Robotics – Michael Doornbos

First “REAL” 3D Maps with my 3DRobotics Solo

Switching gears lately in my other life to work with Blueridge Forestry on a mapping workflow for them. Making this map of a local closed landfill turned model airplane field really was a snap.

Docker images for Dronekit

Started on a new project this evening. Docker images for Dronekit and some tools for automating flights. Love me some Docker!

I’ve always been an instigator

In an email exchange this morning a friend of mind called me an instigator who uses “science” as an excuse for it. Yeah, this is not a new thing. Here’s some evidence from 2011… I wonder how long it took them to clean up the flour…

Experimentation Platform for UAS Systems with CHIP

I’m a longtime user of Raspberry PI in my day job and I like it a lot, but I’m going to try the just announced C.H.I.P. System to standardize new products on for UAS work. I just ordered 3 for a whopping $27 🙂

Intel Galileo Time! Woot!

Infrared Sensor Data for Hal

I’m using an infrared range sensor for the real life Hal. The Sharp GP2Y0A02YK0F – Infrared Proximity Sensor Long Range – While testing his motions, I was noticing some pretty erratic behavior, so I decided to collect some data on the sensor values on a fixed object, while Hal was not moving. This is aContinue reading “Infrared Sensor Data for Hal”

Power to electric motors from a digital controller is never easy

Hooking up 2 electric drive motors seems like a simple task on the surface, but never is in practice. Here’s my mockup of a circuit I’m going to use. The meat of the control circuit is an L293D Quadruple Half-H Driver. Now that the breadboard prototype is working, it’s time to assemble the thing permanentlyContinue reading “Power to electric motors from a digital controller is never easy”

It’s time to make the robots

I’m building a small robot this week. We’re calling him Evadotbot (Caleb came up with that). He’s pretty simple, a two motor gearbox will control 2 wheels, the 3rd being a caster wheel so he can spin in a circle. He’s controlled by a simple motor controller chip and powered by 4 AA rechargeable batteries.Continue reading “It’s time to make the robots”