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Kickstarter successfully funded

April 19th, 2013 4 comments

We are very pleased to announce that our Kickstarter for the Balanduino balancing robot has successfully been funded by $13,494 which we are very happy about.

We have just received stickers from our printing company and have decided to give a little bonus in form of a signed Balanduino post card. We will be shipping this post card and stickers to all of our backers who have pledged $10 or more, within next week.

All the source code including the firmware, schematic, PCB layout and mechanical drawings for the frame is available at Github: https://github.com/TKJElectronics/Balanduino.

If you are not a backer, but are still interested in the project, you should checkout the Kicstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tkjelectronics/balanduino-balancing-robot-kit and our previous blog post: http://blog.tkjelectronics.dk/2013/03/balanduino-balancing-robot-kit/.

That’s all for now. Please let us know in the comments below if you got any questions or comments regarding the project.

The Balanduino

The Balanduino

Balanduino Kickstarter almost finished

April 13th, 2013 6 comments

Hello to all of our followers. This is just a short reminder that the Kickstarter of our Balancing robot, the Balanduino, is nearly finished.
We have already reached our goal of $10.000, but of course it would be great to get even more backers and pledges.

In the meanwhile we have recorded a new video of the robot with a GoPro mounted on the top.

For more information check out the prevouis blog post: http://blog.tkjelectronics.dk/2013/03/balanduino-balancing-robot-kit/ and the Kickstarter page.

Documentation added for the USB Host Library

February 20th, 2013 22 comments

I’m happy to announce that documentation is now available for all the libraries I have written for the USB Host Shield library.
The documentation is available at the following link: http://felis.github.com/USB_Host_Shield_2.0.
The documentation is generated using Doxygen which is a free documentation-generator based upon the header files in the source code.

For instance the following comment will end up looking like this in the documentation:

I hope this will be useful for people who is new to the USB host library or even people who just want a quick overview.
If you spot any typos or got any comments please let me know in the comments below.

Categories: Arduino, Bluetooth, TKJ Electronics, USB Tags:

USB Host Shield is now available in the webshop

January 17th, 2013 73 comments

This is a short announcement regarding the USB Host Shield from Circuits@Home, which we are now carrying in in our store.
By buying the official shield you will support the continous development of the library and get support from us!
The shield can be found and bought here: USB Host Shield 2.0 for Arduino.

The shield can be used with almost any kind of Arduino including the most popular Arduino Uno, Arduino Mega, Arduino Leonardo etc. If you are in doubt if your Arduino is supported please don’t hesitate to write a comment below.

The USB Host Shield will allow you to use any of the Bluetooth and USB libraries I wrote.
Read more…

Categories: Arduino, Bluetooth, TKJ Electronics, USB Tags:

Xbox 360 receiver added to the USB Host Library

December 29th, 2012 104 comments

You asked for it and here it is.
I finally got the time to implement support for Wireless Xbox 360 controllers to the USB Host Library. This is done via a Xbox 360 Wireless receiver that is normally intended for Windows computers.

The source code can be found at github: https://github.com/felis/USB_Host_Shield_2.0/blob/master/XBOXRECV.cpp
There is an example as well: https://github.com/felis/USB_Host_Shield_2.0/blob/master/examples/Xbox/XBOXRECV/XBOXRECV.ino.

The receiver supports up to four controllers internally, so it was fairly easy to implement it.

Actually I havn’t tested the library with more than one controller, but if somebody out there could confirm if it’s working or not, with more than one controller, I would really appreciate it!
Thanks to Tim, multiple controllers is now confirmed to work!
Read more…

Categories: Arduino, TKJ Electronics, USB Tags:

A practical approach to Kalman filter and how to implement it

September 10th, 2012 343 comments

I have for a long time been interrested in Kalman filers and how they work, I also used a Kalman filter for my Balancing robot, but I never explained how it actually was implemented. Actually I had never taken the time to sit down with a pen and a piece of paper and try to do the math by myself, so I actually did not know how it was implemented.
It turned out to be a good thing, as I actually discovered a mistake in the original code, but I will get back to that later.

