MSU robotics research chronicles

Link

2011-12-16T15:58:00.002-06:00

Interesting thoughts...

Collaborative bibliograhies

2011-12-05T16:08:00.001-06:00

How can multiple authors share a set of bibliographic entries, referencing them as necessary during the creation of a single, shared document?

BibTeX / LaTeX -- either the only choice for the faithful or an unacceptable morass for the unwashed. I consider it morally wrong for a word processor to generate syntax errors, so I fall in the second group.
EndNote -- the mainstream, commercial solution. Sharing requires creativity, as documented below.
Zotero, WizFolio, etc. -- I have no experience and feel that these products are a bit too young to inflict on a large team, members of which may not love shiny new applications as much as I.

So, that leaves EndNote. I have a love/hate relationship -- in spite of regular upgrades, many of annoyances in the first version I used persist into X5, some of which I discuss today. For EndNote sharing:

A number of problems make their EndNote Web application a poor choice.
As in the first version I used, the main program permits only single-user access. Sorry, no Dropbox, no network share, no Windows Offline, no, no no. What year are we in?

So...the appropriate approach is to:

Create a new Google Doc (or some other document which allows multiple users to edit it simultaneously).
Each author will then enter references to be cited into their own EndNote library.
Each user can then cite this entered reference by first selecting the reference to cite in EndNote then pressing Ctrl+c (copy). In Google Docs, press paste. This will generate a temporary citation of the form {First author's last name, year #num}. While this works in most cases, EndNote doesn't use the record number (the #num entry) to disambiguate entries with the same last name and year of publication, leaving you somewhat confused as to what {Smith, 1988 #23} really meant when you first cited it. Therefore, manually add one other field of your choice (such as the title) to the temporary citation before the record number, giving {First author's last name, year title #num}. There are many other nifty temporary citation options.

With that in place, one person (the coordinator) will then produce a final Word document with citations and a bibliography. To so do:

All collaborators should save their EndNote library as a compressed library in a shared location (e.g. Dropbox).
The coordinator should then copy everyone else's compressed library to a separate, non-shared directory, then open all these libraries in EndNote.
Now, the coordinator simply opens the shared document in Word and clicks on Endnote | Update references.

Bibliographies and collaboration

2011-11-04T14:57:00.000-05:00

I recently finished writing a proposal with a collaborator. We both used EndNote X5 and EndNote Web to share our bibliographies. Problems I found:

Upload from desktop to web is slow. Since updating in-text citations depends on the web, this making checking newly entered citations or fixing broken citations painful.
The web version discards trailing spaces, while the desktop version does not. This making hacking an entry to make it pretty work in preview but not in the final document.
Deleting a reference on the desktop doesn't delete the corresponding reference on the web. The reverse is probably also true, but untested.
A Word doc builds a traveling library, which a simple "update citations" does not update. Instead, the best approach is to unformat all citations, quit Word, restart, then reformat. However, this can lead to a number of ambiguous citations. In particular, EndNote will perform a case-insensitive match against any string in any entry; it also gets lost if there are duplicate entries.

My final conclusion is that the EndNote Web process is a poor one.

We also chose to collaborate using Google Docs, which worked very well. EndNote usage was another matter. In particular, the temporary citation process: ctrl+c an entry in EndNote desktop and ctrl-v to another application (Google Docs) produces a citation in the form {Author's last name, year #num}. However, EndNote doesn't trust its #num as a unique identifier and will find anything with a matching last name / year entry. So, using this will cause problems, since the text (last name, year, obscure number) doesn't help humans identify the paper either. In fact, EndNote will match any {Author's last name, field} formatted item.

Therefore, a much better approach is to pick a more unique field, such as the title: {Author's last name, title}. If this isn't unique, then a {last name, label} where the label is a unique string. Of course, to check uniqueness requires a update citations, which is slow for EndNote Web. The full process is then: look at an entry to cite, manually create a {Author's last name, title} entry, download the paper, update citations, make sure all citations auto-resolve, then fix any problems.

So, what's a better process? Some ideas:

Continue to use EndNote Web:

Improve speed: upload only citations, not attachments, to EndNote Web. Create a new library for each new paper and only upload from that smaller library.
Periodically delete all refs in EndNote Web then reupload to remove any deletions made on the desktop.
Deal with any eaten trailing spaces by sighing in frustration.

Move to EndNote on the PC.

You can't share a file with a collaborator over the network / Dropbox / whatever.
The alternative: get a copy or compressed copy of your collaborator's library and use that.

Try another program. Both Zotero and WizFolio seem to be better at these things.

Zotero supports temporary citations much like EndNote.
WizFolio supports an older version of Google Docs, but not a temporary citation workaround I can see.

Pygments to the rescue

2011-07-14T13:46:00.001-05:00

I'm finally realized that Pygments is the Answer. I can simply run my code through it and get the output I'm looking for with only a little manual tweaking (see below); I'm sure this can be integrated into Pygments with a bit of hacking. Then, a simple copy and paste retrieves the original source code! Some additional tweaks:

I'm like to hide the comment character (# in Python, // in C) to make it look nicer, by giving it a very small font. I suspect I could edit the output of the lexer, or perhaps play with the formatter, to do this.
I need to disable HTML escaping for comments (this is done in the formatter). Perhaps a quick check for non-HTML < characters and escaping only these would help.
I rely on the code editor to support line wrapping, which isn't always present. I don't see an obvious work-around for this.

My simple tweak to the HTML style from Pygments to make comments look nice:
body .c { color: #408080; font-family: Sans-serif; white-space: normal; font-size: 90% } /* Comment */

Documentation and more

2011-07-14T09:37:00.001-05:00

Documentation

I continue to work on my documentation idea. So far, I've run into two problems. First, I'll need my code to HTML converter to recognize strings so that doesn't mistake comment characters in a string as a true comment: printf("// not a comment"). Second, the problem of initial spaces: how can I properly translate them? If a source file indents a comment by 4 spaces then the following line of code by 4 spaces, it looks fine. However, in HTML the code font and comment font will be different, so those 4 spaces cause things to look ugly either in HTML or (if the spacing works in HTML) in the code.

