Tag: hardware
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Stackable hexagon prototype boards
We are working on a lot of hardware projects at the moment as we are interested in how to to rebuild technology from various alternative starting points. It seems most “off the shelf” hardware has converged on increasingly inaccessible and conservative forms, but luckily (and probably not due to entirely unrelated reasons) at the same…
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A screenless programming language: putting it all together
More background on this project here. This is the finished Raspberry Pi interface board, most of the circuitry here is an LED driver to light up one of the 32 programming blocks as they are being scanned, or in any pattern required depending on the needs of the particular programming language in use. The small…
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Building a screenless programming language for the Raspberry Pi #6
Following on from the last in this mini series, the giant 16 byte multiplexer is finished and tested – lots of head scratching due to shorts and wonky solder joints (it’s amazing how sensitive CMOS logic is, interference on accidental free pins causes strange effects) and I’ve replaced the breadboard with a new interface board…
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Screenless programming language #5
Update after the last post. After many hours soldering 75% of the board is complete! The Pi can now address a whopping 12 bytes of data. After thinking about it for a while, and checking with the languages I’m planning to use – I’ve decided to double the number of instruction ‘slots’ by halving the…
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Thinking outside of the screen (#1)
I’m starting a new exploratory project to build a screen-less programming language based on two needs: A difficulty with teaching kids programming in my CodeClub where they become lost ‘in the screen’. It’s a challenge (for any of us really but for children particularly) to disengage and think differently – e.g. to draw a diagram…
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Spork Factory: evolving a light follower robot
Continuing with the structured procrastination R&D project on evolvable hardware, I’m proud to report a pretty decent light following robot – this is a video of the first real-world test, with a program grown from primordial soup chasing me around: After creating a software model simulation of the robot in the last post, I added…
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Evolvable hardware
I’m modding a robot toy for the next Spork Factory experiment, the chassis provides twin motor driven wheels and I’m replacing it’s brains with a circuit based on the ATtiny85 for running the results of the genetic algorithm, and a pair of light dependant resistors for ‘seeing’ with. Here’s the circuit (made in about 20…
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Spork factory
A system for creating an abundance of useless software for tiny devices. Spork Factory evolves programs that run on Atmel processors – the same make as found on the Arduino, in this case the ATtiny85 – a £2.50 8 pin 8bit CPU. I’m currently simply using a piezo speaker as an output and evolving programs…