[Starfox] Rawhound came to life

[Guy]

I was thinking lately about the PWM problems that I was having with
Rawhound when I last worked on it a few months ago and yesterday I put
the scope on it to see what the original controller produced. I had
been reading that you use a high enough frequency to avoid noise
generation so I had been working at around 8 kHz (a common
recommendation) but it turned out that the original controller uses a
pulse interval of 22 ms which translates to 45 Hz.

Today I adjusted my code to use 64 Hz (a round binary number) but it
wouldn't do anything. Turned out that Rawhound had been assembled
with unclipped leads on the bottom of the Propeller proto board which
were causing intermittent shorts. No wonder it had been so
frustrating to work with.

So this morning I had it doing some basic autonomous manoeuvres.
Finally!!!

I should receive the pan-tilt system this week so I can start putting
together the complete hardware. I still need to pick up a few more
sensors to cover some blind spots but there's plenty to work with
already. My control system includes a Propeller in the body running
the "Pilot", another Propeller in a project box on the roof running
the "Navigator", another Propeller in a small project box with the
AVRcam on the pan-tilt unit mounted on top of the Navigator handling
vision, and I'm planning to hack the AVRcam to give me edges and a
small high-res picture-in-picture to mimic some of how the eye works.

I've also found a great test site behind the Cameron Community
Centre. It has paved and gravel paths with grass, trees, and a
variety of other obstacles. I've picked up a couple of traffic cones
so I'm ready for some testing. For transportation I'm thinking of
getting a large pet carrier. Any other suggestions?

Do I sound excited?

-- Guy

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Team Starfox" group.
To post to this group, send email to team-s...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to team-starfox...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/team-starfox?hl=en.