Making Maibock

So I got a few minutes now that the move has more or less concluded. Soon I hope to be firing up the soldering iron to prep for robothon! Mini sumo here we come. Additionally I want to get the arduino to log some temperature data from inside the mash tun. Projects whoo hoo!

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Fire in Motion

Criteria Met! Tinkerbell took off from the start line the first and second run. During the second run sparklers were aflame and I can now check autonomous robot on fire from my must do list. Now that I have a better idea of the terrain and the conditions (a beautiful Colorado day), I hope that there is another competition next year that will afford me the time to improve on the platform. All and all a great showing by all the competitors! There were some that ended up in trees or the drink, but I think everyone had a good time. Sparkfun put on a great event - and now I have as much time as I will ever have to prepare for the next one.

This is how we roll...

So after a lot of experimentation I have something. Will it find way points mmmm we'll see. I managed to hack up some code. I was able to combine libraries and wiring source from tinygps and newsoftserial along with ardupilot. With all these components I wrote a little code to utilize the libraries to acquire gps points, and used ardupilot to set up way points and plot courses. Now I wish I could do more testing. Many thanks to ardupilot and tinygps/newsoftserial creators! I'd be cooked without them or the arduino. Let's say right now I'm less crispy... code listing to come soon.

Speaking of crispy, my rocket igniters didn't fire up the sparklers. The plan was to wire some Estes model rocket engine igniters to the motor pins on the hbridge and have them start a sparkler as the robot began navigating the course. I think the sparklers are too beefy for one little igniter to set off. Sad to say it looks like I'm out of time on this one too and I'll have to remember to bring lighter.

For whatever reason, I could never get the bluetooth connection working on my laptop. In fact once I gave up on wirelessly driving the robot and gathering data I was finally able to get some code cobbled together. I wish I was able to "see" what the robot was doing later today on the course and it would be a lot of fun to drive the beast around the office later this week. Maybe after the competition I can trouble shoot some more.

I now have ambitious plans to write a java app for my phone so that I can drive and get data with it. Now that I know the Arduino and the development environment better I'm excited to see what else I can do. Lots of people seem to be doing a lot of really cool things.

More progress...

So I've been playing with NewSoftSerial for the Arduino. I'm still having difficulties coordinating all the serial communication from the gps out the bluetooth to the laptop. I can debug using the usb connection for now but once the streets are dry I want to see a rover about a way point. Hopefully I can at least get some data back while driving. The acceptance criteria for the final product of this project is officially reduced to pyrotechnics and any movement in the general direction if the first way point. Yeah I said pyrotechnics!

'Grounds are just magical'

So sayeth the EE. After being shown the data sheet for the h bridge, reworking a common ground to the arduino, the motors spring to life!

A quick bench test and the robot hurtled itself onto the floor to the end of its usb cable tether.

I've coded up some simple menus and added some way point code a la ardupilot. Can't wait to see if I can seek a point autonomously.

End game approaching fast...

So after a spring break trip to Kansas and some work stuff I'm back in the saddle. Minutes before we left I was able to verify that my coordinates from the gps unit were good.

After I realized that the output was in degrees/decimal minutes, not degrees/minutes/seconds I was able to plot my exact position from inside my duplex! Google maps even put me on the correct side of the street - hooo raaay!

With that revelation I'm back to hacking up some code to get the motors to do something.
Additionally I found a really cool uav project - ArduPilot to rip apart. Hopefully with some simplification (I don't need pitch/altitude) I can save some serious time.

RTM

So I finally broke down and started to look for the data sheet for my gps unit. Before I even opened the link on the Spark Fun site I saw that the default baud rate was 38400.

Wah?

Well there is my problem! Setting this correctly in the arduino code fixed the ascii soup issue right up. Now if I can get lat and lon that places me outside China I'd be nearly back to where I was.

Well bummer, still can't get useful strings from the gps module. I now wonder if I have fried something in wiring it up to the other components. First saw this sort of stuff after receiving data from the blue smirf. Tried wired connections, swapping baud rates and ports, even hosts - no dice. Serial output from the arduino seems ok. Only the data that originates from the gps unit is wonky. Hmmm wish I had a second gps unit.... Wonder if I could isolate the problem if I took a shifter board to push output via a different com port / hyperterminal session to the uart on the arduino. Oooh ooooh I bet I could wire up the gps unit to a shifter board to read the raw output, or better yet go and install the software provided by the manufacturer to test and configure the unit!

My little pony Jonestown

So the gps got wired to the arduino and the blue smirf got setup to send data back. Unfortunately all that came out of hyperterminal was gibberish. Most of my time lately had been occupied trying to return these poor animals to their rightful owner. Going to take a step or two back this weekend to see if I can get nema strings again.

Assemblage!

After validating that everything seems to work (gps still places me in china) I've wired up a bluetooth link. Next step is to see if a lock outside gives me good gps, and if I can get data via bluetooth.

Gps data he he!

So with some shameless leveraging of some code I now can get data from the gps module back to my laptop via the arduino environment! Now I need to wire in an hbridge, plug in the truck base, and write some code. Hooray!

Mobile platform coming together

So the car has been stripped and a particle board base has been attached. Now I need to get coding to see if there is anything I can get from the gps for guidance.

And so it begins...

I got my parts from SFE and fired up the blink sketch on the arduino last night.

Today I am working toward getting NEMA strings passed back from the gps. To do that I need to wire things up.

To wire things up I had to clip the connector and attach some heftier gauge wires.

Coffee on a Sunday!

The best part of the weekend.

Making Beer

So today I still do not have the Arduino nor my GPS for the Spark Fun autonomous vehicle competition. What is one to do? Clean the garage? Nah, instead brew up a nice porter and keg an ale. I've indefinitely postponed the Beer Db project after buying Beer Smith. It simply does a far better job!

Andy and Coffee

Andy has an idea!

Code Monkey Test

Trying out this mobile blogger. Hope to use it to document my SFE robot dev.