So I’ve spent the better part of the last 2 days working on coding for the C328R vga serial camera module to get it talking through the weegee over the wireless link. So far it’s not been going well. Suffice to say I made about every mistake you can make when coding a serial device (FIFO, delays, etc) but eventually have now gotten myself to where I can sync up to the camera, init it, set the types etc and snap (sometimes…) a jpeg and get the byte size back. I then implemented my SD card writing code to write the 512byte raw sectors to the on board card. And when I checked afterward, I’ve got a valid jpeg header, but not a valid image. I’ll have to play with it more! I’ll put up my open source code once I complete it. That will be a ATMEGA644p AVR C example project…

Ive finally got the first weegee 1.1 made. Took a few simple iPhone pics of it for now. Will post more later…

So in continuing my new line of robotics hobby work I believe I’ve chosen a power source and charging method etc for the HWBY robot. At first I started looking at http://talkingelectronics.com/projects/SolarCharger/SolarCharger.html
which goes into detail about a pretty decent method of charging a battery with solar cells that don’t output at the same voltage level by using a pulsed high voltage spike at very low current. However this method is horridly ineffective and looses a lot of the power. Dealing with a already low power source we want as much effectiveness as possible.

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So I finally got the tri-track chassis built and got the weegee 1.1 pcb’s back from the manufacturer. Here are a few pics to show the new board, the size differences, and the platform I’ll be using…

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I got my serial camera with jpeg engine and pir senor over the weekend. Now I’m just waiting on the pcbs to come in most likely on Monday or Tuesday!

So, with the Weegee 1.1 finally in production, the HWBY or from now on, Howby, rover is underway.

Home, Work, and Backyard for those interested…

The chassis will be a lynxmotion (www.lynxmotion.com) tri-track platform with GHM-04 motors with the QME-01 encoders added. These should get me a pretty decent rate of speed if required and will take a 7.2v battery. I’ll be using some kind of Li-ion 7.2v cells, most likely near 2000mah, and have a huge 6″ square solar panel on top to charge the robot when it parks and enters sleep mode.

The brains of course will be the WeeGee 1.1 with a serial camera, 2gb sd card, 1 sonar and 3 IR range finders. I may add other sensors in the future, but this should be enough to have fun with my closed loop motor drive routines etc. I also did get a PIR sensor to make it eventually seek out warm moving things (Watch out my kitties!). More to come…

After working quite a while on the changes (Actually a lot of the wait was to allow Spymongoose to try and get used to Eagle and submit the microsd portion, which he didn’t ) I have finally finished the revision to include microsd slot using the SPI port, a jumped to enable or diable to buzzer and led, a extra serial port for camera etc, and twice the memory. The design has been submitted for the first batch of boards, the project file is available at:

www.shadowmite.com/temp/WEEGEE1.1.rar

So the next version of the weegee, reducing the size a little and adding a second serial for a digicam as well as a microsd slot is almost done! We should be showing it off at defcon 17! Any interest in one? Let us know…

So here I am testing doing a blog entry from my iPhone which the previous post was against. Seems a little ironic. So far I have to say I’m very happy with the iPhone 3g, kinda sorry I didn’t swith long ago. More to come.

Well its happening, again.  Apple is getting sued due to public outcry of the iPhone’s failings.  This time the complaints are limited to poor build quality leading to “premature wear and tear” as evidenced by cracks in the screen and casing and poor infrastructure on the network side.  Evidently, in a 3G covered area, the average iphone user only gets a few minutes of 3G speed before getting knocked down to “low speed” due to too many iPhone users sucking up the network bandwidth.  Check out the article for more information, and for the love of God, dont buy an iPhone!

www.rcrwireless.com/article/20090203/WIRELESS/902039975/1081