Orionrobots Blog

2024

December 4, 2024 » Particle systems part 2 - The snowglobe
In the previous particle systems article we built a simple particle system that created raindrops.
November 24, 2024 » How to make particle systems for fun and robotics
I have a lifelong fascination with Particle systems, complementing my robotics. However, it was only a few years ago that I found out how to bring the two together in a Monte Carlo Localization particle filter.
October 20, 2024 » Phototransistor Sensors for Micromouse UK
My student is making an entry for the UK Micromouse competition. The competition has a recommended reference robot design for entrants to build, the UKMarsBot. She applied, and was sent the Main board along with the Line sensor and Wall sensor boards.
October 12, 2024 » How to reassign OpenWeb UI chat users
October 9, 2024 » Robotics at Home with the DIY PicoBot
August 25, 2024 » What is the process I use to make drawings, photos and figures?
August 17, 2024 » Using 3D print sample filament
August 13, 2024 » Danny's opinions on ROS
June 4, 2024 » Raspberry Pi Camera Compatibility RpiCam
May 2, 2024 » A retrospective on PiWars 2024 - Disaster Zone
April 29, 2024 » How do you know what all the wires are for?
April 17, 2024 » Pi Wars 2024 Robot Updates
April 13, 2024 » How we designed and built the grab and lift mechanism for the PiWars 2024 robot
April 9, 2024 » Technical and Artistic presentation video for PiWars 2024
April 7, 2024 » Piwars 2024 Disaster Zone Update - Nerf Turret
March 30, 2024 » Connecting a Bluetooth Headset to a Raspberry Pi Running OS Lite
March 28, 2024 » Opening the Pico Bricks Kit
March 19, 2024 » Learn Robotics Programming - Navigating Power and Connection Challenges with the Inventor Hat Mini
March 11, 2024 » Tips for the spreadsheets in FreeCAD
March 6, 2024 » Why Robotics at Home with Raspberry Pi Pico uses PIO
February 28, 2024 » The Pi Wars robot attachment plate comes together
February 25, 2024 » Pi Wars update - updating the attachment plate
February 24, 2024 » Debugging electronic circuits
February 20, 2024 » Learn Robotics Programming 2nd Edition - update for installing OpenCV and Numpy
February 19, 2024 » A handy guide for crimping Dupont connectors
February 18, 2024 » Progress update for PiWars 2024
January 29, 2024 » Piwars 2024 progress - a right angled USB cable
January 28, 2024 » Amusing vL53L5cx sensor issue
January 27, 2024 » Piwars Robot battery charging issues
January 22, 2024 » Phone apps, React Native, Expo and Kivy for robotics
January 21, 2024 » Debugging Yukon
January 21, 2024 » About the MPRemote command
January 14, 2024 » More planning for 2024 PiWars Robot
January 9, 2024 » Strange Yukon power behaviour on Big Ole Yellow
January 4, 2024 » Dialling in my 3D printer for better prints
January 3, 2024 » Robot building fun this week

2023

December 26, 2023 » Unboxing and reviewing the Elecfreaks Smart Cutebot Pro
This week I found time to unbox, review and play with the Elecfreaks Smart Cutebot Pro. This is a robot kit based around the BBC micro:bit, and is a great way to get started with robotics.
December 11, 2023 » A change of my viewpoint on wiring
This weekend, while doing some research for an upcoming book project, and other robots, I had an interesting challenge.
December 8, 2023 » Having fun with the Pimoroni Yukon Board
For the last few months, I had the privilege of being a beta tester for the Pimoroni Yukon board. This meant I got to play with a robotics board with a tonne of features before it was released!
November 30, 2023 » Robotics building - A month of learning the hard way
November 28, 2023 » 3D Printing a replacement part for the Sparkfun Shadow Chassis
November 21, 2023 » Robotics touch sensors mimicking fingerprints
November 21, 2023 » Open Source Python Robotics Algorithms on GitHub
November 20, 2023 » Managing a Raspberry Pi with PyInfra
November 19, 2023 » MQTT Mosquitto Password Issues
November 12, 2023 » Coder Dojo Robot Wall Avoiding
November 7, 2023 » Verifying that Asyncio is working on CircuitPython
October 22, 2023 » TMF882x Distance Sensors
October 22, 2023 » Making a shim for the Pimoroni Explorer Hat Pro
October 18, 2023 » Adapting different Raspberry Pi motor drivers for Piwars 2024
October 14, 2023 » Choosing parts for the coder dojo robots
October 6, 2023 » A weekend of robotics celebration for Orionrobots
October 2, 2023 » Are my robot recommendations expensive?
September 29, 2023 » Say Hello to the Raspberry Pi 5!
September 9, 2023 » PID experiments with an Arduino Nano and encoders
September 7, 2023 » How to drive robot motors with MicroPython
September 4, 2023 » How to get i2s playback with Raspberry Pi Pico
August 29, 2023 » Troubleshooting sensor positioning on a mobile robot
August 15, 2023 » How To Make Robot Building Reference Cards using Pinout.xyz
August 5, 2023 » How to add line following to a robot with Raspberry Pi Pico and Python
August 1, 2023 » Making a robotic foam dart turret with sound effects
July 14, 2023 » 20% Discount on my Robotics at Home with Raspberry Pi Pico Book
July 4, 2023 » Me and MeArm in The MagPi
June 26, 2023 » Fixing the Piwars robot batteries
June 25, 2023 » Testing the PiWars robot
June 24, 2023 » Block Diagrams of Electronics for the Piwars 2024 Robot
June 23, 2023 » Piwars 2024 Robot Arduino Electronics
June 22, 2023 » What electronics did I use in the PiWars 2019 Metal Chassis Robot
June 21, 2023 » Current state of the 2024 PiWars robot
June 14, 2023 » Specification card for my PiWars 2024 entry
June 13, 2023 » Making a PiWars 2024 Entry - The Entry Form
June 7, 2023 » Two MeArm Robot Arms Play Pass-the-parcel
June 5, 2023 » MeArm Robot Arm with Pico - Record and Playback
May 2, 2023 » Talk about my robots at Raspberry Pint
April 7, 2023 » AliExpress shopping list for Robotics at Home with Raspberry Pi Pico
April 4, 2023 » UK Shopping lists for Robotics at Home with Raspberry Pi Pico
March 17, 2023 » Robotics at Home with Raspberry Pi Pico Book Launched
March 14, 2023 » Pi Day: Raspberry Pi on Pico Bot
March 10, 2023 » More Robotics at Home Chassis
March 5, 2023 » Using a Raspberry Pi to inspect code on Raspberry Pi Pico
March 1, 2023 » New robot building parts in the lab!
February 28, 2023 » Interview with Packt Publishing on my upcoming book
January 28, 2023 » CircuitPython Ulab arrays and data transmission size
January 26, 2023 » Using multiple VL53L type sensors
January 25, 2023 » What I've been working on - tracebacks in CircuitPython
January 19, 2023 » Smell detecting robot in the news
January 16, 2023 » Getting support for my robotics content

