HPC Laser – (Laser Cutters)

If you’re looking to get one tool to your take your Maker workshop from meh to magnificent, it’s hard to argue with the addition of a laser cutter. With these guys offering a desktop sized unit (here) for less than a nice laptop, delivery from UK stock and a “Buy Now” button we have a feeling many a maker wish list may need to have another item penciled in, and a few tabletops cleared off.

(our relationship: We’ve visited and their a lovely bunch, we’re also taking delivery of one of their larger units in the new year)

Abolutly Shaw – (OLFA cutters)

Be it prototyping a new design, collapsing a box, or slicing up some paper snap off cutters are indespensible around oomlout hq. While you can pick one up at B & Q for less than a pound high quality ones make all the difference. Here’s a lovely company that imports a load of OLFA products from Japan. Our recomendations are the “Black Max” replacement blades (they really do last longer) (here LBB-10) , and the truly amazing high angle mini blades (here SAB-10) (offering all the niceness of the super pointy Exacto knife’s with the convenience of a snap off format). They’re also a little fun as you have to e-mail or fax in an order, making it feel a little bit like the 1990’s

(our relationship: we purchase all our replacement blades through them)

Farnell – (Everything Electronic)

While Digikey and Mouser may be bigger in terms of service Farnell is impossible to beat. They also have several maker friendly features, with free site wide next day shipping (in the UK), and a site that is navigatable without putting a day into figuring out how it works. They’re by far our favorite distributor. Great for stocking stuffers like loads of resistors, or a few chips to play with on Boxing Day.

(our relationship: one of our main suppliers we place orders/visit several times a week, they have yet to make a mistake, and if ordered before 8pm in the evening there is a 9 times out of 10 chance it’ll be at your door the next day)

(full disclosure: these are companies we like, none of them are paying or otherwise compensating us for being placed here)

Around oomlout hq we’re gearing up for the Christmas season. Working hard on adding a few fun new products (arriving shortly), posting orders, and making sure we keep as many items as we can in stock (all items shown as in stock will ship within 24 hours (on week-days)).

Luckily the good folks at Royal Mail and The Post Office are working just as hard,offering extended opening hours, and extra deliveries (including Sunday December 20th). For all the details visit www.royalmail.com/christmasposting.

With that in mind ordering earlier is advised but here are the absolute limits for ensuring your oomlout order gets in the post before Royal Mail’s deadlines.

Christmas Order Dates:

First Class: Order on Sunday December 20th (Posted on Monday December 21st)

Special Delivery: Order on Tuesday December 22nd (Selectable at check-out) (Posted on Wednesday December 23rd)

We’ve added a few more great products to the online shop.

Bi-Colour 8×8 LED Matrix

This is our favourite item, connect it up to your Arduino to scroll messages or create bizarrely wonderful light patterns. Here is our implementation for scrolling messages… (code detailed in the quick start guide). (available in the oomlout.co.uk online shop)

Infrared Distance Sensor

A great little sensor that will let allow you to use distance in your next project. Perfect for an obstacle avoiding robot, distance sensing musical instrument, or even level sensing in a tank, if distance sensing in the range of 10 to 80 cm is required this is the sensor for you. Better yet it requires only one analog input pin. (available in the oomlout.co.uk online shop)

DIY Arduino Stuff

Played around with your Duemilanove board and have an idea that warrants porting to a custom board? Well we’ve added ATMega328 chips pre-loaded with the Arduino bootloader, as well as the always useful USB – TTL Serial cable, to make the multiplication easier. (available in the oomlout.co.uk online shop)

Tools

Lastly a little bundle to help facilitate the leap from consumer to producer. With the basic soldering bundle you’ll get a solid 40 watt soldering iron, soldering iron stand and some solder, to get you started making great stuff. (available in the oomlout.co.uk online shop)

DIY Arduino Section

We’ve added two new products in this category. A great AVR Programmer kit from adafruit industries, simply solder it up and plug it in via USB and you can program any ATMega chip that is ISP compatible. Or if you have an Arduino Duemilanove or Diecimiella, you can program the Arduino bootloader into blank ATMega chips and make your own army of Arduino clones.

The second product in this category is to make your Arduino clone army creation easy. It’s a component bundle, with everything you need to make your own Arduino clone (a preprogrammed ATMega chip, crystal, socket, voltage regulator, and neccesary passive components). Great for moving a project from a prototype to something a little more permanent.

Super Bright LEDs

Every project needs light (be it working or not a flashing LED makes it look like it’s working). Here is a bundle of 40 Super bright LEDs (10 of each Red, Green, Blue and yellow). Trust us these LEDs are super super bright with the Red, Green and Yellow being 20,000 – 25,000 mcd and the blue being 8,000 mcd. While that’s rather abstract having played around with them we can confirm looking directly at them (even briefly) is really not the best idea.

A Few New Tools

A less than exciting addition, but every toolbox needs tools. We’ve added a trio of basic but great quality tools . We use each and every one of these tools every day around oomlout HQ.

If you’re in Holland and have been waiting to purchase an Arduino Expermentation Kit (ARDX) your wait is over. The great crew over at floris.cc have done a lot of leg work sourcing the components and bundling them up into lovely kits.

They’re available here (but stocks are already dwindling so get yours fast).

Around oomlout HQ we have many loves, and its safe to say that both “fun” and “robots” count among these. So when Make magazine asked for our thoughts on where the future of robots was headed we were only too happy to toss our two cents into the ring.

