I just picked up a new laptop: the Asus Z71V. Overall, this is the most Linux compatible laptop I have ever owned. It replaced the fully awful Acer Ferrari, which was so full of massive Bios problems, and got so hot, that I just gave up on it. I suspect that the XP drivers cheat by scaling back the speed even when you need it, but hey, maybe I just got a lemon.

Anyhow, there is very little advice that I have for Z71V owners, since everything just kind of worked. I suggest adding pci=assign-busses to your grub.conf kernel line, and that is about it. I am cheerfully using my Intel ProWireless 2915 card as well as a Prism54 on Gentoo, and loving it.

p.s. To Intel: I am a security consultant, when I am not hacking on embedded systems, and I would really love to have monitor mode on the IPW.

This is a tad late, but I thought I would post it anyhow. I went to the VRC Games again this year. The competition was neat, with lots of kids again, and way more Lego sumo robots than last year.This is a good thing. OTOH, there were probably fewer line followers and standard/mini sumo entries, and that is too bad. My Belligerator was not yet ready (although I made a lot of progress last month during the build day). I did take a lot of pix and video, and will post them shortly.

Wee-haw. I am back from the dead.
Actually, it is just that I have been insanely busy, but progress has been made.

1. I downloaded a program called mach2 for running my (Andre's actually) CNC. It is funny to see the difference that a properly written control method can make. The previous software (TurboCNC) was good enough for some applications, but was a little on the flaky side. I get twice the rapid rate on the new package, and I have no issues with lost steps or poorly interpolated small diameter circles anymore. I can highly recommend Mach2 for any sherline mill system (It is a bargain for $200).
2. I have created the head and some of the miscellaneous other parts for the belligerator. I think I have about 4 hours of work until I can try balancing this bad boy. Yay.
3. I have been working on some code for a company (more vague maybe?), and I just threw together an HTML scrape -> RSS -> Proxy server package. If all goes well, I may be able to open source it. I used mxTidy, XPath2RSS, and some secret sauce

The 2005 VRG games have been announced, and the room is finalized. Attached are the posters for the event!

Poster 1: Portrait format, 2.2MB
Poster 2: Landscape format, 3.0MB

The event will be on June 11, 2005, in Townsquare D at BCIT.

I feel a little guilty, but I have been really busy. I apologize for the lack of updates.

I was considering turning this blog into more of a business proposition, but I realized that personal robotics (or hobby robotics for that matter) are unlikely to become the cash cow I would like. Because of this, I am going to keep this blog as a personal blog, kind of a replacement for http://enki.cthuugle.com/.

Following are some news about my life, and some updates on the robotics projects...

I am back! And not a moment too soon. After accumulating 58 hours of overtime in the last couple of weeks, I finally had time to work on the "ultimate servo hack"®, and the results are good. Not only have I crammed the step and direction mode into the design, but I also have gotten velocity and ramping working. All of this is still in only 2k of ROM.

Now I am coding a quick Python app to run on your OS of choice, which will allow for quick and easy control of these servos. You'll be able to run the servos from windows/linux/OSX, and hopefully I will get it interfaced to Pyro as well.

(picked up from robots.net) O'reilly developer weblogs has this neat article about learning machines. It serves as a pretty decent "state of the union" about robotics and machine learning. Some interesting social extrapolation as well.

I am sorry that it has been so long since I last updated. We had a major system failure over the last week, and I have been fighting to bring the server up quickly and completely (and I would like to note, with no data loss at all). I am taking advantage of this catastrophe in order to move to chroot jailed system services throughout the entire system, and much better isolation between services. I am in effect trying to implement trusted solaris in Linux form.

Soon, I will be posting the continuation of my ultimate servo hack (which does actually work), in instalments:

Bit banged serial in 512 bytes ROM on an atTiny26L
Quadrature state machines, and interrupt on change
PID loops, and motion profiles
Tying it together: interfacing and open collector serial lines

Just a quick story to tide you all over until I finish the servo hack article;

WoWee is offering a new Robosapien. Bigger, stronger, smarter, and pricier than the current model. It will be able to follow a laser pointer dot on the floor as well, and has better speech capabilities.

In addition, WoWee is going to be releasing a couple of new toys; a robot pet which looks like a skeletal Aibo, and a velociraptor style dinosaur.

this cool mecha project comes from Alaska, where the creator (Carlos Owens) is building a 18 foot tall prototype mecha! This first prototype is powered by hydraulic cylinders, and has yet to take it's first step, but Carlos hopes to test by summer 2005.

Reminds me of mechaps, but with less vapour.