As of June 9th, Cowtowncapacitor.net will no longer be available on the web. Actually, I’m not sure how sad that is, since the organization has been dead for some time now. I just wanted to plublicly declare it on the website for record. Thank you to everyone that joined.
First of all, I would like to apologize. Despite the lack of updates to the website, CTC has been active. I will endeavor to take a more active role in our web presence, and will update the site more regularly.
Currently we are working on a robot. We have a parts list, and have currently refined the goals and operating parameters for said robot. We have a number of ideas about functionality that we wish to introduce to it’s design. First let me start with our parts list.
We started with a chassis. We’re using a 4wd model purchased from seeed studio. 
The features we like best about this chassis is that it has 4 nice gearhead motors that run on 5V DC. They run nicely off the 6V batter that we’re using to power it. When operating at full speed this thing has a lot of getup and go. Also it has a convenient platform, on which to mount a prototyping board from which we will control our monstrosity.
It does have a couple of drawbacks. The supplied battery clip only holds 5 AA batteries. Powering the motors alone off of this, literally exploded an AA battery. I do not recommend using it. The other issue we had is that the only realistic place to mount said clip is in the bowels of the robot. This makes changing batteries a fairly laborious process. If we kept our power-supply mounted there, it would require a complete disassembly of the entire robot just to fulfill this basic function. We have yet to find a viable use for the space inside the bowels of the robot.
For the power supply, we are using a standard 6V batter available at any hardware store or grocery store.
This worked well, because it only puts out 6V, but seems to be able to sustain the power draw that our motors are putting on it nicely. Before this, we tried the afore mentioned AA batter clip (which put out 7.5V but couldn’t sustain the draw). We then tried a 9V, however while this could handle the draw, we deadened the battery in less than two minutes. Finally we opted for something with a little more staying power. Our motors are designed to operate with anything from 5V DC to 12V DC, however it has worked out a lot better than anything our prior attempts have yielded.
Obviously this could not be mounted inside the center of the robot due to size constraints, however it fits nicely on the top plate of the chassis. Changing it will be very easy, as it sits right on top of the bot. It does weigh more than any of our other proposed power sources, though this does not seem to be a problem for the motors that came on the chassis.
Initially the primary input for our automaton will be Ping Sensors. 
These are exceptionally simple from the hardware perspective to implement, especially since they only use 1 signal pin. I kind of expected this to use 2. It sends an ultrasonic pulse, then it waits for the pulse to be bounced back. The delay between the two can then be calculated and converted into the distance to the nearest reflective object. We intend to use 4 or 5 of them, so that we can check multiple directions around the bot. We haven’t gotten this far, as currently we only possess one of them, which for now is enough for development purposes. We should be able to get a good idea of how the bot will behave once we have a few more of these bad boys installed. The one issue we’re running into here with this one is programmatic, but we’ll have that hammered out soon enough.
The brains of our automated friend is a DFRduino Romeo. This was an attractive option as it has regulated power inputs and outputs for motor control. Also it let us wire our arduino and motors into the same switch without any needless complications. 
Another convenient feature of this board is that all of the pins digital and analog, have access to power and ground right next to the data pins. I find that to be especially convenient. The screw terminals make attaching motors and powersupplies easy. Also the power options are nice too, as there are 2 places that a power supply can be connected, and it can even accept 24V. We have this mounted on the rear mounting plate which makes uploading sketches, as we will have to do this a lot to debug functionality frequently, very simple. I really like the extra pins and the bread-boardesque access to power right next to the pin holes. The screw terminals for power are very easy to work with. This has been a very enjoyable board to work with.
Hopefully there will be new things to report on this soon. We will continue working on this and post new changes to it’s design, function and structure.
Cowtown capacitor has picked up a new ambitious project. We are attempting to build a weather machine. This project should be entertaining, and will offer us a vareity of challenges. The largest is the number of things we have to measure, which we haven’t even developed an inclusive list for.
What we do know that there will be at least 4 separate inputs that we will want to measure. We also know that we want this to be ruggedized because weather happens out in the elements. A device that is only safe to operate in-doors is not feasible for this project. We have to figure out how to put together an electronic device that will work literally rain or shine.
Things we know we want to measure:
- Barometric pressure
- Temperature
- Humidity
- Percipitation
In our next session we should be addressing some of these issues, and developing a parts manifest for what sensors should be purchased and what we will use as an exterior material. Hopefully we will begin prototyping this.
This week was a freeform week. Seoci was giving demonstrationson on lock-picking. Saphire worked on how to read output via serial on the LeafLabs Maple. Joe made lock-picks out of street sweeper bristles. We also gathered most of the components that we need for our home-brew CNC machine.
seoci explaining the concepts of lock-picking
In short, we started a bunch of stuff, and have decided a number of tangents to explore.
Since I didn’t have much to write about this week, I figured I’d put up some of the pictures that I have taken during our sessions.
We needed this to see if we were safe to drive after hacking out.
It never ceases to amaze me how well booze and hardware hacking combine!
Our potato cannon is mostly constructed. The sweet smell of PVC cement filled the air as we assembled our 4′ long potato cannon. We used a 4″ pvc “Y” fitting with a screw cap at the top and a regular cap on the bottom. We then connected a 2″ PVC pipe from the “Y” fork that was 3′ long for the barrel.
How do you fire this thing again?
We conducted some introductory firing tests, and found that Butane doesn’t have the explosive force necessary to project a potato into space … or anywhere else for that matter. We tried propane. While it worked better, we were dismayed that it did not produce the boom that we expected. Next for the hairspray. We tried that, ignited it and our basement laboratory echoed with thunder. We found our propellant.
Hopefully next week we can have it combat ready. 
Project Related by .
We sat down for a planning session today, and began planning on what we wanted to do. Of course, what always happens when a bunch of geeks get together and start discussing fun projects? We get to talking about blowing s!@# up. We have decided that our first project will be a potato canon.
Other ideas that sprang to mind are:
Organizational by .
H4ck3r R3l4t3d