2022

December 27, 2022 » Motion tracking workbench accessories
Maker Rue Mohr recently suggested building a motion tracking workbench lamp. This is a great idea, as if you are moving around on the bench, and you need light focusing on where you are working, you could have the device adjust the focus for you.
December 27, 2022 » Cheeky focus stacking
When taking photos of robots, nearly everything is Macro - that is, every shot is fairly close up. What this often means is that I get focus issues.
December 27, 2022 » MaixSense A010 Day 2 - Sipeed Support
In yesterday’s Maixsense A010 post I had reached a block, and it hadn’t worked either standalone, or via the serial port.
December 26, 2022 » Maixsense A010 first impressions
December 23, 2022 » Debugging motion data
December 18, 2022 » Geometry and Trigonometry mix ups
December 18, 2022 » The best way to get things done
December 11, 2022 » Tip for debugging ulab or Numpy
November 20, 2022 » 2022 battery choices update
November 19, 2022 » Battery Storage - simple divider
November 2, 2022 » FreeCAD annotations issue
November 2, 2022 » Foam board joint experiments
October 30, 2022 » FreeCAD topological renaming issues
October 24, 2022 » Euro boxes - idea for storage
October 23, 2022 » How to Sample from a Gaussian distribution on Raspberry Pi Pico
September 28, 2022 » Inkscape Path Manipulation Menu
August 7, 2022 » Bluefruit graphing - beware auto scaling
July 27, 2022 » Machine bolts supplied with parts
July 25, 2022 » Tiny Toolkit Drill bit tray
July 24, 2022 » Tiny Drill Bit Holder For Tiny Toolkit
July 10, 2022 » Day two of Piwars Raspberry Pi Robotics Competition 2022
July 9, 2022 » Copilot and Jupyter are an awesome combination
July 9, 2022 » PiWars 2022 - Old MacDoofus Had a Farm - Raspberry Pi Robotics
July 9, 2022 » Putting together a tiny toolkit
July 8, 2022 » Moving Orionrobots back to github
June 14, 2022 » FreeCAD Topological Naming
May 20, 2022 » Adafruit Airlift ESP32 NINA Firmware
May 19, 2022 » Learn Robotics Programming Second Edition errata - PuTTY
April 8, 2022 » Raspberry Pi Pico Wifi and Wireless
February 8, 2022 » Raspberry Pi Pico USB tip

2021

July 24, 2021 » Freecad Assembly4 File Link
When using FreeCAD’s assembly4 workbench, have you seen broken object links after moving a file? Here’s how I came across the issue, diagnosed it and a fix for it.
June 15, 2021 » Raspberry Pi Pico Wireless pack and Motors
Pimoroni have a wireless pack for Raspberry Pi Pico. This adds wifi capability with an ESP32 (and possibly bluetooth, more on that later). Wifi capability is great because it means I can teleoperate (remote drive) my robots, even if it’s just starting behaviors. In Learn Robotics Programming I have a chapter showing how to crate a nice web interface and remote camera/driving app to take advantage of Raspberry Pi 3a+ wifi. It’s something I’ve taken to adding to most of my robots. But what about Pico robots?
May 23, 2021 » Foam Core Drawer Dividers
To get better access to tools in my closest drawer, I make dividers with foam core and hot glue.
April 28, 2021 » Raspberry Pi Pico with the VL53L0x Distance sensor
April 7, 2021 » Motor Mash - N20 to TT Motor Adaptor - Learn Robotics Programming Help
March 7, 2021 » How to keep home build project wires tidy with Spiral Wire Wrap
March 6, 2021 » Raspberry Pi Pico Session with Mini Orionrobots - LED flashing and speaker tones.
February 19, 2021 » Learn Robotics Programming 2nd Edition - Hardware Shopping List
February 11, 2021 » Learn Robotics Programming Second Edition Video Announcement
January 23, 2021 » Controlling a OWI Edge Robot Arm with Bluetooth
January 16, 2021 » Interview with Danny Staple
January 15, 2021 » Learn Robotics Programming second edition

2020

September 16, 2020 » How to use the ReSpeaker 2 mic Hat with Mycroft
Voice Assistants like Mycroft are a cool bit of technology, and running them on the Raspberry Pi seems like a great fit. The Seeed Studio ReSpeaker hat, and it’s clones seem to be an inexpensive way to get this running, however, none of the instructions I found on the web got this to work. So here I document how I made this device work.
August 24, 2020 » Parts for Learn Robotics Programming Chapter 6
I have been asked by some readers of my book, Learn Robotics Programming (first edition), what parts I’ve specifically used for chapter 6.
April 21, 2020 » Piwars 2020 Robot design - The Roof Rack
The State of The Piwars 2020 Robot
March 1, 2020 » Piwars 2020: Kicad Part For the Pimoroni Explorer Hat Pro

