SchmartBoard Is Looking for
Beta Testers
New Website will be Social Network
for Electronics Enthusiasts
SchmartBoard is looking for people to beta-test a soon
to be opened web space call Solder By Numbers™.
The website, which is due to launch in late summer,
will be a social network for electronics enthusiasts.
SchmartBoard is looking for all levels of testers from
professional engineers to novices who have an interest
in electronics. They are looking for people from around
the world.
According to SchmartBoard’s VP of Sales &
Marketing, Neal Greenberg, “SchmartBoard is not yet
ready to reveal specific details about the website,
except that it is web 2.0 for electronics enthusiasts.
Solderbynumbers.com will be a place to design and
build your electronic circuits while you create a worldwide
network of peers. The site will be much more than a
social network. It will be a place to collaborate, create,
communicate, and learn.”
To sign up to be a beta-tester, go to www.solder
bynumbers.com.
for evaluation purposes, I could easily envision a
spider-sized eight-legged walker, powered by 16
skeleton-mounted Squiggles.
The size of the peripherals that accompanied the
motor — a wall wart power supply, a USB driver card, and
a three-foot USB cable — not to mention the desktop PC
and software — explains why the robotics shops aren’t
offering autonomous robots sporting Squiggle-based
grippers and actuators. Even a six-pin DIP dwarfs the
Squiggle, much less a PIC or BASIC Stamp. However, the
control issue should be partially solved by the time you
read this. New Scale has a miniature ASIC driver under
development that could form the heart of a Squiggle
spider robot.
Power issue is another matter. The smallest battery
packs that I’ve used are thin-film lithium-polymer cells
designed for miniature indoor R/C aircraft. The thin,
dime-sized cells power a single-motor aircraft for about
five minutes. As such, an autonomous eight-legged
Squiggle spider would likely have a lifespan measured
in seconds with current battery technology. Even so,
in some applications, 20-30 seconds of operation
could be worth the cost of a swarm of insect-sized
microbots.
On the topic of microsensors, with the exception of
Hall-effect devices, I haven’t seen any commercial sensor
offerings that come close to the level of miniaturization
required for an insect-sized microbot. I’d like to have an
affordable ultrasonic or IR rangefinder comparable in
relative size to the Squiggle. However, consider the
Dear SERVO:
The “analog” servo block diagram, Figure 5, of the
Servo Buddy article in May 2008, is missing the velocity
feedback path from the motor to the local pulse
generator. Without this damping feedback, the servo will
oscillate. After the stretched drive pulse has ended, the
motor back EMF is used to modify the next local pulse.
In servos that use the NE544 IC, this feedback is from
pin 9 to pin 1 via a resistor. For the NJM2611 IC, from
pin 11 to pin 15.
It is interesting to note that years ago what is
now called an analog servo was called a digital servo.
Back then, an analog servo required an analog VOLTAGE
input.
— William J. Kuhnle
RESPONSE: While I tried to keep the diagram simple,
it might have been good to include that. Thanks for
pointing it out.
— Jim Stewart
challenge in creating a suitable IR rangefinder with
standard components. A typical IR LED alone is about the
size of an insect’s head. And the available ultrasound
rangefinders require even more volume. Clearly, when it
comes to microsensors for autonomous microbots, it’s time
for a new generation of SMT devices.
Although autonomous microbots made completely of
commodity — read affordable and readily available —
components may be a few years away, there are myriad
applications of micromotors in other areas of robotics. The
most obvious applications range from the manipulation of
camera optics and R/C mini helicopter control surfaces, to
control of microvalves in implantable drug delivery devices
to surgical robots. Although I expect to see the first
large-scale applications of micromotors in the consumer
electronics industry, the medical applications will likely
have the most profound effect on quality of life.
Consider that current surgical robotics rely on
standard-sized motors connected to scalpels and other
instruments through cables. Although these robotic
systems enable surgeons to operate with greater efficiency
and effectiveness than traditional methods, because of the
physical arrangement of cables and instruments, the
working area is constrained to only a few inches across.
The use of micromotors connected directly to instruments
would allow for a much larger work area for tele-surgeons,
as well as lighter, mechanically simpler surgical robots. Size
and weight can be critical factors if the remote patient
happens to be an astronaut on Mars, or a critically injured
US soldier in a remote area of the world. SV
SERVO 07.2008 7
