dincer hepguler projects page  

This is a page for some of my projects... 

Mini CNC

This is a weekend project that I made recently. Many of us have some junk cd or dvd writers lying around. These have many stepper motors and hidden CNC mechanics inside. I used 2 of them for this project as X and Y axes. Two EasyDriver modules are controlling each axis by the help of a tiny Arduino Nano. The controller script is GRBL which is well known for the purpose. There is a GRBL library for Arduino. A g-code interpreter is also used to create g-code and control the CNC manually or automatic from a file.

GRBL Library

G-Code Sender

This is a multi-tool device. A pen can be mounted to plot on a surface, a laser can be mounted to engrave something (logo, writing, shape etc) on surfaces such as paper, cardboard, leather, plastic or even thin aluminum sheet. Even one can use small high speed motors with drill bits to scratch similar things on a surface.

I did not make a third axis but a Z azis can be added to the CNC to raise and lower the head. A floppy disk motor and mechanism must be used for the purpose instead of a cd or dvd driver because it is smaller and easier to mount on the moving head...

Mini CNC Front Mini CNC Back

 

 

 

Lidar Lite Scanner

I recently ordered a Lidar Lite from Sparkfun... This is a very capable distance measurement device, a laser rangefinder  in a very compact form and is also relatively cost effective... Pulsed Light company  first carried out a successful Kickstarter campaign last year and now the device is commercially available... Link to manufacturer:  http://pulsedlight3d.com/ 

After playing a little, I managed to get this tiny device working... the setup can be seen in the right picture... I placed the Lidar on a pan-tilt driven by an Arduino and sent distance measurement to PC on which the output is visualised by a  Processing sketch...

Actually I made this DIY Lidar Scanner to make some sort of use about it for my robot projects... However I am still trying to find a way to implement 3d virtualization out of it... If I can manage to make an 3D virtual image out of this Kinect like depth map, I will be pleased... Still short of ideas... 

Arduino sketch: LidarScanner.ino

Processing sketch: Plot_LidarScanner.pde

 

Lidar Scanner

Lidar Depth Plot

 

Touch Sensitive Robotic Skin

Having a lot of background on DIY resistive sensors, I decided to make a different approach to creating touch sensitive robotic skin... The skin pad you see on right pics shows a pad 20cmx20cm 8bit matrix with 8x8=64 junction points controlled with 8 analog and 8 digital pins on Arduino... I made this matrix inspired with the work of Markus and another study here   and here  ... Check the right pics for the materials and construction...

As you can see the final skin is very thin and flexible... Can be placed on any part of the robot... Around arms, legs or chest... It can be constructed at any size... The Arduino code for reading the sensor is written by me using a software 12bit ADC for increased sensitivity... I am trying to find a way for visualising the output on Processing.... I will post future improvements....

Arduino code is : Robotic_Skin.ino

Matrix_KeyPad

Materials

KeyPadMatrix

 

 

Telescope Mods For Astrophotography

connector

commander

focuser

 

My Konus Maksutov telescope has a hand held controller for slewing and moving on RA and Dec axes. The controller was powered with AA batteries which is not supplying sufficient power and had round connectors which came loose easily. It also has a short cable for working near the telescope. This setup was not acceptable for astrophotography. I first added a power jack for the controller to use a 1amp power adapter and a 10mt long flat 6pin cable extension to use remotely. This 6pin cable and RJ45 jack which can snap securely has 6 pins and lighter. Only 4 pins are needed to control the telescope motors. The extra 2 pins are used to add a motorized focuser. I used a very slow and powerful gearmotor for the purpose. The motor is added to the telescope body using the side screws and some bent metal to act as a tensioning spring for the o-ring connected to focusing knob. The springed switch which I added to the hand controller can make very sharp focusing remotely. cable
Peltier Cooler for Astro Camera
I recently bought a ZWO ASI 120mc astro camera for my telescope and very happy about using it on planetary astrophotography. This small cam has awesome features and yields good imaging, but this one is a budget cam of the ZWO ASI range and higher end models have cooling options (at a much higher cost of course). Cooling the camera yields more crisp images by bringing down the sensor noise substantially, that is due to decreasing the electron movement between pixels of the sensor. As a DIYer, I wanted to add a cooler to my camera. Searching my scrap bin I found a suitable PC MCU cooler which is 6x6cm and 12v fan, perfect size for my ZWO ASI camera. I also had many peltier coolers at hand. I fitted the peltier between the aluminum body of the cam and heatsink using a metal ring and some wire wraps. In this way I made no modifications that will ruin the camera. For prototyping purposes I used a digital thermostat module to control the activation and temp control of the peltier via a relay. It worked well with this compact setup bringing down the temp of the camera 20 deg C below the ambient temperature. A bigger heatsink and fan can be more effective but it will be bigger and heavier. For my purposes this compact setup will be enough to cool down the camera. For the actual imaging sessions I will not use the thermostat module and the setup will be lighter and more compact to place behind my telescope. I will be sharing my astro images using this setup soon...