2019

December 8, 2019 » Piwars 2020 Designs
Piwars Acceptance
November 5, 2019 » Raspberry Pi Magazine Robotics
Build A Low-Cost Wheeled Robot
September 10, 2019 » About The Eevblog
The EevBlog, aka the Electronics engineering video blog is a Video blog about electronics engineering. That is, a Youtube channel with original content that is intended for people who like to dabble with all thinks electronics.
August 31, 2019 » Connecting a MeArm to the Raspberry Pi
April 23, 2019 » Use OWI Edge Maplin USB robot arm with the Raspberry Pi
April 16, 2019 » Learn Robotics Programming 1st Edition Electronics Fix
February 15, 2019 » Using The Picon Zero with Learn Robotics Programming - Part 1
February 15, 2019 » 3D Printed Holder For The PiWars USB Battery
February 13, 2019 » Fusion 360 CAD Files For My Piwars Robot
February 9, 2019 » New addressable RGB LED's, perfect for a robot
February 1, 2019 » Learn Robotics Programming On The Raspberry Pi 3a+
January 9, 2019 » Info from robotics talk at Richmond New Tech
January 9, 2019 » My Book - Learn Robotics Programming on Sale Today

2018

December 25, 2018 » Merry Christmas 2018 - Flashforge Finder 3D Printer Unboxing
For many years, I’ve made-do with the kit made Reprappro Ormerod 2 printer. It was a platform for learning about these devices, but has never been that reliable, and never earned my trust enough to confidently leave for long prints. I made small prints and rarely on it.
December 12, 2018 » What did I make in my lab in the summer?
I was pretty quiet over the summer, however, I made some videos showing what I’ve been up to.
December 5, 2018 » Announcing My Book - Learn Robotics Programming
Tonight I am proud to announce that available to buy in most online bookshops is my new book, Learn Robotics Programming.
May 7, 2018 » What Happened At Piwars 2018
April 10, 2018 » PiWars 2019 Build Journal - Pi Problems With IP
April 10, 2018 » PiWars 2018 Build Journal - Choosing the display
April 8, 2018 » Reviving Sparkfun Microviews With a New Bootloader
February 26, 2018 » 2018-02-26-piwars-robot-status
February 16, 2018 » Things we want to 3d print at Orionrobots
February 16, 2018 » 2018-02-16-helena-learned-to-solder
February 10, 2018 » 2018-02-10-website-fixes-and-live-solder-video
January 1, 2018 » Wrap Up Of The Year 2017

2017

December 29, 2017 » Printed Circuit Board
A Printed Circuit Board is the normal system for holding components together in a circuit.
November 24, 2017 » Decoding robot messages
There are crazy sales this weekend at some of my favourite places to buy stuff to play with. Pimoroni, The PiHut and Cool Components are all having fun.
August 9, 2017 » Building an esp8266 based hexapod robot - SpiderBot Part 1
This week, I’ve started building an esp8266 based hexapod, which I’ve nicknamed “SpiderBot”.
May 28, 2017 » Attaching a Joystick or 2 Analog Sensors to a Nodemcu
April 25, 2017 » Pi Bakery and Scroll Phat
January 3, 2017 » Building a Microbit Robot with the Kitronic v2 Motor Board

2016

December 23, 2016 » 2016 Christmas Outtakes
First I have some goodies for the lab - for Helena, the Explorer Hat Pro Parts Kit and a Kitronic Motor Board for her to use with her microbit.
December 16, 2016 » Microbit Merry Christmas!
I found today, on Christmas jumper day, I was caught short and couldn’t find a good jumper.
December 12, 2016 » Programming the UnoTron using ArduBlockly
I’ve published a video where my son and Lab Helper Jon and I use the tool
November 24, 2016 » Building a 4tronix UnoTron Robot
November 19, 2016 » Beware - Fake Lego on eBay
April 26, 2016 » Lab Gear - a Crimping Tool
February 4, 2016 » Bounce! An Esp8266/nodemcu blocks coding system

2015

December 7, 2015 » Esp8266 nodemcu simple robot
This week I built a simple robot base using a NodeMCU V3 dev board - an ESP8266 based board broken out for use with a breadboard,
December 3, 2015 » Getting a quick ESP8266 build environment
The ESp8266 is currently my favourite toy right now. I’ve mostly been using NodeMCU, but also experimented with Micropython.
October 2, 2015 » Truth Table
A table showing the operation of a Boolean logic gate, or combination of them.
September 3, 2015 » Analog to Digital Converter
September 3, 2015 » Adapting Lego RCX Stud Style Connectors
June 10, 2015 » Making a wifi controlled Light with the ESP8266
April 29, 2015 » Powering the esp8266 Wifi Microcontroller
April 4, 2015 » Powering An Arduino Uno and Servo from 4xAA 6v Batteries
March 9, 2015 » Lego
March 1, 2015 » Making A lego Technic Bike
January 15, 2015 » Teaching Angles With Turtle