I actually wrote about the Kalman filter as my master assignment in high school back in December 2011. But I only used the Kalman filter to calculate the true voltage of a DC signal modulated by known Gaussian white noise. My assignment can be found in the following zip file: http://www.tkjelectronics.dk/uploads/Kalman_SRP.zip. It is in danish, but you can properly use google translate to translate some of it. If you got any specific questions regarding the assignment, then ask in the comments below.

Okay, but back to the subject. As I sad I had never taken the time to sit down and do the math regarding the Kalman filter based on an accelerometer and a gyroscope. It was not as hard as I expected, but I must confess that I still have not studied the deeper theory behind, on why it actually works. But for me, and most people out there, I am more interrested in implementing the filter, than in the deeper theory behind and why the equations works.
Read more…

Categories: Guides, TKJ Electronics Tags:

Wiimote added to USB Host library

August 21st, 2012 72 comments

This is yet again a new announcement regarding the USB Host library. I just added support for the Wiimote via Bluetooth.
Check out the source code at github: https://github.com/felis/USB_Host_Shield_2.0/blob/master/Wii.cpp and the example sketch as well.
I will work on implementing support for the Nunchuck and Wii Motion Plus extension in the near future.

Update:
The library now also supports the Nunchuck controller and the Motion Plus extensions. The newest version of the library can be found at github.

Another Update:
The library now also work with the new Wiimote where the Motion Plus extension is built-in.
Check out my commit to see what where needed in order to make the new Wiimote work as well – the main difference is that you now have to send the data using the interrupt channel.
To tell if your Wiimote is the new type, it should have a label at the bottom saying “Wii MotionPlus INSIDE”. If you are in doubt take a look at this picture.

Yet another update:
The IR camera inside the Wiimote is now also supported. The the following commit for more information.

A new update once again:
The Wii U Pro Controller is now also supported via Bluetooth.

Categories: Arduino, Bluetooth, TKJ Electronics, USB Tags:

RFCOMM/SPP Library for Arduino

July 30th, 2012 104 comments

This is yet again a new library for Arduino.
But this time it is a speciel one and a library I have though about making for a long time since I wrote the PS3 Bluetooth Library. It is the RFCOMM/SPP library, in short it is a virtual serial port via Bluetooth, which means you can now communicate with your Arduino via Bluetooth using a normal terminal application on your computer, smartphone etc. It has been confirmed working with Windows 7, Mac OS X, Linux (Ubuntu 12.04) and several Android devices.

Arduino RFCOMM

Arduino Mega with some compatible dongles

Read more…

Categories: Arduino, Bluetooth, USB Tags:

Xbox 360 controller support added to the USB Host Library

July 18th, 2012 88 comments

Update
A wireless Xbox 360 controller is now also supported via a Wireless receiver. For more information see the blog post.

Hi everyone. I just wanted to let you know, that I just added support for the Xbox 360 controller via USB to the USB Host Library. The code can as always be found at github: https://github.com/TKJElectronics/USB_Host_Shield_2.0.

Categories: Arduino, TKJ Electronics, USB Tags:

NXT Shield Library

April 18th, 2012 5 comments

After several questions on how to use the NXT Shield I decided to create an Arduino library. All the code is available at github: https://github.com/TKJElectronics/NXTShield.
The library is pretty easy to use, I have provided three examples witch demonstrates all the libraries functionalities.

I works with all official Arduinos including Arduino Mega. To use the ultrasonic sensor with an Arduino Mega, one have to connect pin 20 (SDA) to A4 and pin 21 (SCL) to A5. A new revision of the shield might use the two extra SDA and SCL pins that are near to the AREF pin on r3 versions of the new Arduino boards.

Below are some photos of the NXT Shield:
Read more…