Author Archives: Skye Sweeney

Spam out of control

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Skye Sweeney

Spaming the comments on this blog has gotten out of control. I had 83 in one day. In self defense I implemented a simple Captcha system. So far i have had zero spam comments and it would appear zero failures … Continue reading →

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Gyro calibration table

Posted on October 1, 2012 by Skye Sweeney

Finally getting close to finishing the gyro calibration table. This was made from a re-purposed record player. I gutted the electronics, the tone arm, and even the motor. Replaced the motor with an electric starter motor for a nitro RC … Continue reading →

Posted in Arduino, AVC, Processors, Projects | 1 Comment

GPS survey

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Skye Sweeney

Last week sometime, Sparkfun announced next year’s AVC competition. I am sooooooo far behind schedule it is not funny. By now I had hoped to have sensor data I could use for simulations. I had wanted an ARM processor up … Continue reading →

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GPS Error

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Skye Sweeney

I started to experiment with GPS positional error. I placed a Trimble Lassen IQ receiver in the shadow of my house. Most the the satellites vehicles (SV) in the south are masked. I logged position data all night and loaded … Continue reading →

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Back from vacation. Will start to post again

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Skye Sweeney

I was on a sailing vacation in Maine for the last two weeks. My type of sailing is small boat sailing that leaves you bruised and sore, no the Margarita sipping type. Need to get ready to teach a class … Continue reading →

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Another break

Posted on August 10, 2012 by Skye Sweeney

Having to take another short break. Time to take a small vacations and to get the kids off to college. I had been working on a gyroscope calibration table but that will all have to be put aside for a … Continue reading →

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The trouble with being ethical

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Skye Sweeney

After I got Vectronix to agree to a sponsorship of my AVC bid, I was compelled to get approval from my employer as we do business with Vectronix. After numerous exchanges, my companies policy prevents me from accepting the compass. … Continue reading →

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First experiments with an HB100 Doppler radar

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Skye Sweeney

I ordered two HB100 Doppler radar modules from China. They arrived and I took them down to the lab for a quick test. First off, the boards look nice. Good solder masks and silkscreens. On the surface they look of … Continue reading →

Posted in AVC, Projects | 16 Comments

Vibration isoltation

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Skye Sweeney

So the electronics deck on my RC car is hard mounted to the chassis. When the robot vibrates so do all the electronics including the IMU. This points tons of noise into all the channels of the IMU. I have … Continue reading →

Posted in AVC, Projects | 3 Comments

Pololu MinIMU-9 V2 issue

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Skye Sweeney

Got all the channels on the IMU to work last night. I then started to perform some crude testing. First thing I did was to get a few minutes of data without any motion. This seems ok, although there is … Continue reading →

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