Monday, April 8, 2013

Quadcopter Log, Week 4, New Space

No new developments on the XBee front (catching up with school before it catches up with me), but there have been some interesting changes. Turns out the leadership of the robotics club, who was overseeing the robotics lab, has disolved. I'm not sure what's going to happen to the club, but the lab, and everything in it, has been turned over to us (CC IEEE). Additionally, we've moved slightly and now have a larger space. So now we can have people working and learning about the new tools (aka toys) we inherited around all sides of the two large work tables. It was a bit cramped before. We have two more arduinos, two maples, a few shields, a couple of robot chassis, a bunch of 7-segment displays, four more thumbsticks, and a few more things. I'm hoping we'll be able to get some more XBee units, perhaps series 2.5, and make some wirelessly controllable robots. With enough sensors they could be entirely autonomous. At the very least, we certainly have enough to start doing Arduino/Microcontroller workshops that will include everything from how to attach a motor shield to soldering and everything from Arduino sketches to microcontroller programming and assembly, depending on what people are interested in, of course. Should be tons of fun.

In other news, another work day didn't happen. Car troubles this time. At least it's different. As I, the project lead and holder of important keys, couldn't get to campus, the quadcopter project didn't happen, and apparently no one wanted to come to work on other projects. This friday should be our first day. Five weeks after we agreed to start this project. Four weeks after I ordered all the parts. Life.

Also, another new project! We have not only inherited the robotics lab's space and toys (did I say toys, I meant arduinos, etc, though that is basically the same thing), we have inherited their projects. We are also working towards converting two gokarts to run electrically and charge via solar panels. If the temperatures this friday aren't too deadly, we'll be doing that too.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Quadcopter Log, Week 3, Distractions

I talked to Digi support about the potentially bricked XBee. Their immediate solutions, not much different from the ones I found on google, haven't helped. I forgot one step, so I need to go back and do that, but school work has been getting in the way. Time has been hard to come by lately.

More parts arrived last week. We now have everything except the frame and the battery. The motors and propellers were coming from China, so I was afraid they wouldn't come for a while, but thankfully I was wrong. I'm going to store them away until this friday so that someone else gets to have fun.

We will have our first quadcopter meeting/workshop/workday this friday.