PERSONAL ROBOTICS
■ FIGURE 6. Bruce Tabor working
on the top for the box.
turns the card into a rudimentary
wing which made it fly right out of
the frame! (See the Resources for a
video about the RoboSpinArt
machine that includes the paper
launching into the air!).
This was one of many lessons
we learned while building this
machine. Rick re-designed the
aluminum frame to have a
snap-down PVC plastic cover to
hold the paper in place and in
testing, the paper stayed put for
painting (Figure 4). So, now we
had the basic mechanical parts
for the machine. We just needed
something to put them in.
■ FIGURE 7.
Finished box
takes up the
whole kitchen table!
BOXING DAY!
As I’m not too handy in the woodworking arena, I reached out to another friend of mine who does carpentry
for a living. I went out to see Bruce
Tabor. Bruce has a fully-equipped
carpentry shop and he said he could
help out with the project. I brought my
sketches and hoped he would be able
to help convert them into reality. Bruce
happened to have a cabinet base left
over from a project and offered to
convert it into the chassis for the
RoboSpinArt machine (Figure 5).
After a number of hours cutting
the slanted top, adding some channels
for the Plexiglas, and cutting a hole for
the all-important bucket, a spin art
machine began to take form. (Figure
6). I brought the raw wooden box
home and placed a few parts in it. It
was really beginning to look like a
cool vintage arcade game (Figure 7)!
Before I started permanently mounting the controls, it would need a bit of
decorating. I contacted Denise Scioli,
a local Austin artist (and of course,
fellow Robot Group member) and she
took control of the decorating. With
the help of some friends, she sanded,
painted, and decorated the box with a
cool, retro-tech, pseudo steampunk
finish (Figure 8).
I mounted the bucket, the controls,
and the pumps. With most of the
hardware done, it was time to get
busy bringing the monster to life by
writing some software. I started
small, first building a prototyping
platform that would allow me to
start writing and testing software
for the various component parts
(Figure 9). This small board had all
the systems I expected I would
need including:
■ FIGURE 8. The box after paint
and decorations.
• Parallax BASIC Stamp II
• Parallax Super Carrier Board
• Parallax Serial Servo Controller
• Rogue Robotics uMP3 Player
• EFX-TEK DC- 16
• Hitt Consulting HC4LED display
• RadioShack audio amp
• Arcade buttons from Happ Controls
I wrote some general code blocks
that would let me read the buttons,
run the servos,
change the values
shown on the LED
display, turn the button lights on and off,
and trigger sound
effects. I spent lots
of time getting the
logic straight, which
for me means building flow charts of different programming
methods to track the
logic (Figure 10).
Once I had the basic functionality, I brought the board out to
Dorkbot Austin (see Resources
section for more info on “Dorkbot —
People doing strange things with
electricity”) for a bit of a preview
(Figure 11). The reaction was
wonderful! The kids enjoyed playing
with the board, even though all it
did at the time was blink lights,
make sounds, and spin servos! Lots
HELLO WORLD!
Now that I had the box all ready,
■ FIGURE 9. Software
prototyping board
Rev 1.
January 2008 73
