Self Balancing Robot

Since I know the digital gyroscope I have a particular interest by this component, due the fact of being used in a lot of modern systems, like smartphones or aircraft industries.

To participate on Lisbon Maker Faire I built a project that used this amazing component, called Self Balancing Robot [SBR].

The SBR helps to understand the principles behind the Segway vehicles. The robot stands in two wheels using the gyroscope inclination readings to position the mass center of the robot in vertical.

Codebits 2014

Since long time ago i dreamed about participate on Codebits, a programming event that puts together computer programmers and enthusiasts, during 3 days in Meo Arena, Lisbon (10-12 April).

The access for this event is exclusive and from thousands of candidates only 800 were selected and i was one of them. The best part is some friends applied being selected to.

  

The format of the event is amazing, because it encourages the direct contact between programmers and also with all workshop speakers, some of them working in very iconic places like Christian Heilmann from Firefox or Tor Björn Minde from Ericsson.

The workshops contents were vast starting by web development, to telecom, embedded systems, electronics, algorithms, human interfaces, 3d printing, product developments by enterprises, and so on.

Node School

At 2 of August me and my colleges went to a fantastic node.js event called Node School, co-organized by Nelson Neves, during a Geek Session at Faro Co-Working Space.

The event had 13 node.js challenges and the code was submitted and verified by a platform called learnyounode.

Lisbon Mini Maker Faire

During the days of 19, 20 and 21 of September me and my colleagues from eLab Hackerspace, had the amazing opportunity to participate on the first Maker Faire in Portugal.

The event hosted 100 maker projects and 10.000 visitors on "Pavilhão do Conhecimento". Organized by Make magazine, Sapo another tech partners, we submited our projects to the ultimate stress test - The People's Judgement! It was interesting receive feedback from the public about our projects, in major part very good comments and also improvement suggestions, in some cases possible deal offers.

The climate between makers was awesome and it was nice environment to learn new things, some of them cutting edge technologies and some of our projects were awarded.

In the event me and my great friend João Duarte presented a workshop about Kicad - Printed Circuit Design Software, where we explained and demonstrate in exactly 1 hour, the steps to design a simple PCB in Kicad.

Let's check some of eLab's projects.

This is my personal project called Self Balancing Robot and equilibrates in two wheels with the help of an accelerometer + gyroscope by the same principles of a segway [Cover in another post].

Test 101

Hi there,

This is the Hello World of the Dry Etch blog. Dry Etch will be my personal micro-blog and will show some of my works as a Maker and Electronics student.

Why the name Dry Etch?

Dry Etch or more precisely Dry Etching, is one of the most widely used processes in semiconductor manufacturing. Dry etching uses plasma generated free radicals to remove material only from the area dictated by a photoresist pattern created during the photolithography step.

The following image shows an etched silicon template for micro gears.

This blog will support me by providing a faster way to find documentation about my works and help another makers like me.