25-Nov-08

I've been doing some pretty extensive upgrades to my Library although almost all the files are still in Alpha testing, due to the fact that I still don't have access to the Control System. But it will come soon though, I can feel it! With these upgrades, the library now has support for the following items:

• Omni-Drive Drivetrain
• Servo Tracking
• Pan/Tilt Servo Searching
• Ultrasonic Sensor support
• Accelerometer Sensor support
• Gyroscope Sensor support
• Wheel encoder support
• AXIS Camera support
• Environment Mapping
  

As far as I know, these are all the sensors (except the IR Control Board) that the FRC competition usually uses. When I get the control system I will start debugging all the code (although I hope none of it is too bad...). Thanks!

16-Nov-08

So I went to a workshop yesterday for the new FRC 2009 Control System, very exciting stuff! Today I developed a LabView application for the implementation of the AXIS 206 Camera for this Control System, it includes a Searching algorithm and a Tracking algorithm. You can find it in my Library. Note, I can't test it yet until I get the Control System or another Team does it for me. Thanks!

13-Nov-08

So our Senior Design Team has just finished our Proposal for "Rikki", at long last. We still have a long way to go but we see the light at the end of the tunnel now! I've also been asked by our local ASME Chapter to help them out with their Design Competition (a.k.a. Robot!) project, "Mars Rocks". When that gets up to a higher priority level, I'll start posting designs and spec's on my Projects Page.

6-Nov-08

Well it looks like my idea of doing position mapping with the NXT isn't working out so well. There is a firmware (FW 1.21) that supports floating point operations but Lego isn't supporting it so it isn't available for public use, and LabView isn't capable of creating this functionality either. So until I can get this FW level for the NXT, I'm going to move on to bigger and better things. I've been updating my Library lately and adding some documentation for the items.

3-Nov-08

Today I finished the CAD model for my Pan/Tilt Mount for the NXT, you can find it in my Library.












Now on to bigger and better things...I found out today that the NXT w/ Labview does not support floating point math, to my dismay. Hopefully someone has developed this functionality so far, and I'm going to continue to work on my position localisation algorithm for the NXT. And if I can't find it, I'll make it. :)