Book Spotlight:



I got my autographed copy of the 4th edition of Robot Builder's Bonanaza from the author Gordon McComb. I've loved this book since I was kid and would check out the 1st edition every 2 weeks from the local Middletown, OH Library. This 4th edition Gordon is the sole author and he provides a wonderful update to the book filled with updated hands on projects.

This book really is a bible for robot builders. The projects covered walk you through construction, working with materials, how to use tools, what parts you needs, mobile robot drive trains, motor and server control, sensors, communications, microcontrollers and programming. It is a amost have for any robot builders!

http://www.amazon.com/Robot-Builders-Bonanza-Gordon-McComb/dp/0071750363

It's been a while...

Well it's been a while since I posted on my blog, my bad! I've been extra busy at work and working on projects for people. Something neat I worked on for my wife was getting software for her Cricut Expressions die cut, cutting machine that would allow her to cut any design from any picture. Really cool stuff. Normally you are limited to what the cartridges included to cut anything with a Cricut. The software I got really opens up the usefullness of the product. E-mail me if you are interested in the details.

My other project has been for my 11yr old brother-in-law Daniel. Daniel loves the Dukes of Hazzard tv show, especially Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane. He loves to pretend he is Roscoe. So when his mom had a problem with his little tikes Hummer and it needed repaired I figured, why not fix it up like Roscoe's police car while I was fixing it.

That turned out to be a bigger project than I thought. First its hard to take the plastic molding off those types of cars. Second the gas switch had a broken wire and shorted out ground so I had to re-wire that. The stickers were all faded and needed to come off, but those stickers are so hard to take off its not even funny!!! I had to use a power sander and mineral spirits to take them off.

After that several coats of white plastic spray paint in primer, flat and finally gloss, it started to look pretty nice. I took my police siren out of my Mustang and gave it to Daniel along with some of my flashy police lights. He got to pick where to put them. Below are the results. I ended up having to coat the new sheriff stickers I printed out, both side with DIY lamenating sheets then screwing them into the plastic body. It works, its not perfect, but it should last as long as he can drive it and cares to play Dukes of Hazzard. =)

If you ever work on a little car like this, take pictures of the steering wheel, steering column and steering linkage to the front wheels, because getting it back together correctly was quit challenge for me since I did not take pictures when taking it apart. :-)

Vb.net Serial Control

If you are looking to do a serial link to a micro controller in VB.Net I found a couple of great sites with tutorials and downloads:

http://www.innovatic.dk/knowledg/SerialCOM/SerialCOM.htm

and

http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/topic/37361-serial-port-communication-in-vbnet/

Both are great tutorials if you are looking to jump start your project.

Robot Vision

My robot vision experimentation so far is not going well. I think I'm expecting too much too soon. I use RoboRealm (http://www.roborealm.com/) which does a pretty good job of color and motion tracking, but if I change lighting condition that will change the way RoboRealm sees objects and colors because the light will be reflected differently which makes it hard to find settings that will work from dusk to dawn.

OpenCV can be a great tool. I downloaded the latest version 2.2 from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/opencvlibrary/ and to use it more easily with Visual Studio and VB.net I found and downloaded the EMGU openCV .net wrapper from here: http://www.emgu.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Now once you get both installed, the EMGU folder had a sample solution you can open in Visual Studio which gives you sample programs from WebCam to Face Detection and so on. Now the draw backs are the Face Detection sample for VB.Net is written to work with a static image. What I want to do is live video face recognition. One would think combining the sample of the WebCam plus the face detection would be straight forward but so far all I have produced is errors.

My searching on the net have revealed several "so-called" tutorials that give incomplete code samples and wonderfully frustrating videos of people with face detection software working, but never provide enough information to actually reproduce the desired effect.

I think in the long run a robot or AI program would do well to use several sources for video imaging and I'd like to work towards using both RoboRealm and OpenCV to create modules that will give my creations the ability to see and track objects and people but so far it is a task that is easier said than done.

Bubby's Manual

Bubby's manual is complete. If you are interested you can download a .pdf copy here: http://ratliff7.tripod.com/robotics.htm I'm working a an upgrade to the drive motor system. I'm sure there will be a few more updates to Bubby as time goes on.

YES WE CAN.....

Yes we can program our Basic Stamps wirelessly. YES WE CAN!!

What's that? You say Parallax engineers for years have been saying it is not possible? That you can not do it because the nature of the communication protocol when connected to the computer and because wireless protocols can't communicate the data as required?

Well hold on to your hats my friends because I just programmed a Basic Stamp II wireless!!

Muuhahahahahaha, your Stamps are belong to me!

Okay, where is what I used, a wireless USB hub. It's an IOgear GUWH104KIT which included a wireless USB dongle you connect to your computer and a wireless hub you can connect 4 USB devices too (as long as they are not Webcams or speakers). You can read about the device from here: www.iogear.com/product/GUWH104KIT Currently you can purchase it from here for around $30 usd: http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/58-14255&CAWELAID=552469334 I got mine from www.ebay.com

It might be hard to see in all the mess, but connect to my robot's Basic Stamp II is the wireless USB hub, through an IOgear serial to USB converter (not the one Parallax sells) which is connected wireless through the USB link to a Windows7 laptop. Not too bad huh? So if your dream is to program a Basic Stamp wirelessly, this might be the solution for you. The down side is it will not support webcams or speakers of any kind. I was counting on it to transmit my webcam data as well. Oh Well, can't win them all.

Bubby is back home

Bubby and I before returning him home just after the new year. Still have not finished his manual yet, but it was good to see him returned home. Not everything worked on him as planned. The voice board I had in mind to install fried. The motor control board there were in home did not want to work. His programming was a little tricky too. But overall it was a good upgrade from when I first brought him home I think.

Next in store of Bubby is the completed of his manual to detail is circuits and construction. And then we might pick an upgraded motor control to make is drive and naviagation easier to control.