I’ve been playing with the CFAX 128 x 64 pixel graphical LCD from Spark Fun. This is a really nifty graphical display that includes a four-wire resistive touch screen and white backlight. The picture here (click it to see the larger version) has the backlight turned off and you can see it’s still pretty visible.

I decided to write some simple code to draw text and rectangles. The picture shows that stuff pretty well. I also got the touch screen logic working but that isn’t really demonstrated in the picture.

I’ve hooked it up to an AVR Mega 88 on a prototyping board, which gives just barely enough output pins to drive it. I will probably switch to a 40-pin Mega 16 to complete my experiments, as I want to use it with my on-going CAN project; it will require a few more i/o pins that what the 28-pin Mega 88 has available. The idea is to make the LCD available to all CAN nodes in a larger, multi-processor robot suitable for the SRS Robomagellan contest or something similar.

The display has its own memory buffer for the 128 x 64 pixel grid and also has about ten different icons above the top row. It’s pretty simple to interface, and fortunately Spark Fun has some useful sample code here. I also found some sample code from the original manufacturer here.

I also found a nifty article in a recent Circuit Cellar that gave me some inspiration. Look for the issue that covers various video, LCD and LED display projects. My long-term goal is to assemble all of my AVR software into an open source package under the GPL. When I get around to doing it I’ll post it here.

I just finished uploading some more photos of the most recent minisumo project The Thin Man. You can see the whole project here.

This was one of my more ambitious projects and I’m really pleased with how it turned out. There is more work to do though. I’ve got to find a new, stronger battery that will still fit in the same form factor as the original one is just too weak for the latest GM11 motors I installed.

And I will probably make a new circuit board, those wire patches just look too ugly and I want to improve the layout of the line sensors and will probably raise the forward-looking sensors slightly.

And I really, really need to write some good software for it. I never did figure out what was wrong with the sensors at Robothon, but I’m sure its a software problem.

Hope you find the project as interesting as I did. The next likely competition I will enter will be the Western Canadian Robot Games, typically held in May every year in Calgary. I went out there this past May (pictures here) and had a great time but next year I will have a really cool minisumo to show off!

I’ve discovered new joy in life, in the form of HD television and a PVR – a digital video recorder similar to a Tivo. Eileen’s folks gave us a beautiful Toshiba LCD HD television recently, and we upgraded to the Shaw HD terminal with the PVR feature. Sure it was expensive but well worth it.

At this very moment, we are watching last night’s Without A Trace episode, sans commercials. Earlier we caught up on some Daily Show episodes from last week, again we fast-forwarded through the commercials. This new gadget has really altered the way we watch television. Instead of trying to catch certain shows at certain times, we just record them for later viewing at a more convenient time. We record every episode of our favorites so we never miss out even if we are out being social.

I have thought about buying a Tivo for a long time now. I even considered building a MythTV appliance to make it even better. The only things that stopped me were the lack of HDTV support (although I understand this is now available from Tivo and you can buy HD tuner cards for MythTV) and the lack of integration with Shaw’s cable service for encrypted channels like the Documentary Channel. And the cost isn’t really less for either solution, especially if you end up with a good quality case for the MythTV solution.

Shaw’s service isn’t flawless but its darn near perfect. The recording feature integrates with the “guide” of upcoming programming, recording is a single button press, and it offers to automatically record every new episode of a given show. I have it set up to record every episode of the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, Numbers, and Battlestar Galactica.

I would like to have larger recording capacity but honestly I haven’t found it really necessary. And I’d like to have a text search to find programming to record but even that hasn’t been terribly limiting.

This coming Saturday – October 21st – the Vancouver Robotics Club will host its annual Robot Games event where we invite all robot builders to come out and show off their creations.

This year’s event will be held at BCIT, in Building SW2, Room “Town Square D.” The fun starts at 11am and will run until approximately 4pm, with breaks for lunch and robot repairs and such.

Events include line following, robotic sumo wrestling (Lego and two classes of autonomous minisumo), a walking & crawling robot triathlon, solar speeder races, and photovore competitions. Promises to be a lot of fun for everyone.

Details available here.

Hope to see you there!

The new hockey season is well under way, promising many exciting games. We attended the Canucks home opener against the San Jose Sharks last Friday night. The score sounded much worse than it was (we lost 4 – 6) but it was an exciting show right up to the end.

We have new seats this year, opposite end of the rink from our seats last year but ten rows closer to the ice. We look down over Roberto Luongo in the first and third period, which means we get to see some really great goalie work. Overall we’re pretty happy but would really like to see a few wins…

The team is quite different this year, only nine players continue from last season. And much of the team comes up from the Manitoba Moose, same as the new coach Alain Vigneault. It’s like we have an AHL team playing in the NHL, and boy did they look like it on Friday night – the Sharks ran circles around them.

Fortunately there are seventy-plus games to go, and they didn’t look that bad on Friday. Tomorrow night is another home game, this time against Edmonton. Should be fun to watch, especially if they pull it together and play like the same team that played smart and fast hockey to open the season with a win in Detroit.