http://code.google.com/p/imumargalgorithm30042010sohm/ looks like a neat and approachable IMU project/research. It has code and was designed around in-expensive and readily available components. In the video Seb demonstrates impressive response with this components.
I keep wanting to complete my RoboMagellan robot, but other projects keep getting in the way. This intesting bit of research may help me get this bot back on track.
Ever since I read Ken Maxon's article: 'A Real-time Laser Range Finding Vision System', I've wanted to experiment with a similar system. This past Sunday afternoon, I finally got around to it. I don't have any CLPD chops, so I used a regular computer. Above you can see my initial rough results. The line laser registers lower in the image field for the block than for the background. The software properly converted that lower registration to a distance of about 26.5 inches.
It took two three hour sessions, but I got five or six people on the ground and running with Arduino. Another fellow already knew what he was doing and was just there for giggles and one more fell prey to a missing package dependancy and an overburdened 'net link.
We started with a very basic blinky light, moved into switches, a CdS photosensor, servos and finally we rocked some LCD screens
Next time I'll have some 2-D animation to better demonstrate the voltage/water pressure analogy and also have paper overlays for the breadboards just to get folks that final assurance of a proper connection.
John December took some great photos of the session:
One student coding for his LCD screen.
Students hard at work.
Students hard at work from a different angle!
See you at BCMKE5!
So today I discovered two things: I have a transistor in backwards on Uno-version-Dos' drive board and I am out of de-soldering braid. :(
I worked on my sensor board again tonight. I got the sensor portion, as opposed to the led driver portion, working. I had to do a bit more board repair. Apparently, when I swapped the incorrectly routed op-amp outputs and power lines, I damaged a via and disconnected the forward looking opamp from the MCU. I wound up drilling out a couple vias to fix it.
hack-a-day picked this up from instructables who picked it up from Pulsar. Its a story about etching VERY rapidly, in about 60 seconds, by using a tiny amount of Ferric Chloride and a sponge. I am pretty excited for this technique and will try it very shortly. I found a second error on my LED emitter board so its over-due for a re-etch. Once I've tried it I'll report back here. If you've already tried it, leave a comment and let me know if the technique lives up to it amazing promises.
So tonight I finally got back around to working on Uno V. Dos. The part I really wanted to get working was the multiplexer driver. The idea behind the multiplexer circuit is that the
So, in order to support the change in meeting format I've begun working on my own extra low cost Mini-Sumo kit. It won't be a super-competitive kit, but it should be plenty educational and fun to build in a classroom/lab type scenario.
Well it seems I made another blunder quite some time ago and have only now just seen it. I finally got around to firing up Uno's sensor board for testing. The Transimpedance Amplifiers immediately got hot. After poking around a bit I discovered that the library component that I created for DipTrace has the pins in descending order.. on both side of the SOIC chip. Doh. I got lucky, two of the four pins are N/C on the bad side, but the output and the Vcc got swapped.