 



Motor fan speed control with brain waves

I have some Neurosky ThinkGear modules at hand and decided to make a project with this mighty module... I also own a Brainwave set and a Mindflex headset from Mettel... These devices can read your brain data as Alpha ,theta,etc waves and communicate with some apps on pc and android to play with controlling on screen icons on monitor... All these devices are using ThinkGear module to read brain wave data and use some algorithms to calculate attention and meditation values meaning concentration and relaxation of mind...

I decided to implement a project with my ThinkGear modules to physically move an object with my mind... Mainly, controlling the fan speed of a motor...

What I did is taking an old hair dryer and using only the DC motor trying to control fan speed by the use of a logic mosfet driven from a PWM pin of Arduino... By the help of this hardware I managed to float a pingpong ball from the air blown from the haie dryer... When I concentate and increase my attention values, the fan speed is increased proportionally and can control the fan speed thus raising the ball into air...

For the purpose I hacked a Mindflex headset (the procedure can be found on internet) to send my brain data via bluetooth to Arduino... Arduino sketch receives that brain data over soft serial and after some calculations sends it as PWM to the mosfet which in turn drives the motor fan at proportional speed...

Arduino sketch: ArduinoBrainControl.ino

 

 

 

Mosfet driver

 

 

 

Motorized TimeLapse Rig

My DIY timelapse rig... As a DIYer I made a micoprocessor based Timelapse rig which has a linear motion and panning at the same time... fully customizable setup with 1 steps precision... time interval and speed adjustable with forward and reverse... I wrote the software running on Arduino and the hardware is almost in every DIYer's bin... You need:

- Arduino UNO

- Motor shield.. I used this one: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-motor-shield/o...

- 2 small stepper motors... I used the paper driver mechanisms from scrap inkjet printers...

- a tripod head (optional, you can fit something to hold the camera)

- a small trigger circuit using an optocoupler... this isolates your camera from other electronics thus protecting it..

- curtain rail and 2 steel rods to strenghten it...

- 1 mt threaded rod

- some buttons and pot for setting panel

The construction may differ for anyone who builds this. the Arduino program has explanations about parameters and these can be changed according to the steppers used...

Arduino sketch: TimeLapseRig.ino

 


Rig on tripods Rig Components Rig shuttle Rig final
Trigger Circuit  

 

 

Mini IOT Remote Terminal

This is the mini IOT terminal I made recently. I used a Nodemcu V1 board for wifi connection and processing capability, 2 relay module for controlling 2 different gadgets, a DHT11 module for temperature and humidity monitoring and a PIR sensor for motion monitoring around the premises. The module can be powered from a single cell power bank (5v) for long operation. I wrote a web page GUI for remote monitoring and controlling of the environmental automation. The system is capable of controlling only 2 relays for now but it is modular to expand to control some more apparatus. This is an experimental home automation system I made.

The web page GUI is kept on Nodemcu and served whenever requested from any browser using its IP adress. When the unit is powered on it automatically connects to predefined wifi network and obtains its own IP, then you can connect to the module using this IP.

