Life's a Gas

It's a bird!  It's a plane!  It's... a robot!

I read Sagan's Cosmos during junior high school, back when I still thought I could become an astronaut. 
One of my most striking memories of the book is Sagan's proposal that there is no real reason why aliens should appear humanoid, be bipedal, earth bound, or show bilateral symmetry. 

In a fanciful description of what alien life might look like on another planet, say a gas planet like Jupiter, Sagan proposes that evolved Jovian life forms would appear much different than earth-bound ones. 
Sagan hypothesized (with the help of E. E. Salpeter) that ammonia-based life could evolve in Jupiter's upper atmosphere...
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Virtual Breadboard.  


Graphically emulates hardware components, connections between them and (THE BEST PART) the code that you develop to run on the PICs or microcontrollers (yep it can even emulate a BS2!). Simply put Its a rapid electronic development and visualization tool.

The IDE has a toolbox of switches, logical gates, chips, servos, LEDs, LCDs and even a nice selection of PICs that you can click and drag onto a virtual work space (breadboard), then connect the leads by dragging wires between them, select what file\code the PIC\Microcontrollers are to load, then click the run button.
If you have LEDs or LCDs you see the output displayed on them, and if you have servos or stepper motors on the form you see them move... READ MORE

Pololu Micro Dual Serial Motor Controller


It seems like I have few serial h-bridge mortar drives in my arsenal of parts for building robots, but I'm not one to pass up an opportunity to work with a new one, especially a nice small one with a good bit of power for its size.

So when the Pololu Micro Dual Serial Motor Controller arrived I was exited to dig in.  First off, it really is a tiny package -- about 1inch by half an inch -- and the leads set in my breadboard nice and snug; not too short like some items have a tendency to do.

I'm commanding the Pololu Micro Dual Serial Motor Controller using my beloved Arduino (Diecimila) -- it's an open source microcontroller that’s quickly taking over such popular controllers like the BS2.
controller...
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