Line Following Robot – Building a 3.3v Power Module

The Pololu m3pi robot has an “mbed” socket for an optional compute module and an “XBee” socket for an optional communications module. Unfortunately, the communications module is expected to source its power from the compute module (docs). I’ve built my own power module to support a communications module in the absence of a compute module.

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Secure Disposal of IDE Hard Drive

I was asked to securely dispose of an old 3.5″ IDE hard drive. I wiped its data, then scattered its physical components across multiple waste disposal streams. The technique I present here is broadly applicable and does not depend upon the OS installed on the target hard drive or the OS installed on the lab machine.

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Wireless Serial Loopback with Bluetooth and USB Power on Linux

I’ve powered the Wireless Serial Loopback with Bluetooth on Linux exercise via the TTL-232R-3V3 USB cable by introducing a voltage regulator component. This eliminates the bulky and expensive bench power supply.

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Wireless Serial Loopback with Bluetooth on Linux

I’ve successfully passed serial data in both directions over Bluetooth via a Bluetooth device mapped as a Linux serial port device. I used a Roving Networks RN42XV embedded Bluetooth module and a Linux host with a CSR V4.0 Bluetooth USB dongle. This builds upon my previous wired serial loopback exercise.

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Line Following Robot – Flashing the 3pi’s ATmega328p Microcontroller

I successfully flashed a “*.hex” program binary onto my 3pi’s Atmel mega328p microcontroller using an Ubuntu 16.04 PC with the “avrdude” utility software and Pololu’s USB AVR Programmer V2.

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