I can think of a couple ideas:

Auto-space -- in code, indent a comment line to match the spacing of the next code line. This would work most of the time. In HTML, do the same; make the space characters the same as the code font to insure alignment.
In HTML, always insert the same number of spaces as the code, in the code font. How would I detect these spaces and automatically remove them when going the other direction? Perhaps tagging the initial spaces as .

For correctly recognizing strings, I'll need some sort of lexer. Yuck. One option is to start with the Python tokenizer; its' source code (see link on that page) contains all the necessary regular expressions. Another is to use Pygments, which I'll want for syntax highlighting anyway. I may hack around this for now just to get some working code, then return to fix it. A related but simpler problem is dealing with C /* */ comments.

In working with the idea, I'm continually surprised by how much just writing about the problem has helped me to solve it. I believe that this will be a big help for me in all future projects, if I can actually find the time to implement it.

Other things
Do robots take people's jobs? No, they empower people and create jobs, as the arguments in this article show. It included some nice historical perspective and facts (did word processors eliminate secretaries?).

I found a list of the top 25 most dangerous software errors (from a security perspective). Interesting.

2011-07-08T15:25:00.001-05:00

After playing with my documentation idea a bit, I discovered a serious problem: what I created looked great in Word, but all the comments existed only in Word, leaving me a bit lost when I looked at the source code itself. This is a problem; for many, the source code will be the first thing they see and the only thing they see. In many applications (fixing compiler errors, debugging) I'll be working with the source code. The moral of the story: the source code matters!

In particular, Knuth composed in a Web file, then produced both a .tex and a .pas (Pascal source file, whatever the extension was). However, neither produced file was editable or even very human-friendly. Instead, I now see that both the "pretty" format (in Word or whatever) and the "plain" format (raw source code) should both be nicely formatted and easily readable.

That is, I'm building a bridge between a beautiful representation of the code (probably HTML) and a functional representation of the code (as plain text). The beautiful form is easier to edit documentation and comments, insert diagrams, videos, etc. while the functional form provides a tight coupling with the compiler / debugger.

That changes everything in terms of my design.

Before I get too carried away with it, let me test-drive this idea by providing some example code. This is the beautiful form, taken from a unit-testing section of the document.

Testing
I don’t have a unit testing framework. So, I’ll develop what’s necessary as I go. There’s a framework for Excel, but it’s very tied to that application. Problems so far with the home-brew approach:
1. There’s no automatic test discovery; I have to manually add all tests.
2. There’s no setup()/teardown() facility
3. There’s no “clean the environment” comment. For example, strLastError can be polluted by earlier tests.

Source file split testing
A documentation file with no extension should produce an error.
Sub Test_SourceWithNoExtension()

First, create a dummy document to test with.
Dim docSource As Document
Set docSource = Documents.Add
Dim strFileName As String
strFileName = "Word documentation idea test."
docSource.SaveAs fileName:=strFileName

Now, do our testing.
OpenDocFile

Clean up by closing and erasing this old doc. If the test breaks, the developer must close it ma-nually. Time to look for a try/catch in VBA (On Error statement)
docSource.Close
Kill strFileName

Check that it worked. Errors are reported as strings, so check for the correct error text.
Assert (strLastError Like "*Documentation file has no extension:*")
End Sub

Now, here's how I'd like to see this in the functional form (as source code). Since this is VBA, the comment character is the single quote '.

' <h1>Testing</h1>

' <p>I don’t have a unit testing framework. So, I’ll

' develop what’s necessary as I go. There’s a framework

' for Excel, but it’s very tied to that application.

' Problems so far with the home-brew approach:</p>

' <ul>

' <li>There’s no automatic test discovery; I have to

' manually add all tests.</li>

' <li>There’s no setup()/teardown() facility</li>

' <li>There’s no “clean the environment” comment.

' For example, strLastError can be polluted by

' earlier tests.</li>

' </ul>

' <h2>Source file split testing</h2>

' <p>A documentation file with no extension should

' produce an error.</p>

Sub Test_SourceWithNoExtension()

' First, create a dummy document to test with.</p>

Dim docSource As Document

Set docSource = Documents.Add

Dim strFileName As String

strFileName = "Word documentation idea test."

docSource.SaveAs fileName:=strFileName

' <p>Now, do our testing.</p>

OpenDocFile

' <p>Clean up by closing and erasing this old doc.

' If the test breaks, the developer must close it

' manually. Time to look for a try/catch in VBA

' (On Error statement)</p>

docSource.Close

Kill strFileName

' <p>Check that it worked. Errors are reported as strings, so check for the correct error text.</p>

Assert (strLastError Like "*Documentation file has no extension:*")

End Sub

It's interesting that, to me, reading the first is much easier than reading the second. Not because of the HTML markup, but because a simple difference in font provides visual cues to divide the code nicely. It feels good to me to read the first! This is certainly what I'm striving for.

I haven't found a reasonably-featured word processor that read and writes HTML, though. Word includes lots of goop, but has all the features I want. I need to try OpenOffice and also Compser to see if they're reasonable. While I like several of the browser-based editors (Google Sites / Docs is great), the "allow now access to local files" paradigm seems to prevent their use in editing local files.

Documentation ideas

2011-07-01T14:52:00.003-05:00

The ideal for documentation creation

I find that the type of documentation I want to write isn't well supported by the tools I've found. In particular, I typically like to write documentation at three levels. First, there should be a high-level overview, defining the overall purpose and ideas behind a module of code. This should be followed by detailed description of every element in a source file. Finally, I'd like to provide a line-by-line commentary of each function, commenting on the particulars of its implementation. This documentation should, as necessary, include equations, diagrams, images, flow charts, videos, etc. Because code changes frequently, all code snippets or references to names within the code should be easily refreshed by applying a tool.

I see variants of this approach in use for several types of documentation. I typically write code for other programmers, rather than end users. Therefore, my "users" will be fellow programmers desiring to make use of a module I've created. For these users, a high-level explanation of a given header file followed by a description of each element of the header, provides all the information they need to make use of the module. For fellow developers, I'd like to present the same high-level overview, this time focusing of the algorithms used to implement elements declared in the header. This information naturally belongs with the source file the header accompanies. Next, a per-element detailed description of the source file might also be accompanies by a line-by-line analysis of some of the subtle portions of the code. (On a side note, I'd like to use this to develop and updated version of the PIC24 book I co-authored).

