Upcoming Projects

So, first off, I have to say, I definitely do not like the look of the new Blogger format. In fact, I hate it. Maybe I'll get used to it but this is just not fun at all. Okay, now that I've ranted, moving on.
I have a few projects in mind that I thought I would write a little about to document for my own sake. It's stuff I've been planning on doing but haven't gotten to yet, although I have a lot of the hardware for it that I have had around when I used to have more funds to get the stuff. I'm still missing a few key components but hope to be able to get them over the coming months.
The first is a home wireless sensing network. This will involve using multiple XBee radios in a mesh network so I can pass around temperature data for various rooms. It'll start just as temperature to begin with but will eventually evolve to other sensors like PIR motion sensors, humidity, light, and whatever else I think would be nice to record and push out somewhere. This will take a little work but shouldn't be too bad, at least for temperature as I have the sensors. The other sensors will take a while to get as it's just too expensive to buy them at one time. Maybe next year.
Then I have some other interesting plans. The first will be something that's more mechanical than anything else. I have been working on converting the body of an old Tonka truck and adapting it to my Traxxas Summit to drive through a video camera. You can see a picture of something similar I'm modeling it after here.
The biggest issue is that my camera will be on top of a servo so I'll likely use the ServoBlocks from Servo City. They have a great setup on their website that will be really useful for strengthening what weight the servo can handle. That would be perfect for this setup. Eventually, it'll transform into something like what you see in this thread. I'm excited about that.
Then my next project is to build an antenna tracker so when I fly my r/c plane with video gear installed on it, I can track the plane for a better video signal. Again, for the pan servo, I plan on using a ServoBlock as that should fit the bill nicely and if I can somehow afford two ServoBlocks, then I'll use them for both pan and tilt to make building a lot easier. That's more of a programming challenge for myself and although it shouldn't be too difficult, the hardest part will just be to get started. Getting the GPS data down to the ground wirelessly won't be an issue at all as I have already done that before.
My final big programming / radio control project of the two will be fairly big. I have a cheap auto-pilot to turn my r/c plane into an autonomously flying airplane. My wife and friends like to run a half-marathon in the fall that I thought would be a nice venue for tracking some runners. The plan is to use the airplane as a relay station in the air. It'll fly in a circle pattern on its own and with it in the air, should have good line-of-sight to the runners to get a clear signal from them. The runners will carry a GPS, battery, and XBee module to transmit their position to the airplane. That airplane will then relay the signal back to a ground station where I will be plotting their positions on the computer. The difficult part will be making sure the data gets from point A to B to C reliably and making sure the plane stays in the air without issue. The antenna tracker I build will be useful for this part to make sure I get the best reception at the ground but I don't think I would need the tracker for a basic telemetry relay. It would be for the next part.
If I can get this project working reliably fairly quickly, then I'll move to a different airplane platform with a really basic camera system underneath that will let me look at the actual runners. I would need to use a directional antenna to make sure to keep a good video link and the pan/tilt will let me keep the receive antenna focused on the airplane so it could pick up even a marginal signal. I would then be able to tell the plane to track a specific runner and it would fly circles over the runner and keep the camera focused on the runner. This last part is a much trickier project and would require modification of the open source code but would be a great project to do. That way, if I want to focus on runner 1 for a little, I tell it to track their GPS location and then if I want to move to runner 2 a quarter mile ahead, then it moves to the next runner and circles them. I may have to make this a multi-year project but it'll definitely be something to work towards and could be very useful if I get it running.
So, that's what I have in mind. I have all the hardware (except spare XBee, GPS modules, and batteries for the runners) for most of the projects, oh yeah, I need ServoBlocks too. We'll see how it goes.

Finally! An R/C Related Post!

Well, since I have been doing book reviews, that took away from some of my free time to do r/c stuff, which is how this blog started. I'm finally book free and now I'm back to r/c again!

A friend at work was very generous and offered to give me all the parts he had previously purchased to build a quadrotor. If you don't know what a quadrotor is, check this video from UPenn out.

Okay, so mine isn't that fancy but that was cool wasn't it?

So, since my friend was so generous to give me his parts, I had to build it and I have wanted to build one for a while so it was a perfect opportunity to learn to fly one.

