Nathan's Blog

Liberty University is building a new $50M library and the Liberty University Robotics Club had the opportunity to tour the new library and see it's robotic book retrieval system today.

I forgot to bring a camera and used my cell to take the pictures and video below, so they're not the best quality, but hopefully you get the idea of how cool it was!

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Last semester my robotic's club's goal was to build small robots that could navigate through mazes. I was able to complete the challenge, but I just realized I never posted about it on here!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLwJEyHSLCY

The Arduino code is available for download here: Arduino maze solving robot code

This is a reply to a facebook post. It would have been difficult to read in facebook's narrow layout, so I'm posting it here.

In order to average three readings from a sensor in a non-blocking manner, you could either have three variables like this:int ultrasonicReading0 = 0;int ultrasonicReading1 = 0;int ultrasonicReading2 = 0;
A variable to store the...

I was asked whether an Arduino would be capable of measuring a device that is rotating at 100,000 RPM. Assuming that there is 1 interrupt per rotation, that gives us the following:

100k\:rpm = \frac{100k}{60} \frac{rotations}{sec}

Therefore, \frac{60}{100k} \frac{sec}{rotation}

So the period is \frac{60}{100k} sec and the frequency = \frac{1}{\frac{...

Bookstores have a special place in my heart. I love the atmosphere, the smell of thousands of books, and the opportunity to peruse the literature. But despite that, I no longer purchase books from my local Barnes & Noble. I still go to the store every once and a while - as I said, I love the atmosphere - but I no longer buy anything, except perhaps fr...

On January 1st I will have gone one year without watching a single television show or movie. In anticipation of this landmark, I thought I’d write why I did it and reflect on what a TV free year – something many people will never experience – was like.


Why I did it

Most people will admit that TV is overall a bad influence and a waste of time, but tha...

I've used Notepad++ for several years now and have yet to find it's equal. Sure, there are full blown PHP IDEs available, but those are more advanced than what I need and are slow. Notepad++ is very lightweight and starts up almost instantly, has great syntax highlighting, and works for many different languages. In short, it's great. Today however, it fai...

I recently purchased a My Weigh iBALANCE 601 precision scale for measurements and parts counting. This scale rocks so hard, I just had to write a short review.!

I...

There's a saying, "Big things come in small packages." So, what comes in big packages? Small things of little value, of course. Take this package I received, for example:



A fairly large package, right? I wonder what could be...

My Rigol DS1052E oscilloscope arrived today! I know patience is a virtue, but I have a really hard time waiting for packages, so I was very excited when it finally arrived! Here it is, just waiting to be unboxed:http://www.foxytronics.com/uploads/gallery/album_18/gallery_1_18_88377.jpg I excitedly cut open to find... another box! A box within a box -- bri...