My dream implementation would be seamless: a fully-featured word-processing program in which I can type code or in-line documentation, including snippets of code in explanatory sections as necessary. All documentation would be transparently encoded in the raw source file. No such tool exists, to the best of my knowledge.

Existing tools

There's nothing new under the sun, including this idea. Its best-known formulation, Literate Programming by none other than Donald Knuth, "regards a program as a communication to human beings rather than as a set of instructions to a computer. Your program is also viewed as a hypertext document, rather like the World Wide Web." (from an associated site). While WEB (Knuth's tool) operates on Pascal to produce TeX documents, a more modern version (CWEB) applies the same process to C. The literate programming site provides additional information on these ideas; several other notable implementations (FunnelWeb, Noweb). The practical result (here's a sample of some code) is that a program is written in CWEB syntax (mixed C and TeX), then transformed to either C or TeX, making it painful (IMHO) to either write documentation or develop code!

An opposite approach is to embed documentation into the source code, simplifying the build process but still requiring a translation step to produce documentation. Doxygen (along with variants such as JavaDoc), my favorite documentation tool which I've used for several years, excels at extracting documentation from code and producing a polished, nicely cross-referenced result -- the middle level (describing each element) of my documentation hierarchy. However, it contains several major flaws, IMHO:

There's no way to directly edit the resulting documentation. I often find a typo or other small correction when browsing through the documentation, which then requires that I dig up the corresponding source, edit it, recompile the docs, and check. This discourages quick fixes.
Writing high-level documentation is painful; editing text then compiling reminds me of all the evils of LaTeX without any of the helpfulness of word wrapping, TexWorks docs-to-source synchronization, or quick compilation.
There's no way to write line-by-line commentary for a detailed look at an algorithm.
Including non-textual media is painful.
Trying to fix syntax errors in the source code documentation tags is painful.

Recently, Python adopted use of Sphinx and reStructured text to produce their documentation, which is very impressive. It seems a step back from Doxygen, since there's no automatic linking to source code, while suffering from all its liabilities. The same is true of other alternatives I've found, such as antiweb.

Proposed solution

So, I'd like to create yet another documentation tool, in the (most likely vain) hope it will have some impact. My ideas:

I'd like to be able to open some source code in a modern, fully-featured word processor, add documentation (images, diagrams, etc.), then save the result (including any changes I made to the code) back to both the source file and its accompanying documentation file.
The program should support documenting only selected portions of the code; for example, I'd typically omit a copyright notice appearing at the top of every file. It should allow adding comments to arbitrary snippets of code, rather than just as the API level (Doxygen's strength), and placing multiple copies of these snippets in arbitrary order within the code.
All snippets should be auto-refreshable by reflecting any changes made to the source code. They should follow any source code changes such as moving code around, changing names, etc.

After pondering how I can implement this in as simple a fashion as possible, I've converged on the following design:

Label the start of a snippet with a tag marked by rarely-used delimiters, such as &|tag|&.
Auto-generate these tags when the documentation file is edited then saved.
Auto-refresh all snippets when the documentation file is opened by matching source code tagged snippets with their tagged snippets in the documentation file.

I've chosen Microsoft Word as a word processor and begun writing code in VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), Word's macro language. There's little good documentation on the language I've found; the built-in help is poor, MSDN lacks in many areas, and even searching the web produces mediocre results. I may purchase a book to help. I haven't found a good unit-testing framework for Word; a framework for Excel seems fairly tied to that platform.

So far, I've written code that divides a source file into named snippets; not bad progress, but there's much more to do. I should probably next:

Write unit tests, which I should have done first.
Create a good, high-level document to describe all this in more detail.

Documentation ideas

2011-07-01T14:23:00.001-05:00

There's no way to directly edit the resulting documentation. I often find a typo or other small correction when browsing through the documentation, which then requires that I dig up the corresponding source, edit it, recompile the docs, and check. This discourages quick fixes.
Writing high-level documentation is painful; editing text then compiling reminds me of all the evils of LaTeX without any of the helpfulness of word wrapping, TexWorks docs-to-source synchronization, or quick compilation.
There's no way to write line-by-line commentary for a detailed look at an algorithm.
Including non-textual media is painful.
Trying to fix syntax errors in the source code documentation tags is painful.

I'd like to be able to open some source code in a modern, fully-featured word processor, add documentation (images, diagrams, etc.), then save the result (including any changes I made to the code) back to both the source file and its accompanying documentation file.
The program should support documenting only selected portions of the code; for example, I'd typically omit a copyright notice appearing at the top of every file. It should allow adding comments to arbitrary snippets of code, rather than just as the API level (Doxygen's strength), and placing multiple copies of these snippets in arbitrary order within the code.
All snippets should be auto-refreshable by reflecting any changes made to the source code. They should follow any source code changes such as moving code around, changing names, etc.

After pondering how I can implement this in as simple a fashion as possible, I've converged on the following design:

Label the start of a snippet with a tag marked by rarely-used delimiters, such as &|tag|&.
Auto-generate these tags when the documentation file is edited then saved.
Auto-refresh all snippets when the documentation file is opened by matching source code tagged snippets with their tagged snippets in the documentation file.

So far, I've written code that divides a source file into named snippets; not bad progress, but there's much more to do. I should probably next:

Write unit tests, which I should have done first.
Create a good, high-level document to describe all this in more detail.

Visual Basic for Applications

2011-07-01T09:56:00.001-05:00

The ideal for documentation creation

I find that the type of documentation I want to write isn't well supported by the tools I've found. In particular, I typically like to write documentation at three levels. First, there should be a high-level overview, defining the overall purpose and ideas behind a module of code. This should be followed by detailed description of every element in a source file. Finally, I'd like to provide a line-by-line commentary of each function, commenting on the particulars of its implementation. This documentation should, as necessary, include equations, diagrams, images, flow charts, videos, etc. Because code changes frequently, all code snippets or references to names within the code should be easily refreshed by applying a tool.

