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Windell Oskay
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- Windell Oskay
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Capacitors are not like batteries. They do not maintain a fixed voltage when discharged, but instead decay exponentially. Look at how an "RC" circuit discharges for an example. So, what you really need to know is how far down that curve you can go…
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I must apologize; that description for how to upload the firmware was utterly terrible; it was more applicable to the v1 firmware than to the current process. I've updated it to say rather explicitly what you need to do. First, install the Alpha C…
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If it was working properly to begin with, you can be assured that all of the LEDs are facing in the correct directions; they don't spontaneously reverse direction. And, if you really need to look, the right way to verify the orientation is by looki…
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If you have a multimeter handy, you might check to see if there's a short circuit between lines LED1 and LED2, or between either of those lines and LED10. There could be a solder blob or stray wire somewhere causing the problem. I'm having a li…
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If just one of the ten LED lines is not wired up correctly-- for example, if a solder joint has failed --you will start to see these kinds of funny lit-up patterns. And yes, it's an effect of charlieplexing. When you're describing the LED position…
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A very thin cylindrical ring is a lot like the center slice through a sphere, so the Eggbot can probably work okay on the surface, but I'm really not sure about the engraving part. The Eggbot is meant for drawing, and does not exert the kind of dow…
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The added weight is slightly inelegant, but a fine solution. You may be able to add a little extra weight *under* the lever to make it a little less obvious. The danger of too much weight on that side is that it will not return up when there are …
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The test that we use-- before it ships --is that you need to be able to place a ball, at zero speed, right above where it says "MAN," and it should work *every time* for dozens of balls in a row. It's a pretty rigorous test. Now, what we have found…
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Good; that sounds a lot better. I'd imagine that more humidity would be a bigger issue, as the wood pieces may not slide so easily. For T4, do you find that it "clicks" when you slide it from one side to the other? If so, you may find it helpful …
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It should definitely still activate the start lever, even when the input guide is empty; that's one of the critical tests that we repeat dozens of times. Let it sit for an hour or two and try again.
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Sorry to hear about the trouble. The ball release wire is carefully tuned in length, so it probably is a good idea to let it warm up, adjust to room temperature, and so forth before worrying about anything. If the balls and brass pins are cold an…
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There are at least some code adjustments necessary, but I have not tested it, and I do not know if there are any major stumbling blocks that I had not considered. Obviously, the signature bytes and fuse bytes are different, but some register names …
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Yep. Potentially, the nine LED lines could be used to drive up to 9*8 = 72 LEDs through charlieplexing.
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You probably can't really drive 3 LEDs in series directly from each output. The absolute maximum voltage for the microcontroller is 5.5 V; do not exceed that value. The actual voltage output may be up to 0.8 V below the input voltage, so you m…
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While that *is* true vector clip art, it isn't actually "eggbot ready," because of the way that it's designed. Try opening up the file in Inkscape, and looking at where the lines actually are. Select all, and then ungroup everything. If you look a…
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The example on that page is not actually a vector, so I can't say whether or not the "real" version is suitable. You could certainly trace it, if it is not already true vector art.
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Thanks for the feedback on the capacitor-- we'll take a look. You are welcome to post code here, and this is a good place for discussions.
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OK, great-- thanks! I'll mark this one as the "featured" installer. As for the version number, it probably should have been updated, but was not since (IIRC) only the "extra" extensions and the installer itself were updated.
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Please try this version of the installer, which was created specifically to solve this issue, and let me know how it goes: http://code.google.com/p/eggbotcode/downloads/detail?name=EggBot2.3.1.r3s.mpkg.zip (If it does not work, I have a workaround t…
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I'm sorry to hear about the trouble. We're currently using really nice Cree brand red LEDs in our RGB Bulbdial Clock kits, and we have (at least until now) always found them to be of exceptionally quality and consistent in all of their important pro…
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>My son is extremely disappointed. I would think that this would be good motivation for you to look a little harder and figure out what the problem is. This is a very simple circuit, and there isn't much that can go wrong. - If it was left on f…
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Well, that is good news-- I'm glad to hear that *at least* the hardware is okay. (Again, I'll hopefully have more time for Eggbots and setting up a testbed once our holiday rush is over-- we're in full-on production mode on the Digi-comp, working …
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Try changing the speed settings on the programmer; you may be trying to send the data too quickly.
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There are two available PWM pins specifically for driving LEDs. One is the standard nightlight, D2, on OC2B. You can use the "nightlight" function to dim it-- see the "sleep" nightlight mode for an example of how to do this. The second one is D…
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I'm sorry to hear about the trouble. It actually is critical to make sure that no pins or leads whatsoever are touching-- we call those "short circuits" and as you can probably imagine, they can cause a lot of trouble. In many cases, just having …
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Yikes, that sounds awful! I'm very sorry for the trouble; we'll check our brackets here to see if it's a more widespread problem. And, I'm glad that you were able to get them tapped. (We'd happily send you replacements, too.)
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We've used a similar hardcoded python trick to get Inkscape extensions (in general) to run under some recent versions of Mac OS, each release of which seems to temporarily break Inkscape extensions. We're located in Sunnyvale, CA, so not very close …
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If voltage is getting to the LED, it is likely that the resistor is good, and that the chip is sending a signal there. (Either that, or you've got a short circuit that is causing the voltage to get there...) One thing not in your list that can go w…
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As I said, if there weren't a counterexample... and yes, my comment was written after trying to follow that guide and not ending up with a working system. (It would be convenient if there were a real installer for Gentoo.) Anyway, I did come acros…
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> Well, actually I am trying to use MATLAB's GUI interface to control the LEDs. You did already say that, but it is actually as I was guessing, more or less: It's not that you're writing a program that runs on the Arduino, you're using Matlab's…
