CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet. In HTML, you use it to apply a certain look to specific elements in the page. CSS makes it easy to give every page on your website a unified appearance. The format is extremely straightforward, but to be effective you need to know how to specify which…
An SVG is a type of graphic that is defined by shapes and math instead of discrete pixels. So, it is scales nicely, but can’t make photo-realistic images. An (currently) SVG is two dimensional. That does not mean, though, that we cannot represent 3D information in this 2D space. After all, it is…
Programming is becoming more useful in a variety of fields. There are a lot of uses, but we are most interested in robotics applications. Microcontrollers like the Arduino are programmed in C++, which is undoubtedly the most widespread language. It is powerful, fast, and easier to use than some…
Cameras can be used in numerous applications: survellience, hobbies, robotics, etc. They are very useful to see what is happening when a robot is moving on its own or even to just have fun with.
Passive Infra-Red (PIR) sensors are used to detect motion based on the infrared heat in the surrounding area. This makes them a popular choice when building a system to detect potential intruders or people in general. These sensors can take for 10-60 seconds to warm up, so try to avoid motion during that time.
HTML is the language that your browser reads when it shows you a webpage. It is a variant of XML. It makes the actual content that you see, but also can contain visual styling information (typically in the form of an external CSS file) and also can have an in-browser (client-side) programming…
EEPROM is a permanent memory. It will remain even after the Arduino is restarted. It can be reprogrammed around 100,000 times, so it is substantially less resilient than the flash storage or a hard drive. It is also kind of slow (3ms per byte). The Ardiono Uno has 1KB of EEPROM.
LaTeX is a typesetting system. It’s an easy way to make very professional looking papers. In fact, many academic books were written in LaTeX. You can usually tell by looking in the first few pages. Somewhere it might say “Typeset in LaTeX”.
A lot of us have an old desktop computer we don’t want anymore and it’s good to re-use components. You’ll find in each standard sized desktop, an ATX power supply. It’s a standardized form factor for AC-to-DC power conversion with +3, +5, +12, and sometimes -5 and -12 VDC rails. If you look on…
Octobot is the name of the robotic chassis that I do most of my testing on. It got it’s name because it originally had eight wires sticking out because of the motors.