I see variants of this approach in use for several types of documentation. I typically write code for other programmers, rather than end users. Therefore, my "users" will be fellow programmers desiring to make use of a module I've created. For these users, a high-level explanation of a given header file followed by a description of each element of the header, provides all the information they need to make use of the module. For fellow developers, I'd like to present the same high-level overview, this time focusing of the algorithms used to implement elements declared in the header. This information naturally belongs with the source file the header accompanies. Next, a per-element detailed description of the source file might also be accompanies by a line-by-line analysis of some of the subtle portions of the code. (On a side note, I'd like to use this to develop and updated version of the PIC24 book I co-authored).

My dream implementation would be seamless: a fully-featured word-processing program in which I can type code or in-line documentation, including snippets of code in explanatory sections as necessary. All documentation would be transparently encoded in the raw source file. No such tool exists, to the best of my knowledge.

Existing tools

There's nothing new under the sun, including this idea. Its best-known formulation, Literate Programming by none other than Donald Knuth, "regards a program as a communication to human beings rather than as a set of instructions to a computer. Your program is also viewed as a hypertext document, rather like the World Wide Web." (from an associated site). While WEB (Knuth's tool) operates on Pascal to produce TeX documents, a more modern version (CWEB) applies the same process to C. The literate programming site provides additional information on these ideas; several other notable implementations (FunnelWeb, Noweb). The practical result (here's a sample of some code) is that a program is written in CWEB syntax (mixed C and TeX), then transformed to either C or TeX, making it painful (IMHO) to either write documentation or develop code! While other tools (

My favorite documentation tool, which I've used for several years, is Doxygen. It excels at extracting documentation from code and producing a polished, nicely cross-referenced result -- the middle level (describing each element) of my documentation hierarchy. However, it contains several major flaws, IMHO:

There's no way to directly edit the resulting documentation. I often find a typo or other small correction when browsing through the documentation, which then requires that I dig up the corresponding source, edit it, recompile the docs, and check. This discourages quick fixes.
Writing high-level documentation is painful; editing text then compiling reminds me of all the evils of LaTeX without any of the helpfulness of word wrapping, TexWorks docs-to-source synchronization, or quick compilation.
There's no way to write line-by-line commentary for a detailed look at an algorithm.
Including non-textual media is painful.

Back to blogging

2011-05-03T17:18:00.001-05:00

It's been a busy semester, but it's over now. I'm returning to blogging as a way to trying to be more organized and to share interesting things with others.

The first question: does this make any sense? Who really cares what my to-do list is? I like having a place to store hyperlinks, since that's where I keep a lot of my ideas. Hopefully, that will be helpful. I'll keep lists in my gmail tasks and see how that works.

Interesting things:

The ideas behind the quantum leaps framework are excellent. The book introducing these concepts is excellent if you can survive the introductory chapter (the "fly-n-shoot" game isn't a very motivating example).

An annoyance: the examples tend to compile and run in DOS mode on a free compiler. That's just not very appealing to me. It would be fun to "port" the framework to run under Python, since the framework is pure C, making it multi-platform.
The framework doesn't include a library for a particular processor. That would be very helpful, since some of the implementation details aren't clear to me. I'm considering creating just such a library for the PIC24. There is a TCP/IP stack implementation, which looks interesting; perhaps a good starting point.
The author's blog makes for very interesting reading.

Get your Starkville weather updates from Doug Gillham, an excellent meteorologist. They're particularly helpful for severe weather (more tornadoes, anyone?).
A book from the National Academies Press, The Future of Computing Performance: Game Over or Next Level?, gives a great explanation of why power limits growth in computing performance. High-performance computing = low power computing, which is a very different paradigm.
NASA posted a draft of their robotics roadmap. Now, if I could only find the interest to actually read it...
I'm still looking for a good platform for Intro to Robotics. Some good finds: either the Stinger or the Dagu Rover 5 look good. Both have encoders in addition to DC motors, wheel/tracks, and gearing. However, both probably draw more than 1A for the motors, so I'll need a beefier H-bridge. An L298 would work, but needs external diodes and doesn't seem breadboardable. It looks like there's a nice product with all the necessary parts. As a second alternative, there's the Sparkfun motor driver, which contains a micro to do the PWM.
An amazing paper on what computer science really is. A lot of Biblical references also provide me with insights on how my faith can be expressed in an academic context.

Weekly meeting

2010-09-16T13:56:00.001-05:00

This week:

Review the task list.
Next week's meeting canceled -- Dr. Jones traveling to Case Western.
Look through SVN, Dropbox files.
Clean and inventory the lab.

Organizational meeting

2010-09-09T13:55:00.004-05:00

It's time to get the semester started! The agenda:

Introductions, group home page
Research overview

Dynamics for continuum robots
Desktop supercomputing
Alternative navigation

New student orientation

Policy -- get everyone started on training. Jacob - update policy page. Krishna - add link to library formatting zip files.
Make sure everyone is on e-mail list, has permissions to edit home page, task list, SVN. Dr. Jones -- add Quintin, Tommy, Jacob, Ankit (SVN). Get SVN path fixed for everyone else.
Look at thesis formatting.
Review software. Get everyone started on SVN. Dr. Jones to do -- find MathType old version.
Update the people page!
Discuss recommended courses.

Schedule weekly meeting times; look at the task list.
Lab: need to clean and inventory. Dr. Jones - card access for Steven, Ankit.
SVN, Dropbox need to clean up!

Fun links

2010-09-06T15:24:00.000-05:00

I've been focusing on staying up to date with my inbox, but my blog has fallen far behind. A bit of catch-up:

I'm using Camtasia to create a series of videos for the "Digital approach to Bible study" Sunday School class I teach. The site uses Joomla, so I got to learn enough of that to post videos using a plugin. While the first two are just .mp4 files and therefore require Quicktime, I figured that uploading an extra file allows me to use the Flash player, which is much more widely supported.
The Autonomous Robots blog is neat.
Python(x, y) is great! I'm really liking it for my Intro to Robotics class. I certainly miss some features (a nice integrated debugger is one).
I decided to have a bit of fun and purchase the original StarCraft. It is fun!