I finally got around to building it and took my time over President's Day weekend. Once I got it built, then I had to tune the control board up so the settings were just right. The problem I had though is around that time, I started to sell and upgrade things as some of the stuff I had were actually selling for more than I paid, so the tuning had to be put on hold while I was on a crazy selling spree. The plus side is I have MUCH nicer gear now for little extra cost and a brand new Spektrum DX8 radio! Anyway, here's how my quad looks after having been built.

So, now that I'm back in the swing of spring, I have lots of yardwork to do. My wife has been sick all week with a crazy temperature but that actually gave me a chance to get even more done since I had to take some time off work. That was actually a hobby blessing in disguise.

This evening, after the kids went to bed, I finally had the chance to take it out on a calm evening and fly and did it fly well! It flew so well that I decided to test out my new anti-vibration mount on my quad to see if I could get good, smooth video from my GoPro video camera. Here's how it turned out.

Quite good and there's no jello effect as the mount worked wonderfully! I got the idea from www.rcexplorer.se on his v2.5 tricopter build. Excellent idea David!

So, there you have it. I finally did something worthwhile r/c related. Next up is mounting all my wireless video gear onto it and flying from the perspective of the quad! Then it's on to my airplane build.

Stay tuned as I should have something to post in the next year! Hopefully it won't take that long.

My Review of Making Android Accessories with IOIO

Moved to here

My Review of Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 29

Moved to here

My Review of DIY Satellite Platforms by Sandy Antunes

Moved to here

My Review of Environmental Monitoring with Arduino by Emily Gertz and Patrick Di Justo

Moved to here

New Horizons

So, I finally got around to putting my Slow Stick back together after having last flown it in Oklahoma. It was a little dusty but I had secret plans for it.

I first put it back together and left it pretty much as is except for some super landing gear I had custom made for me by the designer. I didn't have the resources to put it together myself so he did it for me. Considering it was just $18 from him in Canada, it wasn't a bad deal at all. You can see the landing gear here.
I took it out for the initial test flight and crashed it straight into the road but only broke a prop and bent the motor shaft a little. It was a little windy and had been a while since I flew so I wasn't too surprised. Then I flew it again and it flew really well, despite the wind. I could tell the vibration from the slightly bent shaft was causing major vibration in the wheels and frame but I worked that out later.

Over the next couple of week, I started putting one new part on and then doing a test flight to make sure it all worked just fine. I did that over and over making little modifications to smooth things out until I finally decided to go for it and this it what I ended up with and I'm pretty happy about it.



http://youtu.be/BQCDdxS-DZg

Excuse the plaid pants as I wasn't feeling all that well that day and it was going to rain for six days straight so I just went out when I had a chance.

Yes, the video is in black and white but there's a reason for it. Before I put on the video gear, the plane's total worth was about $130 but with it, it goes up another $70+ before the camera so until I learn to fly better, I'm sticking with a cheap $10 B&W camera.

Now for any of you that have seen my previous videos, you know I've filmed in color before so this may be a step back but there's a good reason for it. The older videos were recorded onto the camera memory card that was connected to the camera. This time, I'm streaming video wirelessly back to the ground where I am, which gives me the ability to fly from the pilot's perspective. In the r/c world, this is a somewhat recent development called first-person view (FPV) flying. One of my dreams growing up was to be a fighter pilot. Well, that obviously didn't happen but this is the next best thing without spending thousands of dollars to get a pilot's license.

So, there are a few growing pains that come with learning to fly FPV and one is crashing. It doesn't have to be that way if you're careful but regardless, things can go wrong no matter how careful you are so I'm using a cheap camera until I get more proficient flying through the camera. This flight was just a typical r/c flight as I watched the plane and not the video feed. I have a 7" LCD screen and a set of video goggles that I'll eventually be flying through so I'm really looking forward to the fun I can have with all of this. Hopefully I won't be reporting a lost plane any time soon. I'll definitely need to take some precautions to make sure I can track the plane so I can find it should anything ever happen to it.

I have a nice little ground setup I'm working on too so I'll post as that progresses. Stay tuned for more as the weather is getting better.