Where is Jklug80?

Let's Make Robots
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So a few have noticed that I have not been on as much lately. Long story short we bought our first house which needed some work. A week prior I decided to go back to school for degree number 3. This time a masters in Computer Science. One class I am taking is Mobile Robotics. Our first project (we present it tomorrow and work on documentation) is a Rube Goldberg type device. The project must use 7 energy transfers from non electrical devices (marbles, dominos, etc hitting each other) and 3 electronic (sensors, motors, etc). We are using XBC which is coded using interactive C.

The second lab requires us to use BEMF or build a quadrature encode for extra credit to play with PID control.

In case anyone is curious here is the robotics link for SIUE. http://roboti.cs.siue.edu/

I will display our documentation, pics and vids of the robots here when I get a chance.

 

Anyway I had a few people contact me off line asking where I was. I am still around just busy ;) I'm hoping to have more time to play when I get my routine of work, school and work on house down to a managable load. Look out OddBot I'll have a few things headed your way!

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Major project congestion…
Good luck! And have fun in class.

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Loopy Loop

Good call, going back to school. Are you having a midlife crisis?

If you need any help with PID, I’m availalble for consultancy. Reasonable rates.

I’m also a fan of Rube Goldberg devices. Did you ever watch Wallace and Grommit?

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Morning Gromit time for

Morning Gromit time for walkies! I have all 3 shorts as well as the movie. I also used to wake up with the alarm clock! I am still building the encoder discs for the PID control lab. They are letting us just use BEMF since we dont have quadriture encoders but we are going to use an encoder for distance and BEMF for direction. We did our Rube Goldberg demo today and I was disappointed. Everything worked but our cat missed the trash can so we didn’t get the bonus points. I’ll post it tomorrow…

I am only 29 so I’m not old enough for a mid-life crisis yet.

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Crises and Stuff

 

"Letting" you use BEMF? I would have though that to be the most difficult way of getting feedback. Are you being supplied with a device? How does one measure speed at max demanded velocity with one of theose jobbies?

I would have thought a phototransistor and a disc with shades of gray around it would have been easier.

When my cat missed the trashcan, I just used a bigger firework on the rerun and it worked fine.

I remember telling myself that when I was 29. One of the few lies I ever told myself.