After I helped out at the Monsanto event with the pro-evangelists, I was talking with one of their engineers and he told me about a few different solutions for my chain looseness issue. McMaster-Carr has a few solutions, each has pro’s and con’s in terms of space and cost. Floating Roller Chain ...

I got the system up and working and did a trial run last night only to see it act disappointingly slow.  I'm not 100% sure if it is my new laptop (Lenovo x300) or I am missing some bit of code. One big thing I forgot to do is to tune the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) again along with the code. How can I make a device that runs as a fixed rate faster?  Easy!  By turning off stuff that you don't need to send back, I can get get about a 30%+ jump in data speed.  What...

So I have a TTL to USB adapter this time instead of a TTL to Serial, then Serial to USB adapter and it isn't acting as fast as I think it should.  The chip is a FTDI chip and I did see an interesting performance boost messing with an option. This was at 16 by default and it caused everything to run at about 700 milliseconds where before I was at 10 milliseconds per cycle.  By chancing it to 1 millisecond, I'm at about 15'ish ms per cycle, not perfect but not horrible. I hope that...

I had an entire post on this, but after finding out it was a hardware failure, I'm less pissed but still at the same time, very pissed it took 2 days to get me back up and going. This issue prompted me to get going on my move to Applied Innovations.  I'll be posting videos of my move and how I pulled off things like getting the database off the server when I don't have direct access to that server.

I had the pleasure of attending Maker Faire this year and show off my self-balancing skateboard.  There was fun and some suffering in it. I had the pleasure of meeting some awesome people at SparkFun, Sun, Evil Mad Scientists, and Pleo.  Also I had my buddy Andy Konkol to attend.  He may be the panda. And then my smart ass mouth caused this to happen. So enough about the interesting folk, let me the story of the skateboard.  SparkFun sent me a replacement and I updated the source code to a working version.  Once the batteries were...

SparkFun rules, they are drop shipping me a new IMU unit! I’m totally going to be buying these guys a drink at Maker Faire. Time to see if I can’t do some phatty real-time coding while talking to thousands of people and not having it kill someone.  I may get some plywood and do testing inside my pelican case for safety.

I've been reading up on PID controllers and they actually make sense now.  It is a nice Saturday in St. Louis and I'm inside researching PID controllers.  Yes, I'm a nerd.  A very large nerd.  A nerd who's toy isn't playing nicely with him. So here is the break down of a PID controller as I see it along with how I'll be implementing it. P = Short term corrections I = Adds long-term precision D = This gives you a rough estimate of the velocity (delta position/sample time), which predicts where the position will...

The wonders of diagnostic applications and being ugly and not having everything fully hooked up.  I was iffy on the Kalman filter pulling out correct values but as soon as I talked with Filpe Varela, the original coder of the Kalman filter implementation I'm using, talked me through some of the values and wtf they actually meant, I think I got it!  Once I tuned in my accelerators, the angle estimates started working properly.  In doing this, my headache magically disappeared too. I actually only need the angle estimate for the X axis too. I...

I finished up the source for the most part last night.  I'm in South Dakota currently so I have to actually alter the program slightly to work without the motor controller present which actually would be a good idea. I did test it a few times on the skateboard last night too but it did not work properly.  I think the solution of testing this out without the hardware present is the way to go. One interesting bug I did find was with the Speed Controller was it returning data.  I'd do a query and it wouldn't always...

Andy Konkol and myself are attending Maker Faire this year.  I'm doing the skateboard segway and he is doing a LED sign mirror. Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror fame created an API wrapper for the beta brite signs a while back in VB.Net 1.1 and after hearing Konkol swear one too many times, I ported it to c# for him. Jeff does have a Protocol.vb file that personally, I would have broken down into individual files.  There are about 10 classes in there and a ton of enums.  I just felt dirty porting it as is.  Or maybe that...

In an attempt to avoid anything I'm actually suppose to be doing right now, I fixed the source for the Google VS Live application.  As expected, Google tweaked their return call which broke the JSON serialization.  I hopefully made it a tad more hardened now. Source: c# Demo: http://peacelovecode.com/search Updated Source from my GoogleSearch.cs class: // code based off http://blog.yuvisense.net/2006/12/30/calling-google-ajax-search-api-from-c/ // JSON code from http://www.codeplex.com/Json public static GoogleSearchResults Search(string apiKey, string query, bool largeQuery) { WebRequest wrq = WebRequest.Create(string.Format("http://www.google.com/uds/GwebSearch?" + ...

I crimped up the power plugs for the battery charging stations along with cut and mounted the brackets for the batteries on the skateboard.  And since the skateboard needed some TLC tonight, I also cut the mounting holes for the eBox computer that will run Windows CE.  I need longer screws however.  I may get some spacers too. I think I may have to redo the power plugs on the setup for the computer however.  I need a 12V to 5V adapter in between and I crimped the plugs onto the cord to the computer.  Stupid move Clint. Things I...