2014

December 6, 2014 » Github's awesome stl view
So first some great news.
November 6, 2014 » HC SR04 Distance Sensor
The HC-SR04 is a simple but capable distance sensor. It is able to sense a 30 degree range, using 2 IO pins on your microcontroller. They are sensitive from 4cm’s to around 3 meters, with sub-centimeter measuring accuracy.
November 2, 2014 » Designing a second enclosure for my CNC machine
My first attempt at an enclosure was wrong in a number of ways.
September 24, 2014 » Armbot Follow Up
September 1, 2014 » Tekno Robot Dog
July 7, 2014 » 8x8 Red LED Dot Matrix Module Assembled
July 7, 2014 » Arduino Leonardo Board
June 11, 2014 » Idea - a directional distance sensor board
June 1, 2014 » Robot Stores
May 27, 2014 » About the Arduino
May 16, 2014 » Using Heeks CAD to Mill an STL file
May 9, 2014 » Choosing A CAM program for my CNC Mill
May 7, 2014 » Understanding the CNC Power Board
April 23, 2014 » More About The Orion Explorer 1 Chassis
April 13, 2014 » Diagnosing the Cause of the blown CNC components
April 9, 2014 » The reality of electronics repair
March 27, 2014 » Why 3d printing robots wont take over the world
February 9, 2014 » Close Up Of CNC Disaster
February 7, 2014 » CNC - Some new ideas, a plan, disaster!
February 6, 2014 » CNC Mill Unboxing Pictures - img 3023
February 6, 2014 » CNC Mill Unboxing Pictures - img 3020
February 6, 2014 » CNC Mill Unboxing Pictures - img 3019
February 6, 2014 » CNC Mill Unboxing Pictures - img 3018
February 6, 2014 » CNC Mill Unboxing Pictures - img 3017
February 6, 2014 » CNC Mill Unboxing Pictures - Spindle above the border
February 6, 2014 » CNC Mill Unboxing Pictures
February 6, 2014 » The CNC Milling Machine Moves
February 5, 2014 » Inside CNC mill control box - Closer view of stepper board
February 5, 2014 » Inside CNC mill control box - Closer view of stepper board
February 5, 2014 » Inside CNC mill control box - Closer view of stepper board
February 5, 2014 » Inside CNC mill control box - Closer view of stepper board
February 5, 2014 » Inside CNC mill control box - DC/DC converters, Optocouplers and schmitt trigger buffers
February 5, 2014 » Inside CNC mill control box - Caps, connectors and flyback diodes
February 5, 2014 » Inside CNC mill control box - The Stepper Motor Board - With Toshiba Stepper Controllers
February 5, 2014 » Inside CNC mill control box - Close up showing IC numbers
February 5, 2014 » Inside CNC mill control box - Closer view of stepper board
February 5, 2014 » Inside CNC mill control box - Close up showing discretes and connectors
February 5, 2014 » Inside CNC mill control box - The Power and Spindle Board
February 5, 2014 » Inside The Control Box
February 5, 2014 » Taking apart the control box
February 3, 2014 » CNC Mill Unboxing and Setup
January 30, 2014 » The CNC Mill Plan
January 14, 2014 » Getting Started
January 13, 2014 » Orion Explorer 1 Robot | Explorer Arrow Control
January 13, 2014 » Orion Explorer 1 Construction Guide
January 12, 2014 » New Voice Control Modules

2013

December 28, 2013 » Stuff in the Orionrobots lab - Experimenting using a servo + single sonar
I bought a robot kit with pan servo sensor mechanism - I built it, and started playing with it in my lab to see what I make of it.
December 23, 2013 » All Our Robots are User Serviceable!
Orionrobots has always been about self learning and building your own stuff. Our robot kits are designed for you to build which has the knock on effect that you already know how some repairs can be made. Too many products have “no user serviceable parts inside” - something which makes you feel like this device is not really yours and you just have it on loan until it breaks - where you may be able to pay someone to fix it, or worse still, have to dispose of it and get a new one. This is both wasteful and disempowering.
December 13, 2013 » How does the Explorer 1 Robot Deal with Obstacles?
A customer recently asked if the robot would be able to drive over obstacles - like door plinths, and if it could cross gaps. The only good way to answer this was to try it out - so I did.
December 8, 2013 » Last Orders For Christmas 2013 - Tuesday 17th
December 4, 2013 » Google To Start Making Robots?
November 30, 2013 » Bluetooth with the Orionrobots Orion Explorer 1 Robot
November 28, 2013 » Interesting new robots to play with
November 14, 2013 » The Explorer Wall Avoider Kit Now On the Shop
September 29, 2013 » Youtube find - The Evolution of Robotics Movement
May 23, 2013 » Building a Bump Sensor For The Orion Explorer 1 Kits
May 18, 2013 » Automaton
May 18, 2013 » iRobot
May 18, 2013 » Friday Mailbag - Pi Camera, Pi expansion boards
May 11, 2013 » Leonardo Da Vinci
May 2, 2013 » Maplin
May 2, 2013 » breadboard
May 2, 2013 » Electronics
May 2, 2013 » Robot Building Tips
May 2, 2013 » RoboSapien
May 2, 2013 » Modding Robots
May 2, 2013 » Tutorial Projects
May 2, 2013 » Robot Kits
April 14, 2013 » AAAI
April 2, 2013 » The Orion Explorer 1 Robot with Distance Sensors
March 28, 2013 » Why are we using AA batteries?
March 17, 2013 » 3d printers in space
March 10, 2013 » The Sonar Rangers are coming
February 28, 2013 » Coming Products
February 27, 2013 » Robot Combat League - Oh Wow...
February 6, 2013 » Great Ball Contraption
January 5, 2013 » The era of the Robot music band is upon us
January 1, 2013 » Why in 2013 Lego is still the best toy company

2012

December 28, 2012 » Craig Charles
Craig Charles hosted Robot Wars as well as playing David Lister in the British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf.
July 14, 2012 » Terms And Conditions
Definition of terms
July 14, 2012 » DK Robot Warrior Kit
This kit comes with a number of press out cardboard bits, a small two direction remote chassis and a small book.
May 22, 2012 » Arduino Lego Enclosure
March 26, 2012 » Amazing Walking Robot on Instructables

2011

March 21, 2011 » A cute little Robot that finds beats
I love this video - it brings together two of my favourite things - homebrew hacked robots and music/rhythm experimentation. It uses the Picaxe controller board, caterpillar tracks, and a sonar distance sensor.
March 12, 2011 » Lego SpyBotics
These were designed for children to learn about STEM and robotics with Lego, in the disguise of secret agent games.
March 12, 2011 » Awesome Lego Walker - pneumatic based!
A Lego maker has built a Lego walker based only on pneumatics. This build contains no electronics or programmable bricks at all. Granted, there is likely a non-Lego air compressor for the build.
March 12, 2011 » Robot Kits - Gifts For Kids Guide 2011
January 22, 2011 » Arduino tinkerings

