed it for 6, 3 teams of 2 members each.

To make this possible I created a electronic circuit using three double relays, so each button of the same colour could cancel the other two circuits, and switching on the LED of that team. I also added a switch to turn the device on and off and two boxes in the sides to store the decks of cards of the questions.

Here I leave you some pictures and a video to show it more clearly. You can also download the schematic and the Bill of Material.

Mechanical Lift

Hello everyone,
Today I’m gonna show you a project I did when I was in 9th grade.

It’s a lift powered by a electric engine connected to a pulley in whose axis is a threaded rod. So the threaded rod spins and the “lift” is attached to a nut, making it possible to go both up and down.

To change the spinning direction of the engine a manual commuter is used. In the top part 4 LEDs make an arrow that shows if the lift is going up or down.

Additionally, there are two switches at both ends of the way that the lift follows, stopping it when it has reached any of them. Here is a huge gallery of picks and a some videos to show it more clearly.

Hello World!

Here am I, starting The Robot Foundation, a blog to share with all of you my inventions and projects so you can learn and ask me anything about them. My name is Jose Javier Gonzalez and I am a student of High School. Studying my senior year I am going to go over all the inventions that I have made posting them daily. Keep pressing F5!

The Robot Foundation por Jose Javier Gonzalez Ortiz se encuentra bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 3.0 Unported.