Free Touchscreen in cheap car back-up monitor for Raspberry Pi

I have a great find to share with everyone, I found a resistive touchscreen sensor embeded in a cheap car back-up monitor that i was using for the Raspberry Pi.

Cheap car back-up monitor for Raspberry Pi without the stand

As you can see, I have removed the stand/leg thing because it was standing in my way. I bought this from BestBuy because I wanted it then and didn't want to wait for a week for one to ship from eBay (I overpaid by double I think).

Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 3

So I finally got to this step, my bodged together piece of code that makes my robot move. This is the last one in the series.

I uploaded the code to SourceForge so anyone can take it and do whatever they want with it and maybe in the process someone will learn something. Here it is.

Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 1
Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 2
Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 3
Arduino autonomous tracked robot (visual post)

I will start with the easy bits, the small functions and the bits that hold everything together.

Arduino autonomous tracked robot (visual post)

This is a post with the video of my robot in action along with all the photos I have of it. Enjoy!

And the photo gallery below. (and links to the build).

Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 1
Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 2
Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 3
Arduino autonomous tracked robot (visual post)

Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 2

On to the actual construction of the tank.
Basically it is made from Tamiya kits, the tracks and gearbox one kit and the platform and diverse small parts in another. I bought them from a local hobby shop and that cost me a lot more than expected but that is my problem. It should be fairly cheap if you source the parts from the source and not third party vendors like I did.

Arduino autonomous tracked rebot

This is the final version of the robot but there were several iterations until I got to this and unfortunately I don't have photos of those but I can still share my experience.

Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 1
Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 2
Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 3
Arduino autonomous tracked robot (visual post)

Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 1

So I am finally taking time to write about this one. I created the monster some time ago but I haven't have the chance to talk about it. This is a simple (yet it took me a bloody long time to complete) Arduino Uno, motor shield, Ping sensor, infrared sensor, autonomous robot.

My arduino autonomous tracked robot

So there it is, that picture explains everything, my job is done here :)

Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 1
Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 2
Arduino autonomous tracked robot build Part 3
Arduino autonomous tracked robot (visual post)

Testing the Sound Switcher board with an Arduino

So after completing my Sound Switcher board (and updating it) I wanted to use it with a microcontroller. I have a couple of aux cables lying around and some headphones to hear what is coming out of the board. Using headphones though is not ideal as it will hurt my ears after some time, as writing and testing the Arduino sketch is going to take some time. Last night I found a self powered speaker so I will use that instead (it was only $5 so worth it, and even some decent sound coming from it). Here it is:

Self Powered mini speaker

Yes, it does look like a microphone but it is actually a small speaker. It's quite ingenious, I took it apart and looked at it (forgot to take pictures) and the cool part is that it charges using the same 3.5mm input. Not
ideal if you want to listen to it and charge it at the same time but still, quite portable.