Our thoughts on the future of robotics…

The Oomlout Team (makers of open source robot and microcontroller kits)

The coolest thing in robotics right now is fun!. It sounds hokey, but for the first time, the mechanics, electronics, and programming tools required to make really amazing robots are available to just about anyone. No longer are robots forced to live out their days mindlessly assembling cars on factory floors or sliavishly performing demos in university labs. Robots are moving onto our walls, our floors and countertops, and our balconies. They’re making pretty pictures, entertaining us at parties, even twittering the “mood” of the tomato plant on our porch.

Are they doing these things because they are necessary? No. they’re being put to these ends mainly in the interest of fun and exploration. We believe that from this atmosphere of frivolity, the serious robotic future we’ve long been promised will finally take shape.

We were a bit awed by the robotic elite we were featured beside, from our favourite, the creator of some of the funnest and most emotionally evocative robots we’ve ever seen (I-Wei Huang of Crabfu Steamworks). To the big players in the industry (Mark Tilden of WowWee, Matt Trossen of Trossen Robotics, Ken Gracey of Parallax, and Dave Hrynkiw of Solarbotics). Admitedly robot development around oomlout has slowed of late, but we have several projects in development which we think will show that our place within this crowd is warranted (and show that fun and robotics go hand in hand).

The hard working folks over at Wingshield Industries have kindly bundled up a few of their latest kit and sent them our way.

The Screw Shield is perhaps the most useful shield we’ve seen to date. It breaks out every digital and analog pin on an Arduino Duemilanove to sturdy screw terminals. Allowing for the use of many more wire sizes, and eliminating the headaches caused when a wire, unnoticed, slips out of place. (available in the oomlout web shop for £8.00)

One thing we really love doing around .:oomlout:. HQ is taking things apart. Be it an ‘antique’ printer or cute fuzzy toy nothing is safe. However this habit leaves us with box upon box of great components begging to be used.

With many of the funner pieces (motors, solenoids, little light bulbs) the current they require is much higher than a single Arduino pin can provide. To get past this we found ourselves using chips (integrated circuits), and a pair of chips kept finding their way into our projects. Given our quest to fill every electronics parts bin with the funnest and most useful parts we thought it appropriate to start selling them through the store. Thus we’re happy to announce two fun products now available

Dual H-Bridge Driver Chip – L293D

This is a great chip which once wired up can control the direction of two DC motors or one bi-polar (4 wire) stepper motor. We have an in depth tutorial in the works, but for the moment have thrown together a one page quick start guide (available here with a copy shipped with each order) (available at the oomlout web shop for £2.50 )

Octal High Current Transistor Array – ULN2803A

Another great chip, when driving high current loads a transistor is often required. This chip houses 8 high current transistors, with current limiting resistor and flyback diodes attached internally to make for very clean wiring. Simply drop it in and start driving solenoids, high current LEDs or motors in one direction. (each pair ships with a printed quick start guide available here ) (available at the oomlout web shop for £2.98 a pair)

It’s no secret that around oomlout HQ we’re huge fans of the open source Arduino microcontroller. The pre-made Duemilanove board is an amazing prototyping platform, but sometimes its fun to make something for yourself. What follows is a guide on how to take a breadboard and pile of components and turn it into your very own Arduino compatible machine.

All the steps below are summarized in a fun printable guide down-loadable (here)

(shameless plug)
We also sell a kit with all the parts (a breadboard, printed layout sheet, and printed guide) so you can get making right away.
(in the UK Breadboard Arduino Compatible Kit (BBAC))

The Parts

An Arduino compatible is super easy to make just over a dozen different components

The Layout Sheet and Putting Together

To make component placement easy we’ve drawn up a breadboard layout sheet. Simply print it out, lay it over your breadboard, and start placing components. (or if you’d like a step by step guide download the “Assembly Guide” for Lego style instructions).

Breadboard Layout Sheet (pdf) – (here)

Assembly Guide (pdf) – (here)

Programming

This is a slightly complicated step. Because we do not have any USB-serial circutry on our breadboard additional hardware is required. But do not fret you have a choice of two options, either using a spare Arduino Duemilanove board, or an FTDI USB-Serial cable.

option 1 - Using an Arduino Duemilanove Board

For this option we will use the USB circutry (and reset capacitor) present on every Duemilanove board.

Step 1 – Remove the ATMega168 Chip

Delicately pop the large chip out of its socket.

Step 2 - Connect the appropriate wires

Using jumper wires, (there are notes on the layout sheet)

• connect digital pin 0 to digital pin 0
• connect digital pin 1 to digital pin 1
• connect the reset pin to the reset pin
• connect 5V to the red rail (5V)
• connect gnd to the blue rail (gnd)

Step 3 – Program your BBAC

You’re done open up the Arduino IDE and program your BBAC the same way you did your Duemilanove board

option 2 - Using an FTDI USB-Serial Cable

This option will use an FTDI USB-Serial cable (In the UK (here) (farnell). In the US they can be found here(adafruit))

Step 1 – Plug the cable in

Plug the 6 pin female header on the end of the FTDI cable onto the 6 pin header on your BBAC (match the colors of the wires to those of the markings on the sheet)

Step 2 - Program

Next open the Arduino IDE, and program your BBAC normally. Well almost normally, you’ll need to press the reset button before uploading each sketch.

What’s next…

Congrats if all has gone well you have yourself a fully functioning Arduino compatible on a breadboard. (if it hasn’t worked don’t fret send an e-mail to help@oomlout.com and we’ll try our very best to help you get it working).

Open Source

We like to be as open as we can be at oomlout, in keeping with this attitude all the design files (sketchup models, corel draw layouts, pdfs etc.) can be found at http://www.oomlout.com/BBAC/ (if you feel something is missing or would like a file in a different format drop as a message (info@oomlout.com) and we’ll try and help you out.)