What Smoke?

As part of a course im currently undertaking at university Mechatronics 2, A gripper to pick up round objects was required. It was decided that the cost was too much to buy one, so the research started. After finding a couple of suitable gripper designs, A design was conceived.



The gripper uses one servo to open and close the jaws, the servo… Read More

Here is quick power supply that was designed for use within the Lab Power supply project (Still a work in progress). This 5v Supply is to run all the logic, Microcontroller and LCD within the unit. Attached at the bottom of the page is the PCB and SCH file.



The power supply takes an AC input from a transforemer. When selecting the tranformer ensure… Read More

After much talking about it, Machspeed, FireFox, Shadey and Myself decided to finally do it. We built a portable 6.5m Trailer Mounted Mast for Air-Stream.

The design is quite simple. It consists of:

• 2 x 3.25m Sections of 50x3mm Alu Pipe
• 4 x 6mm Wire Rope Guide Wires
• 8 x 20L Water Drums
• 1 x 6x4 Trailer

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Recently i bought myself a bench top drill press, only to discover my workbench was too high for it and i didnt have enough room. I decided that i simply needed another work bench. Below you can find a small work log of the process i use when building work benches. The bench i am building in this log was made to match my previous work benches. This one however is shorter and not as long as the rest, this making it the ideal size for my drill press. The… Read More

Seeing as it has been a while since i posted something, i decided its was about time that i had an update.

I am currently in the process of modifiying an Elektor designed Varible Switch Mode Power Supply for use as a Dual Lab Power Supply. I have been working on this for a while now and am about half way through the PCB layout.

The features of the power supply will include:

• Dual Varible Power Supply
  • Current Control (0-3A)
  • Voltage Control <0-30V)
• Fixed 5v Supply (3A Max)
• Fixed 12v Supply (3A Max)
• LCD Readout for Varible Supplies

The aim of this supply is to replace the… Read More

After two days of slaving woolsheds is now connected to the Air-Stream network. Machspeed, ZadZad2 and Myself spent our time fabricating and modifiying an old windmill tower for use with microwave wireless equipment.

Air-Stream Woolsheds is now connected to Air-Stream Gulfview Heights, which makes it currently the longest link in the Air-Stream… Read More

This is a quick little project i have done which i find very useful.

This particular power supply uses the LM2576T-5.0 switch mode regulator to regulate a higher DC voltage down to 5v.



the circuit itself is nothing new and is straight from the manufactures datasheets, The circuit board is my work. The regulator itself is able to… Read More

A quick little guide to the Atmel STK500 6pin in circuit programming header which features in most of my Atmel based projects.

This layout is compatible with the STK500 Programming board aswell as many AVRISP programmers.



Things… Read More

Air-Stream Woolsheds is one step closer to connecting to the main network today.   After replacing a faulty pigtail Machspeed and myself were able to successfully complete a stumble with surprising results. We weren't expecting to see much at all but surprisingly we picked up the following:

• Air-Stream Gawler South
• Air-Stream Gulfview Heights
• Air-Stream Hillbank
• Air-Stream Modbury North
… Read More

One very common thing to use when embedding a micro controller into to a project especially robotics projects is a reset switch. The ATMega family of micro controllers from Atmel have the luxury of a reset pin. However using this feature can pose problems, especially when used incorrectly.

Whilst working on a previous project i found that the program was resetting at random, i later found this was because the reset circuit was done incorrectly.

The following is the standard reset circuit that Atmel recommend using:

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