Edward Cholakian (call sign KB1OIE) makes and sells a Ten-Tec 1254 Receiver Display Upgrade Kit that is designed to upgrade a Ten-Tec 1254 shortwave radio receiver.

One of the main features of the kit is that it provides a backlit 2×20 character LCD to replace the receiver’s original 5-digit 7-segment display, allowing much more information to be shown. The kit includes a clear plastic window to replace the receiver’s original smoked dark plastic window, and a black plastic display mask. Edward gets both of these pieces made using our custom laser-cutting service.

Two laser-cut pieces, a clear window and black display mask, shown on top of the Ten-Tec 1254 receiver’s original face plate.

Ten-Tec 1254 receiver with Edward Cholakian’s display upgrade kit installed.

The display/control board in the kit uses the P-Star 25K50 Micro as its processor. Edward, a consulting engineer who designs embedded hardware and firmware, told us that he chose the P-Star because he was already using a Microchip processor similar to the P-Star’s PIC18F25K50 in one of his previous designs, and it was more economical to buy the P-Star than to hand-assemble his own board. He said the P-Star’s cross-platform USB firmware upgrade software was also a plus since his own bootloading software does not support Linux and macOS.

The kit comes with software for Windows that can control the receiver over USB. The software provides a graphical user interface and uses WinUSB to talk to the P-Star’s native USB interface.

USB control program for the Ten-Tec 1254 Receiver Display Upgrade Kit

For more information, see the Ten-Tec 1254 Receiver Display Upgrade Kit page.

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The RoboClaw 2x60A motor controller (V5) we’ve been carrying has been replaced by the new RoboClaw 2x60A Motor Controller (V6). This powerful motor controller can drive two brushed DC motors with 60 A continuously at voltages from 6 V to 34 V, and it allows for peak currents up to 120 A. Version six adds a protective aluminum plate to the board bottom and ports for connecting optional cooling fans that are controlled based on the board temperature.

RoboClaw 2×60A Motor Controller (V6) and RoboClaw 2×60AHV Motor Controller (60VDC), bottom view.

The RoboClaw motor controllers from Ion Motion Control can control a pair of brushed DC motors using USB serial, TTL serial, RC, or analog inputs. Integrated dual quadrature decoders make it easy to create a closed-loop speed control system, or analog feedback can be used for position control.

For more information, see the product page.

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We’ve added this Micro-USB wall adapter to our catalog. It can supply up to 2.4 A at 5.25 VDC (the USB specification’s maximum bus voltage), allowing for voltage drop due to power draw when powering 5 V electronics. It features a 1.5 m to 1.8 m (5 ft to 6 ft) DC power cord with 20 AWG wires that is terminated by a USB Micro-B connector, which makes it great for powering devices like a Raspberry Pi (especially newer Raspberry Pi models, like the Pi 3, which can draw a lot of current!).

Raspberry Pi connected to a Wall Power Adapter: 5.25VDC, 2.5A, 20AWG MicroUSB Cable.

For more details, see the product page.

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This tutorial shows how to build a basic Raspberry Pi robot with the Romi chassis and the Romi 32U4 Control Board, our Arduino-compatible microcontroller board designed specifically for the Romi. With this setup, the powerful Raspberry Pi can take care of high-level tasks like motion planning, video processing, and network communication, while the Romi 32U4 Control Board takes care of low-level tasks that the Pi is incapable of, such as motor control and sensing. Continued…

Don’t hold your applause: we are now offering the Verbal Machines VM-CLAP1 Hand Clap Sensor! This board is a low-power, microprocessor-based audio sensor that can detect hand claps or finger snaps while ignoring background noises such as human speech or music. It operates from 2.5 V to 5.5 V and offers a simple interface: when a clap or snap is detected, the output pin goes low for 40 ms, and the integrated blue LED lights up.

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It has been over a year since my last/first blog post about my mini sumo robot. Since then, I have been busy studying to earn a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, working at Pololu, and, of course, building cool robots. Recently, I have been working as part of a UNLV team, Rebel Robotics, to build a robot to compete in an intercollegiate competition organized by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) called the Student Design Competition. My team’s robot, the Rebel WIP (work in progress), competed against teams from colleges across the western half of the United Sates in the Student Design Competition at an engineering festival hosted by UNLV and ASME called E-Fest West. Continued…

One of our customers built this six-foot tall balancing robot. The main microcontroller is a Teensy 3.6, and the stepper motors are driven by ST-M5045 drivers. For its drive train it uses two 3 A stepper motors connected to Pololu 90 mm wheels via Pololu universal aluminum mounting hubs.

Here’s what they have to say about using stepper motors:

I used stepper motors to take advantage of high torque at low RPM and zero backlash. This allows very steady stand-still performance. But dealing with the stepper-induced mechanical vibration was an issue. This was mostly solved with analog filters on the IMU and with an Extended Kalman Filter in software.

Additional description and pictures are available on the project page.

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This is the fourth post in a series about how to make a Balboa 32U4 robot balance. In earlier posts I covered the basic sensors and mechanical parts used for balancing; in this post I will show you how to put everything together to make the robot actually balance.

From earlier posts we have obtained six basic variables for use in balancing: Continued…

Julien de la Bruère-Terreault (also known as DrGFreeman on the Pololu Forum, creator of the Custom Mini Sumo robot and the Romi and Raspberry Pi robot shared on this blog) made “SharpDistSensor” an Arduino library for analog Sharp distance sensors. If you’re running a recent version of the Arduino IDE, you can install it with the Library Manager. The library reads the sensor’s analog voltage output, filters the data, and converts it to a distance measurement. By default it is calibrated to work with the Sharp GP2Y0A60SZLF analog distance sensor 10-150cm 5V, but you can calibrate it to other analog Sharp distance sensors (if you can fit a power function or a fifth order polynomial to the voltage vs distance response of your sensor). Pull requests are welcome for supporting other Sharp distance sensor models!

The readme, library code, and example sketches are available in the GitHub repository.

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One of our customers used our custom laser cutting service to cut the birch plywood panels for his retro-gaming TV system that he sells on Etsy. The birch panels are stained with shellac. The system runs on a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B, to which you can connect (not-included) controllers with Bluetooth or USB. The Raspberry Pi’s Ethernet port, SD card slot, and 4 USB ports are accessible in the back.

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