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My board showed up today from BatchPCB:

I managed to get the 3V power supply built and tested. Yay!

Tomorrow I will get someone at work to solder the processor on for me, as it is well beyond my skills (64 pin MLF).

Looking for tiny Li-Po batteries? Try here.

P.S. I have uploaded a bunch of robot pics to my new Picasa web album here.

I was at Ikea the other day (they just built one in town, so i get to go all the time) and saw a rechargeable nightlight that I thought would be cool with some RGB LEDs. As I was working on the RF link yesterday, I realized that I could make a wireless, pc-controlled RGB LED light. So I headed over and picked up a Spoka from Ikea. This thing is just begging to be hacked. It comes with a 4.8V 400mA wall wart, and an internal 3.6V 550mAh NiMH battery. The silicone rubber outer cover diffuses the light nicely.

Contents Nightlight

Once you get the plastic shell out of the silicone rubber cover (it takes some work), remove the bottom by releasing the tabs on either side. Then split the shell by releasing the tabs at the top (circles), and prying lightly. There are two alignment posts on each side (arrows) that are a snug fit.

After a little circuit tracing, I had the schematic: I should be able to take out the LEDs and place my circuit in the same spot in order to keep the battery/AC/rechargeable portion working.
I am planning 2 RGB LEDs (That’s all I have at the moment) behind the eyes, and a red LED behind the mouth. I’ll use a small AVR (maybe a 2313) and the MirfV2 with a ceramic chip antenna for the RF.

I finally managed to send some data over the RF link. Somehow I managed to break the printf function, so I only saw the data on the scope as it clocked out of the transceiver on the SPI bus, but it was the correct data. Here’s a hint if you are using the NRF24L01 chip. Go to the Nordic website and make sure you have the latest datasheet. There is a step by step guide to the minimum config for enhanced shockburst mode. Once I had all of my generic SPI problems worked out, it just fell into place. Now to wrap it all up into a nice library and install it on a robot!

P.S. If the title didn’t make any sense, try here. Be sure to check out his notebook.

As per usual, I got distracted and changed my mind about the Hackaday design challenge. I decided that it would be cool to have a general purpose AVR board with a voltage regulator and motor controller. I drew up a version last night with large prototype areas, but I think I will change it tonight to have a smaller prototype area, and a cage-clamp style connector.

Here is a preview of the initial board.

In an effort to keep track of the projects that I want to work on, I created a little list. See the  “My Current Projects” link over to the right—>

OK, quickie. Here’s the library for a Hackaday logo in Eagle.