Electric cars

2010-07-23T10:39:00.000-05:00

Electronic design posted an interesting article on the electric car. Here's an image of the Baker Electric, from the early 1900s. Wow.

Summer camp starting

2010-07-21T09:08:00.000-05:00

Today is the beginning of the robotics portion of Summer Bridge camp I'm helping with. Looking around the web, I ran across another interesting teaching robot, the Finch. The Finch can use Myro, a Python robotics library aimed at education; I might take some ideas from that.

A team is driving an autonomous robot for 13,000 km -- wow! They start tomorrow.

Almost done

2010-07-08T15:43:00.002-05:00

My time here at Eglin AFB is almost over. It's been a great time! I've enjoyed learning a lot of new things and using skills I've developed over the years to solve some of the problems. I gave a presentation, but can't distribute it publicly until I get it approved.

I recently discovered several wonderful GMail labs features on their blog: hierarchical labels, archive and send, SMS chat, and offline mode. Also, I learned that I can drag and drop attachments. Wow! That's muuuuuch better.

Now, for random links:

BBQ by engineers
An open-software, open-source robot from Kuka for just $24,000.

A fun video!

To do

2010-06-04T09:42:00.002-05:00

I tried searching for a paper to go with the quad-rotor video I posted yesterday, but no luck. I did find a couple of other papers, though.

Today's tasks:

Review paper
Quad-rotor dynamics
Get wireless Matlab control working
Work on P&T
Look for Summer Bridge assistants
Work on parts list -- 6 V and 3.3 V DC-DC converters; price for Meanwell unit

Quad-rotor and LiPo

2010-06-03T08:41:00.002-05:00

Some notes on LiPo batteries:

Here's a good summary. In particular:

We need a connector to mate with the battery's taps, to check that each cell is fully charged. A charge balancer would be nice; I've added one to the parts list.
We need a safe charging set-up, with a bucket of sand handy and probably a Pyrex dish with sand to charge batteries in.
Don't charge at more than 1C.
Our ESCs have a built-in low-voltage cutoff that is set to (starting battery voltage) * 0.74. So, the batteries MUST BE FULLY CHARGED BEFORE CONNECTING THEM for this to work properly.

Now, what neat things can a quad-rotor do?

The list:

Look up info re: LiPo charging / discharging
Look for 1A inverting regulator
Consider appropriate battery for quad-copter
Review paper
XBee / Bluetooth
Finish deriving and document dynamics

To do

2010-06-02T10:01:00.000-05:00

The list for today:

Paper review?
XBee
Meeting notes
Schedule pest control
Dynamics

Today's plans

2010-05-28T13:03:00.000-05:00

I finally figured out why my OpenCV code didn't work: there was a transpose in one matrix and I didn't understand how OpenCV lays out memory (it pads each column so that it's a multiple of 4 bytes). In general, indexing in OpenCV involves a painful cast; this is the most helpful summary of how to do that.

I still can't get two XBee modems to communicate; I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I just found a nice howto and a tutorial which looks like the right things to try.

Plans for today:

~~E-mail / admin~~
Derive dynamics for the quad-rotor
Work on a list of reviewers for my P&T application
Start deriving continuum dynamics
~~Order breadboards, PICKit2s, mini-Bullys, etc.~~
Prepare for meeting with Jimmy, TJ
~~Work on recruiting Summer Bridge helpers~~

The morning disappears

2010-05-27T10:39:00.000-05:00

The morning is disappearing. I worked a bit more on my CV, realized I'd forgotten to add my SECON paper and presentation to my list of publications. That took time to dig up (I still don't have the page numbers, can't access the ECE web server to post the PDFs, etc.). Going through my inbox, organizing some Summer Bridge things, etc. took a long time! I have just a few more admin tasks before I can (hopefully) be productive.

The good news is that my home publications page and research publications page are a bit more updated as well, with some additional citations found.

List-making

2010-05-26T13:52:00.000-05:00

It's high time to get a bit more organized for the summer!

I've noticed several things about my netbook

It worked best before I installed lots of software. First, the more I install, the more updaters run in the background, consuming precious memory. I'm now in the process of gradually removing unnecessary programs in hopes of restoring some of that performance.
I went through a series of bad turn-on problems after upgrading my netbook's RAM to 2 GB (I have an Acer Aspire One 531h). I finally discovered that powering on with the power supply attached produced failures, at times even reporting that I only had 1 GB installed. I'm guessing the supply can't handle the initial current demands. Likewise, restarting instead of shutting down then powering back on produces flaky behavior.

Things to do:

Read

The quad-rotor thesis
Adam's paper
Look at the QR decomposition in more detail. I'd always used the SVD for pseudo-inverse calculations, but wonder if the QR is more efficient.

Determine a list of reviewers
Write a cover letter
Fill out the forms
Ask Tommy questions on his students for CV
Get CV reviewed

Read reviews
Look up references and incorporate
Start reading and editing

Quad rotor

Order a MAX3232 to interface with the Microstrain / call Microstrain (look at IMU part number)
Talk about DC-DC converters / power supply for PIC, speed controller

Summer bridge

Order parts: breadboards, PICKit 2s
Debug / work around motor noise problems
Build up alternate platform with encoders
p14p development work -- GPIO testing

Other

Talk with Ben
Schedule a meeting with TJ

Video tracking on a microcontroller

2010-05-17T10:12:00.000-05:00

Wow; I'm impressed. Here's a great senior design project in which the students do video processing / tracking on an AVR. That's a good reminder that even low-resolution, low-speed stuff can produce some impressive results!

When we do image processing, the question should be "How little data do I need?" instead of "How large an image can I process in real time?

Fun links and videos

2010-05-14T09:28:00.000-05:00

Extreme car parking!

Build a mosquito-killing laser!

NSF videos on green technology:

Promotion and Tenure

2010-05-07T13:48:00.003-05:00

I started as an assistant professor in August of 2005, so I go up for promotion and tenure beginning this August. I'm trying to get started early and work on it gradually throughout the summer, in order to do a better job and enjoy the process more. The CAAD page on P&T has a great image!

