Category Archives: AVC

SUNDAR project

Posted on July 10, 2013 by Skye Sweeney

In the interest of trying to determine my heading for the AVC robot competition, I have been working on a celestial solution. I am calling this device a SUNDAR as a hybrid of SUN and RADAR. In essence I am … Continue reading →

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Azimuth

Posted on June 30, 2013 by Skye Sweeney

Determine ones heading in an autonomous vehicle is very important.  Without it, it is very hard to navigate a race course like the one for AVC. I have been very involved with FIRST LEGO League (FLL). The experiments that I … Continue reading →

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Roving Networks RN-42

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Skye Sweeney

Over the weekend I took a side trip with my AVC processor to include a wireless BlueTooth transceiver. This will allow me to communicate with the robot as I run various experiments. It turned out to be fairly easy.

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Magnetic flux

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Skye Sweeney

I have been playing with the magnetometer in the Pololu 9DOF IMU. I recorded the data into a CSV file and plotted it in Excel. At the time I did not think much about it, but one evening as i … Continue reading →

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I have a full year till AVC 2014!

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Skye Sweeney

A few months ago I came to the realization that I would have to abandon my bid for AVC this year. A whole bunch of issues came up in my work and private life that made it impossible to work … Continue reading →

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AS3935 details

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Skye Sweeney

After a very frustrating weekend, I am pretty confident I have the worst of the integration problems behind me. The Embedded Adventures board is a very nice board but did take the choice of SPI or I2C out of my … Continue reading →

Posted in Arduino, AS3935, AVC, Components, Lightning detector, Pololu 9DOF IMU, Processors, Projects | 64 Comments

Temperature stabilization of the IMU

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Skye Sweeney

I have a Pololu 9DOF IMU that I plan to use for the Sparkfun AVC competition. One thing (of a few thousand!) that has me worried is the bias of the sensors as a function of temperature. The datasheet indicates … Continue reading →

Posted in AVC, Pololu 9DOF IMU, Projects | 2 Comments

Sandy and gyros

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Skye Sweeney

Seems like I spend more time logging non robotic events than the other way around. This weekend I was planning on spending quality time with a new ARM development board I purchased, but my wife and I decided that this … 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 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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