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Friend of Trossen, Amal Graafstra recently attended Toorcamp and set up an unassuming little station. At this station, for $30 and a liability waiver, Amal would implant an RFID tag into your hand! You can read more at The Forbes Article on Amal or Amal’s write-ups on Toorcon
The tags, much like our Glass Ampoule Tags, will allow their bearers to activate RFID enabled devices with a mere wave of the hand. No more loosing their keys for these implantees!
Life is busy here at Trossen Robotics. Between filling orders, sourcing/posting new products and customer service calls, we’re constantly working on something. This flurry of activity often leaves us with no time to do our favorite thing – engineer new kits and products. But have no fear, that won’t stop us from designing, building and testing new kits – we just have to wait for the weekend.
In this new series you’ll get a chance to see the process behind the products and get some insight to how we work here at Trossen Robotics. This week we’ll take a look at the soon to be released Motor & Wheel Starter Kit.
Early this morning, over 8 years of hard work paid off as the Curiosity Mars Rover succesfully landed on Mars. Shown here is the NASA team celebrating after the rover’s successful landing. The rover, weighing in at 900 kg, is the largest rover ever sent to the red planet. Because of it’s large size, engineers at NASA needed a new way to safely land the rover on the surface of mars. The method they devised was the Sky Crane, a rocket propelled platform that could safely lower the rover to the martian surface. You can see an interactive rendering of the landing here
Here’s one of the first image transmitted back from the rover – a beautiful black and white still of the rover’s landing site. And while we want to wish the Curiositya and NASA congratulations on a job well done, we know this mission is still only getting started. Over the next few weeks NASA engineers will test the rover’s systems and start the final preparations for its mission to explore mars and pave the way for a manned mission to mars. Projects like this really showcase the amazing feats that science, math and engineering can pull off.
Recently, we added Solenoids and Water Pumps to our catalog. These devices are extremely useful so they have a huge variety of project applications.
One question that comes up a lot is, ‘How do I control these devices with my Arduino?” Well in this quick video tutorial, we’ll show you how to use a basic relay to easily control your pump, solenoid or motor! Once you’ve got the basics of controlling these devices down, you can move on to making bigger, better and cooler projects!
Download the sample code and diagram here
Robotis wowed the robotics community with the MX-28T, and recently they’ve expanded the MX line to include the TTL MX-64T and the MX-106T, as well as the RS-485 variants, the MX-28R, the MX-64R and the MX-106R.
These new servos have a contactless magnetic encoder, which offers 4x the resolution of the RX series. This makes them more accurate and even smoother than the old servos. Also upgraded, is the processor in each of these servos – a 32bit 72mhz Cortex M3! This beefy processor handles the newly implemented PID control algorithm. It can be used to maintain shaft position and can be adjusted individually for each servo, allowing you to control the speed and strength of the motor’s response. The new setup also offerers a 3Mbps bus. The ‘T’ variants use TTL communication and are compatible with other TTL servos like the AX-12 and the AX-18. Meanwhile the ‘R’ variants use RS-485, just like the RX series.
You might remember Don and Jason’s new robotic arm, which uses the new MX servos. But the real question is, what will you do with them?
We really love our Flex Sensors – just by bending the sensor, you can feed control data into your Arduino. In fact we love them so much, we’re adding 2.2 Inch Flex Sensors to our catalog as well. This sensor’s diminutive size makes it great for all sorts of small spaces and projects.
We know that power connectors can be a pain, especially when your in the prototyping phase. Loose wires and alligator clips can be messy and dangerous while soldering in power cables tethers your project to your power supply. Get the best of both worlds with the Power Converter 6 in 1 Pack. This pack has several DC power jacks that have screw terminals – making it easy to add them onto your project.
The new Desktop RoboTurret does it all – from defending you against other robots to following you as a faithful servant, the RoboTurret is pretty versatile. But what else can it do? Well, tune in to see some of its amazing feats, incredibly caught on camera…until it saw us!
The ArboriX Robocontroller is THE best way to interface with Dynamixel Servos. It’s used in everything from robotic turrets to crawlers. Today, we’re slashing the price of this beloved micro-controller from $99.99 to $59.95! This also meams that the price on the ArbotiX Robocontroller Starter Kit will drop from $189 to $149.95!
We’re also lowering the price of the ArboiX Commander – an Arduino Compatible gamepad style controller. We’re dropping the price (previously $89.99) down to $59.95. The Commander communicates with the Robocontroller seamlessly via an XBee connection. But don’t think that the commander only works with the robocontroller – it in fact can control any XBee compatible system. The Commander has a wide variety of functions, and it’s designed to be customized so that you have perfect control over your project.
The great new prices on the Commmander and Robocontroller also mean that we’re lowering the prices some of our most popular kits. The PhantomX AX-12A Robot Turret will be dropping from $249.95 to $199.95, and the AX-18F version will go from $349.95 to $309.95. The basic PhantomX Hexapod Kit without Servos and the comprehensive PhantomX AX-12A Hexapod and PhantomX AX-18F Hexapod kit sare all dropping $100 to $549.95, $1,199.95, and $2,149.95 respectively. We hope that these new low prices will get your robotic projects up and running even faster than before!
The dynamic duo from Mad Lab Industries are at it again! Don and Jason needed an automated system to load materials in and out of their laser CNC, so they decided to build a robotic arm! Naturally them came to us for the newest Dynamixel Servos to power their arm. For the wrist this arm uses the tried and true MX-28T servos as well as the AX-12A servos for the gripper. The main arm joints use the new MX-64T servos to operate. Finally, to rotate the base, this arm uses a beefy new MX-106T servo to. The arm even has a custom cut control box for testing the arm and setting poses. Check out the video below for a demo of the arm’s movement.
We just added two new Grove Modules to our catalog that we’re really excited about. Both of them are compatible with our Desktop RoboTurret and they both have a lot of great applications.
One question we get alot about Grove products, is ‘Why do the connectors have 4 pins when most sensors only need 3 pins?”. Well the answer to that question is, “So that we can have products like the Grove – 4-Digit Display!” This sensor uses 2 pins to connect to the on-board TM1637 chip, which controls the 4 digits on the display module. With adjustable brightness and an easy to use software library, you’ll be adding 4 digit displays to your projects in no time!
The Grove – Slide Potentiometer is a compact sliding module that is easy interface with. This module can replace just about any Arduino compatible potentiometer, and is great for measuring linear movement, or just for adding some new controls to your next project. This module even has an LED that can be accessed from the extra Grove pin (we told you the 4 pin connector was handy!)
Go pick up a couple of the new modules, and make sure to show off your creations on the Trossen Robotics Community!
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