As always, the process begins with some information gathering:

The Faculty Handbook contains P&T procedures (also available as a PDF).
The BCoE P&T policies.
ECE P&T policies.
The Provost's office page for faculty contains some useful info:

Documenting teaching effectiveness.
A list of peer research institutions from which I should get external letters.
Tips on promotion and tenure.

The UPTC website (which was very well hidden) has a suggested application organization document. Note: I've been told that the info on this web site is outdated and the site itself will soon be taken down. However, I still find the suggested application organization helpful and see elements of it in the P&T presentation given Spring 2010.

Continuum robots

2010-05-07T10:28:00.001-05:00

Catching up on my e-mail, I've run across a couple of interesting links:

A paper worth reading on a novel 3D elephant trunk.
The ICRA workshop on medical applications for continuum and serpentine robots. A couple of paper listed in the papers section will definitely be worth reading.
DuPont's latest work.

At Eglin AFB

2010-05-06T12:28:00.000-05:00

I'm now at the Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. It's beautiful here! I've been enjoying meeting people, but at the same time I'm still in the process of discovering a good project to work on.

From some e-mail catch-up, the robotics podcast looks interesting.

A member of the Eglin group is a big advocate of PythonXY. It looks like a nice toolkit for doing MATLAB-like work in Python. Very interesting!

Amazing bionic elephant trunk

2010-04-19T20:29:00.000-05:00

Wow. I've seen a number of neat Festo demos, but this is nearest and dearest to my heart. Krishna found it.

Now, how can I get my hands on one of these? :)

UAVs galore

2010-04-14T12:36:00.000-05:00

Here's a nice article which goes through a number of UAVs out there, from hobbyist to military versions.

Python for robotics

2010-04-06T13:22:00.000-05:00

I'm planning on using Python-on-a-chip for the Summer Bridge program and for my Intro to Robotics course next semester. I'm pondering also using Python on the host PC for Intro to Robotics, instead of Matlab. Thoughts:

Helpful links:

NumPy for MATLAB users

Requirement	MATLAB	Python
Pseudo-inverse	pinv	linalg.pinv
ODEs	ode54, etc	scipy.integrate
3D visualzation	My Coin/MATLAB bridge	IVuPy or pivy

Scary video

2010-04-05T16:05:00.000-05:00

Wow. Big brother is coming, and we'll welcome him with open arms. Even worse, I'll be helping design the systems that makes it all possible. Wow. (Here's the full version of the video).

Clean up and catch up

2010-04-02T15:04:00.003-05:00

I'm working today, trying to clean up and catch up a bit. I've posted an updated oscope tutorial. Others stuff:

A great article by Mark Taylor on his ideas for effective engineering education.
Helpful advice for new faculty (I could still use it!)

Embedded Systems notes

2010-03-23T14:04:00.002-05:00

I'm impressed by the Embedded Systems newsletter from Netrino. There's a lot about programming I can learn from them! My favorite links:

Inside info on the Mars Pathfinder rover software failure.
Michael Barr's blog.
Nigel's Jones' blog.

Fractal fun and more

2010-03-22T16:46:00.000-05:00

After a couple of back-and-forth e-mails with the judges, it turns out that the MSU SECON team was judged third, due to eight penalty point assessed in the final round (a total of two were assessed in the previous three rounds; the behavior of the robot didn't change). Oh, well -- that puts us in 3rd place. It's a great robot and a good reminder to focus on standards other than winning.

Some fun links:

Johnny Lee produces absolutely amazing videos of this HCI ideas. Wow.
Fractals can be quite pretty (and there are more!).

SECON frustration

2010-03-20T20:37:00.000-05:00

I've just come from the awards ceremony, in which MSU received the 3rd place trophy while the University of Florida received 2nd place. The Florida team confirmed that they thought their score was lower and ours higher. However, the person that did the scoring is now sleeping. That's both disappointing and frustrating.

SECON results

2010-03-20T16:58:00.000-05:00

The day is mostly done and the results are in. The robotics (hardware) team ended up with 2nd place overall, a great feat. In the initial three rounds, they scored 271 points (best 2 of three games), while the next team came in at 211. In the final match, all earlier results are ignored and the 3rd place robot built by Western Kentucky won with a very strong run of 166 points, while the MSU's SPIDR scored 111 and Florida's robot scored 105.

The software team didn't place and was frustrated. They were placed in a cloud computing environment, which meant that keystrokes sometimes took seconds to appear. The problems primarily dealt with UI creation, rather that classical problem-solving. Given this is an IEEE programming contest, I'd like to see all teams given some sort of hardware (say, an iRobot Create) plus a task of making the robot do something interesting and useful.

I took lots of video and photos, though I don't know when I'll sort through it all. Unfortunately, the Windows 7 Starter on the laptop doesn't play MPEG files from the camera, which is a bit disappointing.

Go Dawgs!

The competition begins

2010-03-20T07:21:00.001-05:00

Today is competition day here at SECON! The software competition team got started half an hour ago (it runs from 7 AM to 2 PM, with finalists then going an extra two hours). From what I hear, the hardware competition team (MSU_SECON on Twitter) is having a hard time, trying to improve their robot to take on the top dog, which can run ~6 laps compared to the teams ~4 lab abilities. Last-minute changes are always scary; I hope the robot still runs consistently for the competition!

Internet service got much better last night, so I'm more able to catch up on e-mail and get a few things done. That's nice.

I always learn something when I come to SECON. For example, one team showed me their Arduino environment. The things that made it useful for then is the object-oriented libraries for the processor (an Atmel 8-bit part) with a C++-like syntax based on Wiring. Essentially, a good library enables a wider audience to get involved in microcontroller development. I think my Python idea is therefore good, though the slowness and bulk of Python might be a barrier.

Interesting links:

One company is developing higher-efficiency gasoline engines for cars -- they evidently have a 98 mpg prototype. Wow!

I'm doing some catch-up, going through my inbox as usual. That always takes time. Projects for today (hopefully):

Permissions for the review paper -- I still haven't applied for them.
Salary request for Eglin trip.
Paper review -- I'd like to at least start reading a paper today.
Proposal review -- I need to download and take a look at this stuff.