2010

November 15, 2010 » More amazing lego innovation
The arrival of Lego Mindstorms kicked off a wave of Lego innovation, but not all of that used official Lego Mindstorms kits. Some creations were just motors strapped onto curious contraptions, the most interesting being the Rube Goldberg devices, kinetic sculptures, rolling ball machines and similar.
November 14, 2010 » Building RAM memory cells yourself
Computer memory was once built by hand. Building your own like this memory will help to understand the principles of the system, and experiment with it.
November 11, 2010 » Lego RCX
November 11, 2010 » NXT
November 11, 2010 » Factories Built With Lego
October 26, 2010 » Helicopter
October 26, 2010 » Robots with real uses around people
October 23, 2010 » Chicken Walker Robot Halloween Costumes
October 20, 2010 » Robots in unmanned warfare
October 4, 2010 » 3d Printers proliferate
October 3, 2010 » Absolutely brilliant storage concept
January 19, 2010 » The Lego RCX, Inside and Out
January 17, 2010 » NQC

2009

December 24, 2009 » EEE PC Robot build
The ASUS Eee PC is a small netbook laptop, which seemed about the right size to balance on a medium robot. The Aurorans, a London based gathering of robot builders, suggested that the participants start building a robot. I thought this was a great opportunity to try this out in practice.
November 10, 2009 » William Grey Walter - Machina Speculatrix
These robots were built as learning platform by the late William Grey Walter in the 1940s.
April 25, 2009 » Lego Manas
The Lego Bionicle 8539 Manas set contained two IR remote controlled Crab like battle bots. The remote control units at the centre of the set each take three AA batteries, and have two fixed motors. The remote control units each also take 3 AA batteries.
April 25, 2009 » Using External Power Sources With The RCX
April 24, 2009 » MindStorms
January 27, 2009 » Sci Fi Robots
January 2, 2009 » Happy New Year!

2008

December 18, 2008 » East Finchley Robotics Club
The East Finchley Robotics Club ran from 2004-05.
December 3, 2008 » More Lathe Info
I have still been at work on my Lego Lathe. This is the first in a series of automatic construction/fabrication/workshop robots that I want to build. It has been photographed during it’s construction, and I will be putting those, along with it’s plans, onto OrionRobots.
November 28, 2008 » Making Custom Clocks
It seems that a lot of people are trying to customise the idea of clocks recently. I’ve recently seen a screen scraping train clock, an incredible motorised moving clock and you only need to look around to see many people are building variants on clocks.
November 28, 2008 » Lego Pinhole cameras, alarm clocks and moving walls
November 16, 2008 » Communications Between Cybot And RCX
November 3, 2008 » quantisation
November 3, 2008 » Oscilloscope
October 26, 2008 » Halloween Animatronics
September 13, 2008 » Lego Discussion | Mindstorms Stormrunner Game
July 14, 2008 » Chloe and Shannon
July 7, 2008 » Storage Systems
July 6, 2008 » UK Micromouse 2008
July 2, 2008 » Micromouse 2008 Photos
May 25, 2008 » New Great Ball Contraption Videos
May 4, 2008 » Broken Cybot Repairs
March 18, 2008 » Choosing A Glue
March 9, 2008 » SolidWorks
March 9, 2008 » Get Your Hands On a VEXplorer kit with Robot Design and Building Contest!
February 24, 2008 » The McRobot is coming
February 6, 2008 » Nano Bots
February 6, 2008 » Magnetically Linking Robots
February 3, 2008 » Homebuild Electric Vehicles
February 2, 2008 » IJCAI
January 28, 2008 » Happy Birthday Lego!
January 27, 2008 » Awesome Robot Hacked Together With Chumby and Gaffa Tape
January 13, 2008 » NXT Gumball Sorter
January 4, 2008 » Rack And Pinion
January 4, 2008 » A Happy New Year to all readers

2007

December 30, 2007 » Robot Building Safety
Contents
December 29, 2007 » Open Source
The concept is meant to be Free as in speech, not free as in beer - although most projects account for both. This means that you have the right to modify and redistribute packages with certain license obligations(such as keeping the open source license when redistributing).
November 30, 2007 » Walking Bots and Investment in power
The Landwalker
November 26, 2007 » GA Simulation now supports IE
November 25, 2007 » Genetic Algorithm Simulation
November 20, 2007 » DARPA Urban Challenge
October 14, 2007 » Pino
October 9, 2007 » Amazing giant robot arm to be scrapped
September 8, 2007 » Engadget Underwater ROV Kit
August 26, 2007 » Robot searches for trapped miners
July 21, 2007 » Lego Mechanical Gear Multiplexer
July 21, 2007 » The NXT-A-Sketch
April 14, 2007 » Robot Locomotion
April 9, 2007 » Interesting rodent behaviour
April 8, 2007 » NXT - Building the Arm
April 8, 2007 » Lego NXT Photo gallery
March 21, 2007 » A Grand Challenge comes to the UK!
March 17, 2007 » Byte
March 17, 2007 » Degrees Of Freedom
March 9, 2007 » Small robots to be used for medical procedures
March 3, 2007 » Tri Star Wheels
February 20, 2007 » Are manned air fighters soon to be obsolete?
February 4, 2007 » Robot Tools
January 28, 2007 » DC Motor
January 28, 2007 » Lego CyberMaster
January 28, 2007 » Cog
January 28, 2007 » Bleex
January 28, 2007 » The Honda Asimo robot
January 28, 2007 » soldering
January 28, 2007 » Mark Tilden
January 28, 2007 » Salvage Tips
January 28, 2007 » Identifying Electronic Components
January 28, 2007 » Electronic Valves
January 28, 2007 » Electronic Relay
January 28, 2007 » Stepper Motors
January 28, 2007 » Universal Serial Bus
January 28, 2007 » SMT - Surface Mount Technology
January 27, 2007 » Interesting Register Article - Will Robots Ever Be Like Humans?
January 26, 2007 » Prosopagnosia
January 23, 2007 » Lego Mindstorms NXT - The Ultrasonic Sensor Tutorial
January 18, 2007 » Lego mindstorms NXT - Extending Tribot with a grabber
January 13, 2007 » Getting Stuck into the Lego Mindstorms NXT
January 10, 2007 » OSX, NXT, BlueTooth and Ruby - A match made in byte heaven?
January 10, 2007 » OrionRobots gets our first NXT
January 7, 2007 » Lego Assembly Line Machine
January 4, 2007 » Welcome to 2007 and Robotic Lego lathe Plans
January 3, 2007 » FIRST Robotic Competition
January 3, 2007 » Lego Technic Four Jaw Chuck
January 1, 2007 » CMU - Carnegie Mellon University
January 1, 2007 » Smalltalk programming language
January 1, 2007 » C Language

