June 25, 2014

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 25, 2004, 10,000 mile by batbike.
Five years ago today: June 25, 2009, Michael Jackson jokes.
Ten years ago today: June 25, 2004, happy b'day Landsat.

MORNING
           This is today in any order. I’m super lazy in the summer heat. So, like Reader’s Digest, today is “bubble gum for the mind”. Don’t read much into it, because for all you know I could be just practicing for a new career in fiction writing. It was so hot here last afternoon that the club meeting was held mainly over at Best Buy and later to Five Guys for fries. Agt. M wonders if somebody dies, do they change the name to Four Guys? In the course of a meeting, all manner of these profound questions are normal. We have also reached the conclusion that Windows 7 is just on overlay of Windows XP designed to make XP applications incompatible.

           Back in focus is a small working robot that can self-navigate a basic maze. Here you can see the chassis to which is bolted a jenga block, a servo motor and the “eyes” of the ultrasonic sensor. Finally, we are tackling the mechanics and it is being learned as we go along. We have decided to skip the trivial case of a robot that follows a pre-programmed course or line on the floor.
           What is being worked on now? First, we have three of these toy chassis and they have two motors each. A drive motor and a steering motor. Alas, the steering motors are the ones we tested last year. They are reversible dc motors that jam the wheels full left or right only. So it seems this rather unadorned robot will require three types of motor because of the added sensor which means three types of control.
           The locomotion or drive motor must turn forward or backward and have variable speed. The steering motor is called a step motor, it will allow the steering to an accuracy of 1.8°, or 1/200th of full circle, within the limits of the steering mechanism. And the sensor is mounted on a servo motor, the type that will turn to any position and wait, using zero electricity until the next command. This servo will also do a “crazy Ivan” if it gets trapped or confused.
           This will not be ready for the Nova meetup tomorrow but I may demo our club’s complete mastery of the sensor technology. I’ve said how not one of the Nova people have contacted us and let me add that they don’t appear to have done anything between meets either. I’m banking on our ability to grasp the working principles to give the attendees incentive to team up with us. So far, not only do we have the most experience, we also appear to have the most money for a project. Which isn’t much, let me tell you.
           What, you want to know more about the sensor? Sure. Last day I mentioned it sends a burst of sound and upon catching the echo, stops sending. Well, that turned out to be wrong—and so does most of the Internet reviews that call this a distance measuring sonar device. It isn’t. Here is what we now know. The unit is a basic circuit with two microphones “tuned” to the same frequency. We kind of guessed that. It is a well-thought-out circuit because it comes mounted to a small board that does all the interface wiring for you. Thank you, Parallax. This is a huge consideration over other outfits whose required hardware is sold separately.
           The Ping))) has an ingenious one-pin operation. (The other two pins are the power and ground.) From the controller (Arduino) send a 5µS burst (5 volts), causing one microphone to blast a sound. The pin then instantly turns off (0 volts). This is not the continuous beam we formerly thought. When the other microphone detects the echo, it sets the pin high again for, now pay attention, Hector, the length of time it took the pulse to make the round trip.

           This takes advantage of the Arduino’s ability to use any digital port as both send and receive. While the sound is travelling, we set the Arduino to receive and count the duration of the returned pulse. In our test, it was 722µS or 5 inches. This is different than Doppler radar, which measures not distance, but the change in frequency of a beam when bounced off a moving object. We have tested only stationary objects directly in front of the sensor. It detects only the closest object.
           One disappointment was finding out the plastic erector kit from Colorado is not and cannot be made to fit around an Arduino. I’m holding a bracket made from the kit next to an Arduino Uno and the larger Arduino Mega. The plastic girder thingees also have an annoying tendancy to come apart no matter what brand of glue is applied.

EVENING
           I see the novelty of the writer’s club topics as listed last day is a potential winner. Folks, remember this is a small club that does not know about this blog. The short reviews are my take on the submissions. I don’t know if I’ll keep going there. I don’t know what is causing the interest (is it just new, or the topics, or my presentation), but it stays as long as its presence correlates to bringing in more readers.
           As far as the club, I emphasize it is not a close fit for me. There are several differences between me and the majority of the members. Not the least are I am male, I have publishing experience, I write non-fiction, and so on. Lesser differences are that I seem more willing to quit working on a given piece of writing and move on. I doubt I’ve ever been over a draft fifteen times to “get it right”. That sounds like work. Another aspect is although I can’t really define what I mean, very few people in the room “act like writers”. Hey, I just said I could not define that. Go there. See for yourself.
           Um, what about the ladies in the room? Well, that’s a difficult thing to generalize. But they do seem hopelessly out of date in most aspects. Most don’t know, for instance, how to set the indent feature on their word processors. They dress well, but more like I remember from the 1970s. Except for the one lady with tattoos, but that’s another matter. Average age is probably mid-40s and nobody there is my type, at least not right off the bat. They seem nice, but so did most Florida women when I first met them.
           Have you seen the LEAP computer interface? Neither have we, the boxes are sealed tight and there is no demo set up at Best Buy. However, the box says you can communicate by hand motions, even play “air guitar” for real. The demos are repetitious and always show a flat screen monitor as the only feedback device. The club is looking at buying one soon. We are also discussing the possibilities of a sound-based game, the first of its kind. It’s pure brainstorming at this time. The premise is two robotic sonar sensors competing.
           So far we’ve looked at a series of doors or valves that opposing teams can open or shut. It’s a rough idea, but the first models of every computer game out there started by computerizing children’s games. Could the LEAP and the Ping))) device be combined? What a breakthrough that would be. The world’s first ultrasonic game controlled by hand motions. Ideas we have. What we lack is the production facilities.

           What an uproar over meat glue, at least locally speaking for this blog. I did not realize this horrid compound was not reported in either the USA or Canada. Called transglutaminase, some sources claim it is perfectly safe. But some of those same sources have been known to eat just about anything. Excuse the pun, but if the only beef against the glue is fraud, that is enough to ban it. People are not getting what they think they are paying for. And as for safe to eat, aren’t people’s stomachs made of meat?
           Not another border crisis. This time it is unaccompanied children pouring into the USA. And the bleeding hearts are having a field day. My stance is the same as it has always been. Those who believe in helping others should be allowed to do so at their own expense. But I balk at forcing this brand of “charity” upon others who may not feel the same, or are already struggling on their own. That’s my libertarian leaning at work. If you do not have the right to steal my money, you should not have the right to vote for somebody else to steal it for you. Stealing defined as taking things against the owner’s will.
           Of course, the arch proponents of helping the children seem to have Latino surnames. Nothing is as powerful as an ulterior motive. There are millions more children suffering in Africa, but that does not matter to fat reporters like Fabiola Santiago. Only the ones from her culture count, you see. She knows the feds will never allow a vote on immigration policy until the whites are a minority. And for her, the sooner the better. She lashes out with hatred to anyone who wants to stop illegal immigration. A really sad hypocrite.
           And I have contacted Alaine for the requested photos of the iconostasis at St. Jude.

PS: If Elvis was the King of Rock and Jackson was the King of Pop, how come there are not so many Jackson impersonators? That's your controversy for today. I don't like pop music and old Jacko was always a little too weird for me.