Robots, Blogs, Articles, Reviews, Photos, Videos and More Stuff About Robotics

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Wednesday, June 18, 2008

I have changed the site a little bit, let me know if you like it by contacting me.

Thanks,
Scott

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Wednesday, February 27, 2008

To installed text to speech follow this guide then install festvox by performing an apt-get install on one of many voices, like festvox-kallpc16k.

So for short:

sudo apt-get install festvox-kallpc16k festival

update your /etc/festival.scm

Then run a test:

echo "this is a test" | festival --tts

That's it. I will be updating Feynman6 with this code soon.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Once I got it working I was amazed at how easy it would have been if I had the proper instructions. Even the Ubuntu site does not work well for this but here are the steps I followed to get it working.

Updated /etc/apt/sources.list with:

deb http://blognux.free.fr/debian unstable main

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install easycam2 webcam-server 

I then selected yes and installed dependencies and ram the program:

sudo webcam-server -p 88

I then went to my browser and typed http://ipaddress:88, and I saw a snap shot.

 

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Tuesday, February 19, 2008

It looks like I will be retiring Feynman-Jr, it turns out that having two robots that do the same thing are not that good. Also there are a few design flaws in Feynman Jr. First, the motors are too fast, this will have to go on another outdoor robot (name t.b.d). Second, there is no good place to put an arm.

I am going to be moving parts to Feynman6 and then mounting an arm on it and will add a computer power supply so I can leave the robot plugged in 24/7.

The software of course will take a hit pending work on the new robot, the main driver for the software is "What will it do?" and I my goal, to get a beer, is completely dependent on on the arm and having the robot powered on most of the time, without having to worry about recharging the battery.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Sunday, January 20, 2008

I learned that Feynman Jr. has a longer battery life than I thought. In short, it never ran low and was able to stay running during the entire presentation with a full charge, this is moving the robot around via remote and having the PC on entire time.

I had a few bugs with the C# Serial-HTTP bridge. As it turned out, this program bombed about 3 times during the demo and caused Feynman Jr. to run wildly and not stop.

Also the motors for Feynman Jr. are a little too powerful for the kind of fine motor maneuvers needed for orientation (i.e. pointing north) as it turns out the motors on Feynman6 work much better for such movements.

Carnot worked just find though I am not sure of my vision algorithms, I think they work OK, but have too much error to be reliable and consistent.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Thursday, September 27, 2007

I have been working on a smaller version of a robot than Feynman 6, called Feynman Jr. I have also begun to refactor my Java API so that it will work with my new robots.

The summary of my new robot "Feynman Jr" is that he will have his own CPU (another EPIA Mini-IPX that I have used so successfully in past robots. But he will be shorter and smaller than the other robots, small enough to fit comfortably in my truck and light enough so that I can lift.

I have also begin a new API so that I can better have a re-usable architecture then have robot specific classes extend the basic architecture. But this API is not 100% Java, I have had to extend it using C#.

Why C#? Well the main reason is that I use WindowsXP Pro for the robot's operating system. I had tried to use Video 4 Linux a year or so back and got nowhere fast. So even though Windows XP cost some money, it's rather stable for what I want to do, transport Serial and USB Web Camera data over HTTP.

By using HTTP for transport, this opens up any language to be used for processing. So PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, and other languages can be used to access the robot's control and data streams... Which is very, very cool...

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Thursday, September 27, 2007

I have started a blog at ScottsBots.Com. Well, it use to be my "Bot Bits" column but since I rarely used that and wanted to start talking more about robots, I decided to shift that to a blog. I will talk here about some of the latest news with my robots and programming. Stay tuned over the next few days I will be adding some more content ...

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Thursday, September 06, 2007

I was able to do this with 2 resistors and 1 capacitor.

      681 kohm        470 ohm 
Vx ----/\/\/\---o-----/\/\/\----Pin to stamp
unknown         |
voltage       ===== 0.01 uF film
                |
               Vss

The source code for the basic stamp is:

' {$STAMP BS2}
' {$PBASIC 2.5}
' {$PORT COM1}

rct VAR Word    ' RCtime value
Vx VAR Word     ' voltage value calculated
Cn1 CON 48576   ' first constant, see below
Cn2 CON 8       ' second constant, ditto
' circuit attached to P15
LOW 15
start:
RCTIME 15,0,rct
LOW 15
Vx= Cn1 / rct + Cn2
DEBUG DEC ? rct,DEC ? vx
PAUSE 500
GOTO start

You will have to experiment with the constants and values. I had to sit with my battery and take readings while I worked on the robot, then as the battery drained I took readings and voltage measurements and made my self a look-up table.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Contact Me if you would like to purchase a Compact Flash pre-installed with Ubuntu.