2006

December 30, 2006 » roomba
The Roomba is a disk shaped robotic vacuum cleaner or “Robotic Floorvac”, designed by iRobot and released in 2002. It has also become a robot development platform for some.
December 15, 2006 » Lego machines group on YouTube
I recently came across a Lego Machines group on YouTube, which has a number of excellent creations with moving parts and all kinds of functions.
December 12, 2006 » More Rubiks cube
I have stumbled upon more Rubiks cube solving robot footage on YouTube, and thought it work sharing.
December 12, 2006 » The Sony Aibo
December 12, 2006 » Robot Wars
December 12, 2006 » Infra Red
December 12, 2006 » sonar
December 12, 2006 » LDraw System
December 12, 2006 » General Lego Tips
December 10, 2006 » Rubot II
December 3, 2006 » Servicing The Lego Mindstorms RCX 1.0
September 15, 2006 » Budget Robotics
September 12, 2006 » Lego Clone Brand
September 5, 2006 » OrionRobots
September 1, 2006 » Airfix model company in troubled waters
August 31, 2006 » The Pico Cricket - Education Robotics Controller
August 24, 2006 » Peeron
August 24, 2006 » Bricklink
August 24, 2006 » Lugnet
August 23, 2006 » RS232
August 23, 2006 » PDA Suitable for use with Phidgets
August 22, 2006 » compile
August 17, 2006 » Sounds great on the NXT
August 16, 2006 » IDETool
July 30, 2006 » VEX based aerial photographs
July 25, 2006 » Science Museum Fuel cell car toy with potential for robot building
July 23, 2006 » The NXT has been opened up
July 22, 2006 » firmware
July 22, 2006 » MicroProcessor
July 22, 2006 » MRAM Now Viable
July 12, 2006 » Interfacing an LED to an RCX Port
July 10, 2006 » odometry
July 10, 2006 » Building A Battle Robot
July 9, 2006 » Pneumatic
July 9, 2006 » FischerTechnik
July 9, 2006 » Pneumatic Engine Repost
July 9, 2006 » telepresence
July 9, 2006 » Lugnet NXT Newsgroup established
July 9, 2006 » Ants found to use odometry
July 9, 2006 » RCX Switches can be used as analogue actuators
July 8, 2006 » Would you sell your creations if there was no choice?
July 3, 2006 » Speech Processing
June 30, 2006 » Multitasking in Robots
June 30, 2006 » NXT's have started shipping and arriving
June 28, 2006 » OCR - Optical Character Recognition
June 28, 2006 » CCD
June 28, 2006 » Text Reading for the Blind
June 28, 2006 » 2nd International LEGO MINDSTORMS Competition
June 23, 2006 » Microsoft Robotics Studio cool, but not quite there yet
June 18, 2006 » Beta C Programming Solution for NXT Announced
June 17, 2006 » Mecha
June 13, 2006 » MegaBloks
June 13, 2006 » Construction Toys Useful For Robotics
June 13, 2006 » Brickfest 2006 Just Around the corner
May 30, 2006 » API - Application Programming Interface
May 30, 2006 » Lejos
May 30, 2006 » BrickOS
May 28, 2006 » Engadget on current OLED Advances
May 27, 2006 » DorkbotLondon Camping Event Dates and Venue Announced
May 26, 2006 » Adder Subtractor Drive
May 21, 2006 » Building an External Power Supply for the NXT
May 11, 2006 » BrickShelf
May 11, 2006 » A New Great Ball Contraption website
May 11, 2006 » Vex to be acquired by original creator
May 10, 2006 » LEGO Factory
May 10, 2006 » Dorkbot London Summer Camp - aka DorkCamp Proposed
April 23, 2006 » George Boole
April 23, 2006 » NOT Gate
April 23, 2006 » XOR Logic Gate
April 23, 2006 » NAND Gate
April 23, 2006 » OR Gate
April 19, 2006 » Binary
April 19, 2006 » IO- Input and Output
April 11, 2006 » logic gate
April 8, 2006 » Amazing Robot video
March 31, 2006 » Comparing the NXT Educational with the NXT retail packs
March 25, 2006 » Make Blog - Cutting a phone holder with a water Jet
March 24, 2006 » Vexed with the Radio Shack VEX kits
March 21, 2006 » MicroController
March 21, 2006 » MEGAbitty microcontroller
March 20, 2006 » Micromouse contest at APEC 2006
March 16, 2006 » More NXT Obsession
March 14, 2006 » The Mindstorms Developer Panel (MDP)
March 6, 2006 » animatronic
March 6, 2006 » I2C
March 6, 2006 » Steven King Animatronics prop on Ebay
March 4, 2006 » p1010017_2.jpg
March 4, 2006 » p1010016_2.jpg
March 4, 2006 » p1010011_2.jpg
March 4, 2006 » p1010010_2.jpg
March 4, 2006 » p1010009_2.jpg
March 4, 2006 » p1010007_2.jpg
March 4, 2006 » p1010006_1.jpg
March 4, 2006 » p1010005_1.jpg
March 4, 2006 » Lego Great Ball Contraption Stirrer Basket
March 3, 2006 » FLL - First lego League
March 3, 2006 » Lego announces MPD selection process complete
March 3, 2006 » Lego announce US educational prices for range of NXT products
February 24, 2006 » RIS - Robotic Invention System
February 19, 2006 » Wired January 2006 - 50 Best Robots Ever
February 17, 2006 » Who would have thought you could use mould in a robot?
February 16, 2006 » Wave Goodbye to The Sony Robots
February 13, 2006 » WR-07 A real transformer
February 11, 2006 » Happy New Year (2006)!
February 10, 2006 » OpenGL
February 10, 2006 » LeoCad
January 30, 2006 » Gung Hei Fat Choi and Lego NXT developments!
January 16, 2006 » BEAM Robots
January 15, 2006 » Robo Cup
January 15, 2006 » exoskeleton
January 15, 2006 » Cyborg
January 15, 2006 » Leonardo Da Vincis Robot
January 15, 2006 » PLD - Programmable Logic Devices
January 11, 2006 » More NXT Information
January 6, 2006 » AFOL - Adult Fan Of Lego
January 6, 2006 » Lego unveils the next generation Mindstorms system
January 4, 2006 » OOPic
January 1, 2006 » Charmed Labs XPort 2