Almost complete source code sample.  I've tweaked how I decided to do this.  The Skateboard class is now the master.  It contains an IMU and AmpFlow class to do the balancing and motor control. Things of note, isUserOnSkateboard and doesComputerHaveEnoughPower are delegates.  Tje power checks and UI updates are functions that update every so many cycles.  Why do this?  Updating an interface and do extra power checks could be expensive in time.  By doing it every 1000 cycles or whatever I pick, I get feedback data but not the constant overhead of a task that isn't needed. From...

I have some application code bases that are 10ish years old now and are in PHP.  Being the lazy good developer I am, if it isn't broke, why update it? Well, it looks like the hosting provider that runs my brother's business site decided it may be a good idea to upgrade its version of PHP. I know already know the fix for my problem, it is just a logistical issue.  It is old code I did when I was a wee laddie.  I wasn't even able to drink beer!  I'm pretty sure back then had I drank beer, I...

I'll also be using connectors to provide quick disconnects and hookups for charging and reassembling.

Here are pictures from yesterday.  Today I got 1 motor mounted.  The speed controller, 2nd motor, and computer should be an easy mount.  Mounting the skateboard may be a different ball of wax. Things learned today were: Tapping screw holes is both easier and harder than I thought. It isn't a good thing when the people at Menards say "You're back again?" Home Depot is more expensive Menards The drill press from Home Depot sucks, it is a Ryobi.  The supposed "flat" area...

SIPPed the 4 feet and the 2 feet. so that means I only have 13/16 more to go ... damn it.

after spending like 20 minutes attempting to mount 1 damn sipp socket on the ribbon cord ... I've decided I'm spending the money and getting solid core wiring of some sort.

ok, I figure if I have an 8 foot width, I should have some extra slack on the ribbon cords. So I figure I should cut each to 10 feet. Why make everyone the same length? Easy, time to travel then for each cord will be the same. Only way I can assure everyone LED will blow their colorful load at the exact same time. So I have 500 feet of ribbon. Each ribbon cord has 4 sub cords built into it. So in actuality, I have 2000 feet of ribbon. Since I have 10 feet...

Phase 1 - plan and prep Troops lined up USB and Firmware ready and flashed LED Drivers - really annoyed to get working 100% Connection joints soldered Looks really empty right now Only 700 more to bend Box-o-cords, prepped and ready for cutting and soldering Phase 2 - Reconnaissance on the enemy My new enemy - view point 1 My new enemy's buddy How are you going to fit on my floor Stephen Colbert, you sex bastard Phase 3 - draw on paper like you know what you're doing. Battle plans - the orange drawing Battle plans - the math Phase 4 - building My "helper" Still need to buy some power tools and actually order...

My laptop detects the board ... sweet. I also got some 'assorted LEDs' from Radioshack for the power / TX / RX LED spots so I can tell if everything is peachy on the boards. 2.50 per box, got 4 just in case ... really only needed 3

due to the extreme heat in chicago ( 100+ with 80% humidity), I seeked the shelter of friend houses with AC. More or less right now I just need to figure out what LED's / resistor packs to buy. update: Having internet issues at my apartment right now. updating will be a bit sparse.

One board now has the drivers on it. Talk about some major balls. Not even sure if the board will function properly now. On the upside, I think I figured out a decent way to get the solder to the chip now without causing bridges.

the QPOS (Led Drivers) suck. 4 down ... 154 more to go. ---------------------------------- update Red 57 to 64 may be dead. no way of knowing until I power the board up. really really screwed one up, may have killed a quad of color due to it. I had to rip off the chip and in doing so I may have screwed up the pads ... right when I thought I was getting the hang of this too. One pad was totally lost but it was pin 1. From what it looks like on the diagram, that isn't used anyways and doesn't...

Updated my total costs. Current running total for this project is: $1313.42 All that needs to be added now would be the LEDs (got a small inital testing batch), sensors (no clue what to buy yet, asked Grant but no reply yet), saw(s), sander, wood stain, wood, screws, glue, Lexan, powerlines, USB hub(s), alumium for the reflector ... and beer while building. LED cost estimation using the ones I got a test run on cost if I decide I like them. I estimate I'll buy 700 just in case. ----------------------------------- Red: 105.56 @ 0.15080 Green: 631.85 @ 0.90262 <---- damn Blue: 373.65 @0.53376 ----------------------------------- Total: $1111.06 in just...

Soldering irons are expensive.

Ok, what I'm thinking I'm going to end up doing is have all the LED's point from the top to the bottom then have the entire box be actual aluminum sheet metal folded into a nice box. I figure (hope) this will be a nice enough reflector to dampen any hot spots. I'm figuring 4"x4"x2" boxes right now.