 The installation of UBUNTU on the compact flash was not that difficult, but it took me 3 tries.

1. Ubuntu 6.10-Desktop VGA set to 1024x768-16 - Not enough space on my 2GB Flash.
2. Ubuntu 6.10-Server  VGA set to 1024x768-16 -  Strange Errors "Unknown Interrupt or fault at EIP...".
3. Ubuntu 6.10-Alternate VGA set to 1024x768-16 - Slow but it installed and restarted.
4. I removed my install CD-ROM and modified the /etc/apt/sources file by commenting out the CD-ROM as the first place to look for install packages.
5. I installed SSH - sudo apt-get install ssh openssh-server.

 

Part Info all purchased from NewEgg.Com for $237.70 including shipping.

1. MB VIA EPIA M10000 CLE266 VIA C3 - $149.99
2. SANDISK COMPACT FLASH 2GB (Ultra 2) - $68.99 (now much less)
   
3. SYBA SD-CF-IDE-DI IDE to Compact Flash Adapter - $9.99

Notes on the IDE Adapter: I have external power jumper selected, 5VDC vs. 3.3, and it's in Master/Single mode.

I have not had any problems with this solution, if you have any problems or updates to this, add a comment. Or if there is a version of Ubuntu or other Linux distro you would like information on, please leave a comment.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Tuesday, May 08, 2007

The program and batch file require the .Net Framework v3.0.

• SerialWebServer.zip

Once you download this file, unzip it, then open the .bat file and adjust the parameters. The included batch file used COM1 and port 5050, for http.

The commands are simple:


So for an SSC I would send this:


But if you would like a delay for reading sonar from a basic stamp you might try something like this:


Where the 75 is a 75ms delay, the 100 is a byte for my basic stamp program below, and the 102 is the command byte telling my basic stamp to return the command.


I have also included a simple AJAX and PHP script that allows you to access these from a PHP and Apache.

• php_client.zip

Basically this allows you to copy the files to your Apache web server with PHP, then change the IP Addresses of your server, maybe to 127.0.0.1, or localhost, and you can now control your SSC powered remote from anyplace in the world.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Wednesday, March 14, 2007

COJUG - The Central Ohio Java Users Group has meetings the 2nd Tuesday of the month at OCLC.

The demo's went OK. I had problems with the transport of the robot, since it weighs about 200+lb and with WindowsXP Home, which the robot was running. I think the PC was too slow for all the graphics that needed to be done, it also ran out of battery power about 90 minutes into the second demo. About 60 minutes in WindowsXP home started consuming 100% CPU utilization, not sure why this happened...

Other than those things, everyone really seemed to enjoy watching the robot and learning other things about Java.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Monday, January 01, 2007

host = javarobots.cvs.sourceforge.net

repository path = /cvsroot/javarobots

Send me an email if you have any questions.

Thanks,

Scott

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Friday, December 29, 2006

Go to my new online store.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Thursday, November 23, 2006

I have started the new club called the Columbus Robotics Society. I even had a nice article written by the Dispatch.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Friday, December 02, 2005

I have added the JavaRobots project at SourceForge.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Friday, December 02, 2005

This is my new robot site, moved from www.scottpreston.com. I have not moved everything yet, but I will get there by this week-end.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Thursday, October 27, 2005

Now that the book is done I am finally going to start reviewing products and creating guides.

If you would like me to review your products or write about something contact me.

Posted by Scott Preston, posted Thursday, October 27, 2005

I got a copy of this SSC during the writing of my book. I has asked Jim over at Lynxmotion if he had anything I might find useful in the book and he sent me this gem.

The two modes of operation are nice, for movement and simple servo movements I used the SSC Mode. For complicated movements of my Hexapod and Robot Arm, the group move made the motion very smooth.

Since all of my usage of this controller was done via Java I actually created a class that allowed use of this controller. It's called the LM32 and can be downloaded with the source from the book. I also created two interfaces implemtned by the LM32 called the GroupMoveProtocol and the SSCProtocol. So for robots or arms you can use whatever protocol makes the most sense for you.

I can't really say anything bad about this controller, though sometimes I feel like it's being wasted by just using 8 servos. I guess I need to buy more servos.

You can get all the details about the LM32 from the Lynxmotion Site.
Conclusion

You can get a Mini-SSC II but it cost more, has 24 less ports, it does not implement the "group move" and power is more difficult to connect.

I would recommend this unless space is an issue it's size is 3" x 2.3".