2005

December 19, 2005 » About Danny Staple, AKA Orionr
I am Danny Staple, otherwise known as Orion.
December 10, 2005 » Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is a very broad description. It applies to anything from simple bots with some autonomy, to fully learning growing systems.
December 10, 2005 » Interesting discoveries
Facial Recognition and Prosopagnosia
December 8, 2005 » A supercap used as a 9v rechargeable battery
December 3, 2005 » Tokyo International Robot Exhibition 2005
December 2, 2005 » Diode
December 1, 2005 » Horse And Rider
November 30, 2005 » Headbots
October 12, 2005 » Impeller
October 11, 2005 » Pino Toy
October 11, 2005 » Modular Robot Design
October 11, 2005 » Leonardo Zide
October 11, 2005 » Hydraulic
October 9, 2005 » Double Acting Cylinder
October 9, 2005 » Single Acting Cylinder
October 8, 2005 » DARPA Grand Challenge
October 8, 2005 » More info on the Darpa Grand Challenge Result
October 8, 2005 » Darpa Grand Challenge - And its all over
October 8, 2005 » Genetic
October 8, 2005 » Darpa Grand Challenge - they're all set
October 6, 2005 » Mr Psycho
October 6, 2005 » Qrio
October 6, 2005 » FPGA
October 6, 2005 » Deferred design
October 6, 2005 » End Effectors
October 6, 2005 » Electric Vehicles
October 6, 2005 » Robot Design
October 6, 2005 » DARPA
October 6, 2005 » Robolab
October 6, 2005 » Lego DACTA
October 6, 2005 » Android
October 6, 2005 » Cluster Bots
October 6, 2005 » Knee deep in Electronics and building
October 5, 2005 » Capacitor
October 5, 2005 » AC - Alternating Current
October 5, 2005 » Eliza
October 5, 2005 » Anode
October 5, 2005 » Sony
October 3, 2005 » Using The RCX With Stepper Motors
October 3, 2005 » Microcontroller Registers
September 15, 2005 » Part Reuse
September 11, 2005 » Sumpthing
September 11, 2005 » Scrapheap Challenge
September 10, 2005 » Resistor
September 10, 2005 » LED - light Emitting Diode
September 10, 2005 » Diode Bridge
September 9, 2005 » AND Gate
September 1, 2005 » Semiconductor
September 1, 2005 » Transistor
August 31, 2005 » Feedback
August 31, 2005 » Cybernetics
August 28, 2005 » Lego Solar Panel
August 28, 2005 » Palm Computer
August 28, 2005 » Pocket PC
August 28, 2005 » MLCad
August 27, 2005 » Science Fiction
August 27, 2005 » RCX MainBoard
August 25, 2005 » Bluetooth
August 25, 2005 » James Jessiman
August 25, 2005 » Chaos2
August 25, 2005 » PWM - Pulse Width Modulation
August 25, 2005 » Building A Game Scoreboard
August 23, 2005 » MultiMeter
August 22, 2005 » Retrieving Dropped Screws
August 20, 2005 » Damaged Screw Head
August 18, 2005 » The Lady Ada
August 18, 2005 » Charles Babbage
August 11, 2005 » CAD - Computer Aided Design
August 5, 2005 » Corporate Robot Projects
August 5, 2005 » Announcements | One Million Views
August 5, 2005 » Announcements
August 3, 2005 » Servo Motor
August 3, 2005 » Pistons
August 3, 2005 » Idea for an ooPIC based line follower robot
August 2, 2005 » Teddie Ruxpin
August 2, 2005 » Robotic Gadgets And Toys
July 29, 2005 » Internal Combustion Engine
July 29, 2005 » MIT
July 29, 2005 » Holding School Robot Battle Events
July 29, 2005 » Repliee Q1 - A replicant from Japan
July 28, 2005 » Cathode
July 22, 2005 » Images from DorkBotLondon
July 22, 2005 » DorkBotLondon, New Survey
July 22, 2005 » DorkBot London 2005
July 14, 2005 » LCD
July 14, 2005 » Null-Modem
July 14, 2005 » Personal Data Assistant
July 6, 2005 » SIL - Single Inline
July 1, 2005 » Power Sources
July 1, 2005 » Recycling Batteries
June 29, 2005 » Lego Robots
June 29, 2005 » EEPROM
June 29, 2005 » PROM - Programmable Read Ony Memory
June 29, 2005 » EPROM
June 29, 2005 » PC104
June 29, 2005 » UV - Ultra violet
June 24, 2005 » Lego Specifications
June 6, 2005 » More on the signal generator
June 5, 2005 » Building an amplified signal generator
May 30, 2005 » Freeforming a Rectifier Bridge
May 29, 2005 » Propeller
May 29, 2005 » ROBOlympics
May 29, 2005 » Helical
May 28, 2005 » Infra Red Analyser
May 28, 2005 » Robot Wars - Firestorm
May 28, 2005 » PIC
May 28, 2005 » Integrated Circuit
May 28, 2005 » Dual In Line
May 28, 2005 » LAN - Local Area Network
May 28, 2005 » WiFi
May 28, 2005 » Wireless
May 28, 2005 » RC - Remote Control
May 25, 2005 » Rotundus Ground Bot
May 25, 2005 » RCX Code
May 25, 2005 » OS - Operating System
May 4, 2005 » Variable Resistor
May 4, 2005 » Pneumatic Lego Gripper
May 2, 2005 » Some robots from the club
April 20, 2005 » Mindstorms Stormrunner
April 10, 2005 » Ball contraption Stirrer Basket
April 10, 2005 » A Bionacle CD Holder
April 6, 2005 » Round up of the Challenge on Saturday the 2nd April 2005
April 1, 2005 » LSynth
April 1, 2005 » Genetic Algorithm
April 1, 2005 » Legs
April 1, 2005 » Last Meeting in East Finchley
March 21, 2005 » Meeting Log, and movies
March 21, 2005 » Reviewing Disney's Robots Movie
March 18, 2005 » Dyson Robot Vacuum
March 17, 2005 » Hitachi
March 17, 2005 » This weeks meeting
March 17, 2005 » New faster wheeled robot from Hitachi
March 16, 2005 » Parallel Port
March 16, 2005 » AI - Artificial Intelligence
March 13, 2005 » Flash Memory
March 13, 2005 » RAM - Random Access Memory
March 13, 2005 » bit - Binary Digit
March 13, 2005 » DAC - Digital to Analog Converter
March 13, 2005 » ROM - Read Only Memory
March 13, 2005 » SSC - Serial Servo Controller
March 4, 2005 » Differential Gear
March 1, 2005 » Robot Wars - DeadMetal
March 1, 2005 » Robot Wars - Matilda
March 1, 2005 » Lego Capacitor
March 1, 2005 » Sir Killalot
February 25, 2005 » Furby
February 25, 2005 » PPRK - Palm Pilot Robot Kit
February 25, 2005 » Mike and Jarvis - Ukulele Playing Robot
February 24, 2005 » Robotic
February 24, 2005 » Real Robots Magazine
February 23, 2005 » Robots in the news:Spam Filters may hold the key to Aids
February 23, 2005 » East Finchley Group Stopping, Plans for next sessions, and more on Ball Contraption
February 14, 2005 » Skid Steering
February 8, 2005 » Making a Pancake Flipping Robot
February 4, 2005 » Tennis Robots
February 4, 2005 » Sports Robots
February 1, 2005 » Security Robots
January 31, 2005 » Leonardo Da Vincis Tank
January 27, 2005 » DK Ultimate Robot Kit
January 27, 2005 » Free-forming, Ball Contraptions and CAD Software
January 26, 2005 » Professor Kevin Warwick
January 25, 2005 » FreeForm
January 25, 2005 » Diode Bridge And Signal Generator Experiments
January 18, 2005 » Lego Pneumatic Specifications
January 17, 2005 » Nano Technology
January 14, 2005 » P-Brick - Programmable Lego Brick
January 14, 2005 » Happy New Year all!
January 12, 2005 » UAV - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
January 10, 2005 » Rodney Brooks
January 10, 2005 » Kismet
January 10, 2005 » Genghis - iRobot
January 10, 2005 » William Grey Walter
January 3, 2005 » Battle Robot Weapons
January 2, 2005 » Hypno-Disc