 

 

Bat Sonar for Visually Disabled

This is my bat sonar project for visually disabled persons. Simple ultrasonic sensor reading the distance in front of the person. Module creates audible sound in correlation with distance. Nearer the object, higher the pitch of sound heard. If no object in front of the person, no sound. I could use a loudspeaker for the project but it creates audible noise, instead I used earphones which can only be heard by the user. Also the 1K resistor used in the design lovers the sound on earphones. Arduino Nano is used as microcontroller because its tiny, HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor and regular earphones as output.

Bat Sonar sketch:

 

Simple Airflow Sensor

 

A simple airflow sensor for meteorology stations implemented with a 3pin dc fan and Arduino. I made this project for measuring wind speed. 3pin fans has a signal pin connected to internal hall sensor to detect rpm. As you can see on the Fritzing diagram only signal and gnd pins are connected. Some fans signal once per revolution whereas some send 2 signals per revolution. The fan I used in my project sends one signal per revolution. I used the internal interrupt0 (connected to D2 pin) of the Arduino to detect the rpm signal. Later I converted this rpm data to linear velocity using the formula velocity=(2*pi/60)*rpm*radius and grab linear speed value. I simply watch wind speed data on monitor but you can easily add an 16x2 lcd to see the data.

The Arduino sketch: FanRPM.ino

 

 

 

 

Doppler Radar Movement and Speed Sensor

This is my Doppler Radar project implemented with HB100 microwave sensor, Arduino Nano and Nokia 5110 LCD. Sensor works on 10.5GHZ and outputs a weak frequency difference signal when movement is detected and the signal is proportional to the speed of movement. I made an op-amp board to amplify the signal. Wonderful work of 3zuli at GitHub helped me a lot. I made the board with standard iron transfer and chemical etching process. Later I prepared another module with matching dimensions for the Arduno Nano and connections for Nokia5110 LCD which is more or less in matching dimensions. I wrote the program such that when a movement is detected (i.e if movement is faster than 1 km/hr) the backlight 4 leds of the LCD lits up indicating the detection. Also the speed of movement is shown on LCD with big numbers. If you carry the module with you, then it shows your speed. I think of many possibilities of using this sensor in robotics.

Arduino sketch:

 

 

WiFi Weather Station

My WiFi weather station project implemented on a ESP8266 dev board. I used a Wemos V1 board, GY-87 IMU sensor, DHT11 sensor and a custom made rpm sensor made of a CNY70 and 74HC14. The RPM sensor gets fan rpm data to be converted into linear wind velocity. GY-87 IMU has a HMC5883L compass sensor to measure wind direction and a BMP85 pressure sensor to get barometric pressure. The data is served as access point on the esp dev board as a web page. Any wifi enabled device can connect to the esp access point via its IP and watch weather data on a web page as shown on the right photo. I used my smartphone to connect to ESP access point.

Weather Station Sketch:

 

 

DTMF MODULE DEVICE CONTROL

In this project I used a DTMF module to control 10 output pins of Arduino Mega chosen for having many digital pins. DTMF module can detect a dtmf dialtone and resolve the key pressed. It has a 4bit output to resolve the number pressed as well as it has a stq pin to detect key press. In my application I used 10 leds connected to 10 digital outputs of Arduino Mega to simulate 10 devices controlled. Relays can be used to control 10 appliances in home automation. This is yet another remote control project. An old phone can be used as keypad as well as it can be connected live to the system and can be called from another phone in remote position to control the 10 outputs. For demonstration purposes I tested the system with an online dtmf tone generator but you can embed this tone generator to any website to control these 10 devices remotely from the web.

