Category: MakerBlock

All things MakerBlock: RepRap, MakerBot, Cupcake CNC, open source, and plastic building toys!

DrawBot – The Silver Lining of Failure

After having fried my Adafruit motor shield with excessive levels of stupidity by accidentally soldering two chips in each other’s spots, I thought of a little bit of silver lining.  I now have an H-bridge and an IC that may both still be good!

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This is a test of the Simple Series post system… This is only a test

This is really just to see if I’ve solved the “Hey!  The series link doesn’t show up in my RSS feed” problem. 1

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  1. Thanks for telling my Dna! [↩]

My first published WordPress plugin! Simple Series!

This may seem silly, but I’m really happy with having published my very first plugin on WordPress.org.

My Simple Series plugin lets you easily create and helps you automatically maintain a list of posts.  I started writing this plugin because all of the existing ones seemed really clunky and over-engineered.  There’s no need for extra tables in WordPress, brand new taxonomies, or special system requirements.  If you can fire up any recent version of WordPress, you should be able to use this plugin without a problem. 1

As much of a WordPress fanboy as I am, I’ve never actually shared a plugin on the WordPress.org repository.  It was simultaneously easier and more difficult than I thought it would be.  The page that discusses how you can contribute your plugin and talks about “checking out” files makes absolutely no mention of how you’re supposed to do this!

Apparently you require a program to connect to the WordPress SVN to check out the file and commit changes.  On the advice of Schmarty I’m using TortoiseSVN.  Once that was installed and a sub-directory selected, it was relatively easy to commit changes.  If you haven’t tried it before, this whole SVN thing feels like a clunky slow version of FTP.

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  1. Of course, now people are going to start e-mailing me with problems… [↩]

i find i want to add more posts in some random series, just so i can use my new plugin

Wouldn’t that be something?  A bunch of posts… all associated with one another by nothing more than some kind of random brain process fueled by stubbornness, a fever, and too much caffeine?

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DrawBot – The Face Palm

Okay.  Confession time.

First, if you have been following along at home, I’m sorry – I have been leading you on a fool’s quest.  I did warn you at the outset I had no idea what the hell I was doing.  Carry on, don’t worry about me, I’ll go down with this ship.

Second, here’s the actual confession.  Despite amazingly detailed directions from Adafruit’s website, I soldered the Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino Kit v1.0 totally totally wrong.  I soldered one of the L293D chips into the location for the 74HC595N integrated circuit chip.  And I wondered why it didn’t work.

This would completely explain why the shield made a pop noise, why there was the smell of burning, and why one of the L293D chips (which was not an L293D chip AT ALL) was getting super hot while the other was just fine.  I just tried to de-solder the L293D chip, but that’s not going to work.  I’ve de-soldered a part before, but surface mount parts are MUCH easier to de-solder. 1

At this point my choices are, from wisest to most foolish:

  1. Abandon all hope and prayer of building a DrawBot.  Power down my laptop, unplug my router, take the battery out of my phone and stop inflicting my delirium on the world.
  2. Order another Adafruit Motor/Stepper/Servo Shield for Arduino Kit v1.0, and start again. 2
  3. Keep trying to de-solder that damned L293D chip, hope and pray I didn’t destroy both the L293D and the 74HC595N, then try to put them in their proper spots.
  4. Damn the torpedoes!  Full speed ahead!  Who cares that one sad little chip refuses to act like another sad little chip?!  More power and brute force will carry the day.  If I cannot make this work, I will ride this project straight into HELL!  Mu-ah-ha-ha!!!3

I’ve taken a stab at desoldering the L293D, but it just isn’t working.  The solder isn’t really coming out.  Even if it does, I’m going to have one hellishly ugly board by the end of the day – and I’ve probably already burned out the L293D and/or the 74HC595N.

At this point, I think I’ll opt for #2 above.

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  1. Score one for SMT, eh? [↩]
  2. It’s a nice day to start again. [↩]
  3. The world is ours, let’s use it up. [↩]

DrawBot – Halp!!! No – seriously, a little help?

Okay, I’m stuck.  I don’ t know what I’m doing wrong or what I need to do next.  So, I’m calling upon John Abella, Sandy Noble, and Kongorilla for your help.  :)

Here’s where I am:

  • The burning!
    • At last attempt, I hooked up some small steppers to the Adafruit motor shield, put the shield on my Arduino Uno, hooked up the USB cable and the 9v power adapter.
    • I heard a small pop and smelled warm electronics.1
  • After the burning
    • I can upload and run the Arduino basic blink sketch.  I can alter this to change the blinking pattern.
    • I can upload and run the Arduino sketches to operate a microservo.  I can alter this to change the microservo’s behavior.
    • I can upload the Adafruit sketches for steppers – but I can’t make the steppers move.
    • I can upload the Polargraph sketch – but I can’t make the steppers do anything.

Now, I’ve got tons of questions for you:

  1. Did I ruin my Arduino?  I can still run the blink and microservo sketches.
  2. Did I ruin my motor shield?  How can I tell if it is operational?  When I connect the power to the Arduino and have the little jumper in place, the green LED is lit up.
  3. What am I doing wrong?
  4. What should I try next?
  5. How should I diagnose a problem?
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  1. Now I’ve got a cold and couldn’t smell anything if I wanted [↩]