Now that I have telemetry working with the Arducopter, I think I will be able to make useful progress on that project. I will make a video soon.
Throttle curves! I have no idea why I didn't think of this before. The most difficult thing about flying a quadcopter is controlling the throttle; it is always either too high or too low. I love programming exponential control for my roll, pitch, and yaw, but I forgot that throttle curves would allow me to do the same for my throttle control. Now the middle 50% of my throttle stick only maps to a 15% change in throttle. The difference is astounding.
Now that I have telemetry working with the Arducopter, I think I will be able to make useful progress on that project. I will make a video soon.
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I've finished the rough CAD of the hovercraft I am designing with Joe Gibson. Hopefully, we will start building soon. I've been riding Lloyd around more and more, and I figured it was time to get a real helmet. So here it is! Now I just need to get some good gloves so my hands don't freeze solid when I'm riding...
I just finished my review of the Arduino Uno. I'm sure I will think of other things I will want to say, so I be updating the review in the near future. Courtesy of Newark.com, I was given a free Arduino Uno to review, and I had a great time with it. I'm looking for a new project I use it in, so send any suggestions you may have my way.
I have not had the time to update my projects much this semester, but I wanted to spend a little time trying to make my site a little more organized. I did not change much, but I hope it is an improvement.
This semester, I am taking Partial Differential Equations, Transport Phenomena, Dynamics, Computational Probability and Statistics, and Vector Calculus. PDEs and Transport and arguably two of the most difficult classes offered on campus, both of which have the prerequisite of having taken Vector Calculus, which I am taking the second half of this semester. Comp ProbStat has the prerequisite of having taken Software Design (which I have not), and thus assumes a more than competent knowledge of Python. This is the first time that I have coded in Python. On top of this, I am diving into a Passionate Pursuit in hovercraft design, I have created and am now president of the Olin Radio Control Club, and I am researching eight hours a week with Professor Drew Bennett in a variety of robotic endeavors.
The problem is not the work; the problem is that I love everything that I am doing, and I am not yet sure that I can handle it. Everything single class I am in, I want to soak up everything the professor can offer, and I want to put everything I can into the subject. It’s finally striking a chord in my mind that the material in these classes is not just for the academic purposes, it’s not just for next class. These are tools that will allow me to understand concepts and phenomena to a depth greater than what pure intuition can. These are the tools that will allow me to make something completely new and original. Right now, I want to give a hundred percent in a hundred different directions. I’m going to give it a try. If you go to my Omnidrive Project page, you can now download my project files. I could not upload everything, but the main pieces are there. Contact me if have questions for would like more files.
A few years ago, I realized that I had no digital record of many of my previous projects. If I didn’t want to lose more than I already had, I needed a place where I could catalog my projects. Initially, I tried to accomplish this with a simple “Projects” folder on my computer where I stored pictures of everything I worked on. Unsurprisingly, it was a muddled mess generically named jpegs, and after trying to organize it multiple times, some of my best pictures were lost. While the folder was simple, it proved to be nearly worthless: on the few occasions that I actually wanted to find a specific project or to show someone what I had made, I could never find the pictures I wanted. I next tried the blog format for documenting my projects. I made a page on Tumblr titled “Measure Once, Cut Twice”, and I thought it would a simple and functional way to organize my work. It turns out that I do not think about my projects in a linear blog style. I tend to start new projects before I finish previous ones, and everything gets jumbled together when shared in a single chronological stream. I tried making short videos about my projects, figuring they would be more self-contained posts. I made a handful of videos and while it was fun, a decent and creative video is an entire project on its own. I am also far from being a cinematographer. Following a suggestion from a friend, I finally made this site. I like it. It’s simple for me to edit and update and I can organize it how I see fit. While I cannot control everything I might like to, I can focus on my projects and the content, which has been my goal all along. This being said, when one my projects made it onto HackADay.com and my site got over nine thousand views in one day, I realized that my site was nowhere near polished. For the following two weeks after my project was posted on HackADay.com, I did not make any progress on any of my summer projects; I worked solely on the site, trying to make sure it was organized and reasonably professional. It made me realize something very simple: I am not a web designer. I have not the slightest idea what makes a good website. I am an engineering student, and my passion is in making physical things. I do not want to spend more time working on a website than my other projects. However, if I put no effort into this site, it may become just as useless and disorganized as my original “Projects” folder. So where is the balance? With a new semester starting soon, I am going to have significantly less time than I have had this summer for my personal projects and for this website. I guess I will have to wait and see. If you have thoughts of your own on this, please let me know. |