Arduino sketch:

 

 

ArduPet Test Platform Robot

I made this mobile test platform for experimental purposes. I wanted to build a small robot for testing environmental mapping, maze solving, object chasing and some artificial intelligence ( Q-Learning and Artificial Neural Network) applications. With its compact size this small robot came out to be quite agile and smooth movements. She has 2 small high-torque metal gearmotors with tank threads, powered with a DIY 2S LiOn battery I made from 2 Nokia Phone batteries and Arduino Nano brain. The motor driver is a L293D IC and she has various sensors to navigate. A HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor for detecting obstacles, 3 tiny Sharp IR sensors for collision sensing. The front IR sensor checks for gaps in front (to detect ground under the robot) and the 2 back sensors act as non-contact bumpers to detect obstacles at the back of the robot. With the aid of these sensors ArduPet can navigate around freely without colliding anything. This config can be used as environmental mapping and maze solving. Actually I am planning to add a Pixy camera for object following and the small pan servo is for that purpose. However until now I could not get Pixy camera working properly to track a colored object. Still working on that feature. As of now the robot can freely navigate on its own using a proportional driving algorithm (speedy when area is unblocked and slower when approaching obstruction) without colling anything and falling down from edges. Current navigation software: ArduPet.ino

 

 

 

Talking Web Clock

Recently I got a new module from Kickstarter which is called BigBuddyTalker... This module is a voice synthesizer which can speak more than 1000 words from text. I have made a web clock in the past with NODEMCU V3 esp dev module which connects to internet and grab current time from global NTP servers to display the time. Mainly a web clock just like the time displayed on your PC and smartphone. This time I added talking ability to my web clock to "say" the time on demand. This is a cool project and most of all it can be helpful to people with vision disabilities. The system is based on the esp dev board to connect to internet and grab current time to display on a 128x64 oled display but with the help of BigBuddyTalker module it can also "say" the time whenever person pushes a button. The audio amp and speaker is optional and can be replaced with earphones for private hearing... TalkingWebClock sketch:

 

 

Thermo Electric Generator

Thermo electric generator (TEG) is something that creates electricity using Peltier modules and has no moving parts. I decided to make one for myself as a cool project to use as charger for my mobile phone while camping and for photography trips to places where no reach to electricity to charge my equipment, but while making one I stumbled on many difficulties. A 12v Peltier device creates heat at one side and cools the other when applied to 12v but if you heat one side and cool the other, it creates electricity. I saw many DIY devices on internet about people making TEGs but most are fake. You can not create 12v by heating this device. It only creates 1,5v when heated on one side and properly cooled the other side. So I serially connected 4 peltier modules to get 6v, sandwiched them between 2 steel plates for better heat conductivity which will be sufficient to get a regulated usb 5v using a dc-dc converter-regulator. Easiest use is to place TEG on a heat source (a camp fire) and place a metal cup filled with cold water on top, this way you can charge your batteries while making coffee. I tried to make a different approach placing a fan cooled computer heatsink in order to utilize all kinds of heat sources (sun, exhaust pipe, open fire etc.) but first trial was an epic fail. When I placed the system on a stove (without the fan, only heatsink) it created 6v as expected for 5 minutes and then the heat accumulated and some peltiers cracked and failed...

 

TEG V 2.0

Lessons learned and I have a working TEG... The first try was without the fan and too close to heat source. Now I made a better construction with new peltiers, used thermal paste between components and added a handle for ease of use, better handling to place or hold on a heat source. The device worked perfectly 10cm above the stove reaching steady 5v output in less than a minute and successfully charged my phone. My Samsung phone does not charge under 1amps so I can say that TEG delivers more than that. The handle addition was handy but I will also add a small power pack inside the handle so that TEG will charge the power pack and 5v can be taken from the power pack. This way the output will not be affected from heat fluctiations. Although this is not a problem on a kitchen stove but on a camp fire heat may change and fluctuate causing varying levels of voltage.

 

DIY SEISMOMETER

I made a very simple DIY seismometer using a scrap loudspeaker. This is an old woofer which can utilize low frequencies better. I removed the paper cone and glued a vertical pipe with a small weight on top. By doing this, smallest vibrations will cause the coil inside the woofer to create tiny currents just like a geophone. I connected my geophone to the mic input of my laptop and using an audio software I can graph the smallest vibrations in the room...

 

 

 


please e-mail to me at  dhepguler@hotmail.com

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