Welcome to my hobby project journal

Active projects: Micro-RC car converted to telerobot I bought a micro-RC 4FWD car at Toys-R-Us and am converting it to a telerobot. The benefit of having such a small robot is that I can do experiments on a tabletop, rather than on the floor of my apartment. The conversion is quite simple, just connect all the buttons of the remote control to relays controlled by the computer and write software that controls the relays. Completed projects: 1/16 King Tiger Tank model converted into web controlled telerobot Fitted a remote controlled tank model with a wireless camera and replaced the RC-remote control with a wireless PC-driven controller. Wrote various control software, such as Web-driven control, keyboard and mouse control ( "Quake Style" ) and semi-autonomous control for tracking or avoiding bright light. The 2005 entry to the engineering contest This year participants were supposed to build a vehicle that could scale a small elevation, then pick up an empty can. It was then supposed to press a button, lowering a bridge that would take them over a water obstacle. The vehicle was finally supposed to leave the can at a set point and blow a helium baloon. I put more work into this vehicle than my 2004 entry, but still, did not win. My 2004 entry for the University of Iceland's Dept of Engineering design contest Every year the University of Iceland's department of Engineering holds a design contest, where students are given a mechanical problem that they must solve using autonomous machines. The machines have a cost limit of 20.000 ISK ( under $300 ), plus restrictions on size and weight. This year's problem involved a machine that would start as one unit but later seperate into two units, with one pushing a tennis ball down a tube that the other unith would then catch and deliver to a designated area. I didn't find the time to finish building the vehicle before the contest but participated anyway. Result: 0 points. Time lapse pictures of the sky above the mountain Esja A window in my apartment faces the ocean and the mountain Esja. I wrote software to capture time lapse pictures both to disk and to memory. Some of the captures are quite impressive and show various types of clouds forming and dissolving, a clear day turn to rain and "midnight" sunrise at summer solstice. All the files are MPEG1 endcoded for optimum compatibility. The Qucktime plugin and versions of Windows Media Player do not stream MPEG1 files well on some machines, so if they studder on playback, I recommend you download them to your hard disk before viewing. Bare bones 4-DOF robot arm built with hobby servos and LEGO bricks The robot arm was designed to be as simple as possible, as the purpose was to study the inverse kinematics needed to position it properly in XYZ space, rather than to engineer the perfect grabber that could carry a big payload. It had four degrees of freedom. Sonar imaging using a single SRF08 sonar mounted on a servo arm A depth map is created by scanning the sonar, yaw and pitch. Two servos and some LEGO bricks provide the base. Projects on hold: Head Mounted Display control of camera turret A Head Mounted Display fitted with a 3d tracker feeds yaw pitch roll data to a Visual Basic program that controls a camera turret. The camera output is displayed in the 3d glasses providing an interactive immersion. Autonomous RC car with two sonars for collision detection The RC car has been fitted with an OOPic that reads from two sonars deciding if to move forward or backward and when to turn, so that it does not collide with anything.