Beach and SECON

2010-03-20T06:42:00.000-05:00

It’s been busy. But then again, when haven’t I been busy? I’ve enjoyed a vacation to the beach in Destin, Florida with my family. Praise God for very pleasant weather – the boys had lots of fun. While there, my laptop died Sunday evening! Ouch – I’d been working on a presentation to give to a research group at Eglin AFB on Tuesday, plus hoping to do a bit of work on a presentation on Friday at SECON. It’s a rather helpless feeling to be not only without Internet, but without a laptop when it’s needed!

However, that served as a good reminder for me that God is good; he provides for all my needs. I found a computer repair guy that actually came by my condo and picked up the laptop, then dropped it back at the main office when he finished without charging me for his time. That was very gracious; he was able to determine that the root cause wasn’t as simply as a corrupted boot sector, but looked more like a hard drive controller failure.

Hmmm. That left me without a laptop! So, based on the very positive feedback from several students who owned netbooks, I decided to purchase one -- $300 from Wal-Mart. Wow. I’ve been very happy with it thus far; it enabled me to give my presentation (after my grad students sent me the necessary files), plus be productive here at SECON.

We drove back from the beach on Wednesday, then I headed out Thursday morning for SECON in Charlotte, NC. The drive went well, but was (of course) long. We arrived, checked in, picked up our registration materials, then had dinner. I was scheduled to give a presentation on microcontroller education the following day at 10:00 AM, but I hadn’t created more than two slides! So, I stayed up and did some work on the presentation, then worked on it the next morning. By God’s grace, it was in decent shape and the presentation went quite well. I got to meet several possible collaborators afterwards, then spoke with Microchip representatives. Both opportunities were very encouraging; again, praise God.

Back to blogging

2010-03-10T15:27:00.000-06:00

Sigh; I think I've let busyness overwhelm me lately, since I haven't taken any time to think or plan. Instead, I've mainly be doing. That's fun, but not a good long-term approach. So, in an effort to reorganize a bit:

Random links:

DARPA is setting up a big manipulation effort. I wonder if they're interested in tentacles?
There's a lot of robotics in mining these days: fleet dispatch systems, autonomous mining.
A good collection of Nitinol links and info.
An impressive animatronics video., showing how the mouse the cheese commercial below was animated. Some are very eerie.

My p14p project doesn't work, though I can't figure out why. Sigh. I am making good progress on implementing features, though.

Catching up

2010-02-23T10:23:00.000-06:00

Last week was spent getting a journal paper revision done by the deadline. The paper (which is double-spaced) is 57 pages. That was a lot of work; I'm guessing ~25 typeset pages, or 3 normal journal papers. I wish I could somehow get that much credit for finally publishing this one. The editor indicated that, pending revisions suggested by the reviewers, they will accept our paper. Praise the Lord.

Lessons learned:

When I'm busy, I should add a vacation message saying I'll only respond to urgent e-mails.
I discovered TexWorks, which is a great way to work on Latex documents.

Today's list:

Clean my office
Go through e-mail
Work on review paper copyright stuff
Withdraw my paper to Russia, since I'll be in Florida for the summer
Work on a revised interval analysis paper
Work on p14p. I have so many ideas; I just want to implement them!

Fun links

2010-02-12T12:04:00.003-06:00

My inbox is growing, so I need to spend time to day thinning it out. Ouch.

Luxury cars run on 20+ million lines of code. Wow.

A student built a neat hexapod. According to the story, parts came from Crust Crawler Robotics, though I can't find them on that web site. It's powered by an on-board Intel Atom packaged as the Fit-PC2. Very impressive! Here's the video:

It looks like some research groups are making progress on the nanocam featured in Alex's body book!

Here's another video showing applications of that idea. It's a year old, but still seems like a simulation.

My list:

Cal Dan Stutts
Create test 2 for Micro
Work on paper review
Work on review paper revision
Write recommendations
Make SECON hotel reservations

Weekly meeting agenda

2010-02-11T13:28:00.000-06:00

Weekly meeting:

Group lunch - Friday at 11:30?
Task list - review and update.
Review and update group policies - place dates for future sessions.
Neat movie found by Krishna
Research update

Dr. Jones

p14p - Progress; Doxygen support added.
Funding - Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program, Eglin AFB
Funding - Time to make a movie!
Funding - Looking into contacts for CUDA / ERDC work. Need to contact Dr. Ed Luke, who may have some expertise.
Research - Another journal paper accepted. Revisions due on the accepted review paper.

Today's list

2010-02-09T10:08:00.001-06:00

Looking around a bit more at the AVR community, it seems that WinAVR is the most common choice that many use to write C code for the AVR. However, there's not IDE; instead, it uses makefiles. Ouch. Not a good choice for teaching.

I recently did a voice-over for a simulation Buddy produced which shows the behavior of a fiddle string. I found this behavior complex and fascinating. Buddy's working on a version which will show the string in 3-D; below is a 2-D slice. Using Camtasia made is so easy to quickly record this.

I spend some time yesterday evening creating my new personal home page on the web, since my old home page is years out of date. It's fairly simple, but at least a start.

I felt like a kid in a candy store yesterday while order parts for the Summer Bridge program. I hadn't realized that Pololu (named after a valley in Hawaii) offered some many nice robotics parts. I'm also glad I could finally get the order placed; it took a while, but I think I found most of what I need.

Little did I know, but the first annual National Robotics Week will be held from April 10-18!

Today's plan:

I still need to update the Micro libs with the bug fix.
Spend a small amount of time on p14p. My plan is to put small but steady amounts of time in, since I can't afford to spend a lot of time on it.
E-mail as always. I'm mostly caught up, with just a few items to take care of.
Call Dan Stutts to finish our earlier conversation. Though not pressing; I can also do that on Wednesday.
Research -- I need to review a paper, revise two papers.
Funding. I really need to do this, but with other deadlines looming it's not looking like I'll make much progress. Perhaps I can put together one slide or make some other small quanta of progress.
Type in corrected Micro grades.
Clean up. My office is a dump. Update: better now.

Welcome

2010-02-08T20:43:00.000-06:00

Thank you for taking the time to look at my blog! Here's a brief introduction to who I am.

