Proof of Concept Robot

Some friends and I have been talking a fair bit about the current breed of quadcopter that are controllable from your phone using a wifi link, in turn they give you a video feed and some fun AR games. The quadcopters look a lot of fun, and whilst they’re hugely cheaper than just a couple of years ago, they’re still a bit too expensive.

On face value, they don’t seem all that terribly complicated, 4 motors and fan blades, a power supply, a crash resistant frame, a radio transceiver, at least two axis worth of attitude sensors and a micro controller programmed to balance the relative power to each of the rotors to try to keep the thing at least fairly stable and level. Oh, whilst still keeping the total weight significantly less than the combined thrust of the blades so it will actually fly. Yeah. I know people who’ve done a lot of academic research in control theory and aeronautics, so for once I’m not going to have a Top Gear style “how hard could it be?” moment. So, instead, I’m going to build a tank. Maybe two of them. With guns. Boom.

Continue reading →

My Raspberry Pi finally arrived a couple of weeks ago. For those of you who haven’t come across such a geeky accessory yet, it’s a very small, very cheap computer that can be used for, well, really quite a lot of things. I cut my teeth on the BBC Micro in the 1980s, and for me, the Pi fulfills the same purpose today. It’s a fully general purpose computer that can be plugged into the TV, the internet and because it’s got some very accessible General Purpose IO pins, it’s dead easy to connect to bits of electronic gadgetry too.

I won’t try to duplicate any of the excellent material already on the internet for getting started with the Pi, but if you’ve just found a Pi in your stocking, then the newly released Offical Quick Start guide is worth a few minutes of your time.

Instruction manuals aren’t really for me, so here’s what I think is a useful list for getting started with a Pi:

Continue reading →