So...its been a long time since this blog was updated. Eh, I feel old. This 4H club no longer exists, thus i doubt this blog will ever be updated again. Later.
-End Transmission
Friday, February 27, 2009
Saturday, September 1, 2007
telepresence robot and a new project
ok, so since the last post on the 'bot, we have worked out all the kinks and it works beautifully. We'll have some vids of it in action up soon. We entered it in the county and state fairs, receiving a champion at the state fair. we also demoed it at both fairs to promote technology in 4H.
we'll be showing it one last time in September, before we have to take it completely apart. :(
On another note we have started work on a new project: a 2d game, possibly with multiplayer, its still in the early stages of development though.
ok, later
we'll be showing it one last time in September, before we have to take it completely apart. :(
On another note we have started work on a new project: a 2d game, possibly with multiplayer, its still in the early stages of development though.
ok, later
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Technology in Seismology
Being a technology club, we're always looking for ways that technology is being used in various fields. So when I had the chance today to attend a meeting of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network at the University of Washington in Seattle, it was a great opportunity to see how this group uses technology.
The PNSN is responsible for operating many seismometers (the device above) and seismograph stations in Oregon and Washington. These help them predict when earthquakes are going to happen. They also keep an eye on volcanoes like Mt. St. Helens. Before the meeting started, I got a tour of the part of the Earth and Space Sciences building where the organization operates.
Data from all kinds of seismometers comes in to these computers, where it's represented as wave forms. It's amazing to see! No major earthquakes while I was there, but you could tell when there was more activity than normal. They also had the old-fashioned paper kind of seismograph, but it wasn't on.
The meeting consisted of the members of the PNSN on a phone call with other member groups of the Cascade Volcano Observatory. It started out with a slideshow of camera set-ups around the crater of Mt. St. Helens. Then there were time-lapses of pictures from various cameras and discussion of the motion over the period of 21 days. They noted there had been fewer earthquakes than normal recently. Although it's hard to predict, the possibility of a magnitude 4 coming soon was mentioned. It's exciting to see how technology is helping us!
The PNSN is responsible for operating many seismometers (the device above) and seismograph stations in Oregon and Washington. These help them predict when earthquakes are going to happen. They also keep an eye on volcanoes like Mt. St. Helens. Before the meeting started, I got a tour of the part of the Earth and Space Sciences building where the organization operates.
Data from all kinds of seismometers comes in to these computers, where it's represented as wave forms. It's amazing to see! No major earthquakes while I was there, but you could tell when there was more activity than normal. They also had the old-fashioned paper kind of seismograph, but it wasn't on.
The meeting consisted of the members of the PNSN on a phone call with other member groups of the Cascade Volcano Observatory. It started out with a slideshow of camera set-ups around the crater of Mt. St. Helens. Then there were time-lapses of pictures from various cameras and discussion of the motion over the period of 21 days. They noted there had been fewer earthquakes than normal recently. Although it's hard to predict, the possibility of a magnitude 4 coming soon was mentioned. It's exciting to see how technology is helping us!
Sunday, July 15, 2007
robot again
ok so, since the plexiglass shattered we switched to lexan (very cool material) which worked great so we now have a platform
the webcam in the picture unfortunately was incompatible with the laptop so we are now waiting for a diff. webcam to get here. we have the beginnings of a control program using the basic stamp editor debug window. Here's some of the code:
' {$STAMP BS2}
' {$PBASIC 2.5}
counter VAR Word
pulseWidth VAR Word
pulseWidthComp VAR Word
FREQOUT 4, 2000, 3000
DO
DEBUG "enter pulse width"
DEBUGIN DEC pulseWidth
pulseWidthComp = 1500 - pulseWidth
FOR counter = 1 TO 244
PULSOUT 15, pulseWidth
PULSOUT 13,pulseWidthComp
PAUSE 20
NEXT
LOOP
we may just have the robot done in time for fair.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
robot mishaps
our telepresence robot has been going through some interesting mishaps, to start off with we were trying to use plexiglass for the robot platform (see picture)and when we tryed to drill it, the sheet cracked and on the next try shattered completely...more later
Monday, July 9, 2007
Telepresence
What does 'telepresence' sound like to you? The word telepresence literally means "being somewhere else." Livewires has been working on its own way to get telepresence: a robot. The project started out with the idea of attaching a camera to Neil's BoeBot and controlling it remotely. This would allow us to "see" and "hear" anywhere we wanted by sending the robot. The plans have changed, but we've finally started on it.
The BASIC stamp that comes with the BoeBot controls the servos that make the wheels move. It works by plugging into a computer that downloads programs to it. That works great if you want the robot to move randomly or in a pre-set direction, but we needed constant control, so we knew that we'd need to stay "plugged in." The problem is that the cord isn't long enough to really make the bot go somewhere. So we got an EB500 Bluetooth module to download wirelessly, but it didn't work.
So we changed the whole shape of the robot. Now it's two sheets of Plexiglass on top of each other, about a foot square. On this platform will go a laptop that's plugged directly into the stamp. After looking around a bit, we found some software that will allow a remote computer to control the screen of the laptop on the robot. This is possible with a technology called remote desktop. Unfortunately, it's pretty slow since it needs to send images of the screen every time it changes. The next challenge is to make (or get?) a program that has simple buttons to download programs for left, right, forward, and back. Stay tuned!
The BASIC stamp that comes with the BoeBot controls the servos that make the wheels move. It works by plugging into a computer that downloads programs to it. That works great if you want the robot to move randomly or in a pre-set direction, but we needed constant control, so we knew that we'd need to stay "plugged in." The problem is that the cord isn't long enough to really make the bot go somewhere. So we got an EB500 Bluetooth module to download wirelessly, but it didn't work.
So we changed the whole shape of the robot. Now it's two sheets of Plexiglass on top of each other, about a foot square. On this platform will go a laptop that's plugged directly into the stamp. After looking around a bit, we found some software that will allow a remote computer to control the screen of the laptop on the robot. This is possible with a technology called remote desktop. Unfortunately, it's pretty slow since it needs to send images of the screen every time it changes. The next challenge is to make (or get?) a program that has simple buttons to download programs for left, right, forward, and back. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
We have a vidcast...
After a few technical difficulties regarding secret information on the participants, the vidcast of the Tech Conference (see below) is now online! Also, Livewires is pleased to report a new member, Hannah. We'd like to hear what you think about the vidcast; go ahead and leave a comment for us with your opinion. Also, we have picked our a camera for our robot so it should be ready for the fair in August. We'll be seeing you around...
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