2004

December 31, 2004 » RoboBrix
RoboBrix were modular robot building components - with Wheel Bases, Grippers, Servos, MicroControllers, amd Sensors. In addition - they are mechanically compatible with the Lego system.
December 20, 2004 » Converting AC To DC
AC (alternating current) can be converted to DC (direct current) by using what is known as a rectifier. WARNING - do not ever attempt to convert mains power - buy a safe and suitable adaptor if this is needed!!
December 17, 2004 » Leonardo Da Vincis Submarine
Leonardo Da Vinci was known to have designed a SubMarine.
December 3, 2004 » AGV - Automated Guided Vehicle
December 1, 2004 » Solenoid
November 30, 2004 » Using An Old PC To Flash Roms
November 30, 2004 » Holonomic Drive
November 30, 2004 » Honda
November 30, 2004 » Building An Experimenting Parallel Cable
November 20, 2004 » Parallel Data Stream
November 20, 2004 » Serial Data Stream
November 19, 2004 » Python
November 16, 2004 » Creating Custom Sensors For The Lego RCX
November 16, 2004 » The Three Laws Of Robotics
November 16, 2004 » Cardbot Challenge Details
November 16, 2004 » Centronics Parallel Port
November 16, 2004 » CAM
November 16, 2004 » CNC
November 16, 2004 » Fuel Cell
November 16, 2004 » Direct Current
November 16, 2004 » Generating AC From DC
November 16, 2004 » Gruschtelling
November 16, 2004 » Hot Pluggable
November 16, 2004 » The Cybot Infra Red Protocol
November 15, 2004 » Lego Vision Command
November 15, 2004 » Lego Technic
November 15, 2004 » MicroSwitches
November 15, 2004 » BattleBot
November 15, 2004 » Object Oriented Programming
November 15, 2004 » Pro Engineer
November 15, 2004 » Medical Bots
November 15, 2004 » Robotic Traffic Cones
November 15, 2004 » Repair Bots
November 14, 2004 » SubMarine
November 14, 2004 » ROV
November 14, 2004 » Autonomous
November 14, 2004 » Motor
November 14, 2004 » Solar Panel
November 14, 2004 » Torque
November 14, 2004 » Helical Gears
November 14, 2004 » Component Storage
November 14, 2004 » Boolean
November 14, 2004 » Cybot
November 14, 2004 » Unnamed Trumpet Player
November 14, 2004 » Thomas Edison
November 14, 2004 » Techno Games
November 14, 2004 » Sgt Bash
November 14, 2004 » Roboteers
November 14, 2004 » megabyte robot dog
November 14, 2004 » i Cybie Robot Dog
November 14, 2004 » Fixing a Broken Wire
November 14, 2004 » Apache Server Monitor With Python And Led
November 5, 2004 » Simple Parallel Port LED
September 25, 2004 » East Finchley Robotics Club - Twin motor with steering challenge

2002

August 4, 2002 » Lego Hexapod Design Mk1

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

The State of The Piwars 2020 Robot

2019

Piwars Acceptance

Build A Low-Cost Wheeled Robot

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

Definition of terms

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

Contents

The Landwalker

2006

2005

Facial Recognition and Prosopagnosia

2004

2002