My research interests include robotics, real-time control-system implementation, rapid prototyping for real-time systems, and modeling and analysis of mechatronic systems; for more information, see my professional page. On a more personal note, my wife keeps all our family's photos on her blog. My profile gives a few more tidbits of information about me, while my old personal web page contains outdated information.

I'm a Christian and find I enjoy teaching both in the classroom and outside, primarily by leading a Sunday School class at Emmanuel Baptist Church. I serve as the faculty sponsor for Phase 2, a discipleship-focused ministry for college students.

Test time

2010-02-08T11:39:00.000-06:00

Today is a Micro test day. The list:

Order Summer Bridge parts!
Update the Micro libs with the bug fix
p14p work
Double-check SECON motor selection
Finish and print the Micro test
E-mail clean-up
Call Dan Stutts

Neat stuff: Nvidia keeps coming up with amazing applications for its cards: real-time physics (including cloth!) and real-time ray tracing. They also have a scene graph language that sounds interesting!

Organiziation

2010-02-04T09:45:00.002-06:00

The plan for today:

Check with Sol on the Micro parts order. Yesterday, I verified that the three power supplies he sent would work. This also means we can move to a cheaper power supply, I think.
Order parts for the Summer bridge robot. In particular, I'd really like a PIC24HJ128GP502 to play with.
p14p work - I figured out an important bug (building the same binary using two different versions of Python). Now, I can code on the PIC24 port and also work on Doxygen generation.
Recommendation letter for Brad -- need to do that today.
Weekly meeting for the robotics research group. I'd like to do a paper review, but don't have time for that today. The review is due the 22nd?, so I do need to get started.
Work on the review paper. It's due the 18th, so I need to jump on it.
Update the Micro libs, based on a bug report.

Weekly meeting:

Group lunch - Friday at 12:30?
Task list - review and update.
Review and update group policies - place dates for future sessions.
Neat movie found by Krishna
Research update

Dr. Jones

p14p - Progress; working on developing hardware interface libraries.
Funding - NASA pre-proposal rejected
Met with the Industrial Technology group on robotics collaborations.
Turned Buddy's amazing sim into a movie.

Update

2010-02-02T10:44:00.001-06:00

Last week disappeared, mainly in getting p14p up and running on the PIC. The code is now in reasonable shape; I'm doing some clean-up and documentation work before plunging into further development.

Interesting things: a HUD display on an iPhone to control a quad-rotor craft; this augmented reality idea is a great way to debug robots. I stumbled across a free book on robotics using Python running on a PC to control a robot. For embedded programming, Stack Overflow makes for interesting reading.

Things I'm working on:

My overflowing inbox, still containing a fair amount of mail to sort through and reply to.
I now have funding to build the Summer Bridge robot, so it's time to order parts!
The continuum review paper was accepted pending a few revisions, so I need to get started on those.
The limiting case paper is still languishing and needs attention. Sigh.
I need to write the Micro test!
Report lights to be replaced, arrange some tutoring, other misc stuff.
Write recommendations.

I'd like to also think about how to structure a Python-based PIC24 hardware library. Thoughts:

I'm not certain what the balance between writing in C and wrapping in Python vs. mainly writing in Python is.

One approach: define readBits and writeBits functions in C, then call that from Python for all hardware access. Pros: less wrapping. Cons: slower, might take too much RAM space.
Another approach: balance between Python and C, building Python classes on top of C functions. In essence, it's a rewrite of the existing PIC24 library plus lots of wrapping.
The other extreme: wrap the existing library in Python. That's a lot of wrap with little Python structure to help.

All the peripherals on all chip variants keep the same address in memory; duplicated peripherals have the same basic layout repeated at an offset. I'd like to take advantage of this by writing a function which can operate on any port instead of duplicating a function multiple times for each port.
Port configuration needs the most redesign, since it's implemented as hundreds of C functions and macros. Thoughts:

Create a digitalPins class. The constructor takes parameters of port, firstBit, numBits, isInput, isOpenDrain, isPullup and sets bits accordingly, issuing an error if the requested resources don't exist (on a nonexistant port or bit, a port with no pullup ability).

This requires writes to PCFG, ODBC, TRIS, CNxPUE. What't the best way to keep a table of PCFG, CNxPUE mappings?
Does it make sense to also provide a read back of these bits? I've never needed to do that in all my coding. In particular, reading back PCFG, CNxPUE bits through their mapping to port/pin combos would be complex. Probably not.
Should this function also make sure no peripheral output pin is mapped to the pin? That's definitely additional complexity. I'm not sure how much.

Override read and write: if the pins are all outputs, send writes to LAT, otherwise to PORT. Provide read access to PORT, LAT and write access to either PORT or LAT.

Question: should each read/write check to make sure the port is still correctly configured? That means reading back PCFG bits, which is painful. Probably not.

Weekly meeting agenda

2010-01-28T12:04:00.000-06:00

Today's plans (here's the last meeting agenda):

Task list - does everyone have access?
Review and update group policies.
Research update

Dr. Jones

Tutorial on the data transfer protocol.
Our group's videos are featured on the IEEE RAM YouTube channel. I've entered some photos in a contest for the front cover of the IEEE Robotics and Automation magazine.
Python now runs on the PIC24. Still work to do for the Summer Bridge program.
Prepare a quad chart, two slide summary, three slide summary of the group's research.
Continuum review paper accepted; need to review another paper.

Others

Python on a PIC

2010-01-28T11:50:00.000-06:00

After some long hours, I got Python compiled and working on a PIC24HJ64GP502. It barely fits, but it does all work! Things to do:

Clean up the make process. In particular, I'd like to be able to use make to build just the C code from the Python sources. I do have everything else building from both MPLAB and a Makefile (ugh).
SVN commit this to the project.
Write code to interface with the hardware. Idea: write a read/writeBit(s)/Word function, then use Python to build nice classes around all the peripherals. However, I'm not sure if there's enough RAM or if the Python will run too slowly to be practical.
Put together a nice GUI so I can edit code, save it in a file, or send it to the PIC\

Some notes: to run ipm, "/cygdrive/c/Python26/python ipm.py --serial=com14 --baud=57600".

Building a bridge

2010-01-21T15:04:00.002-06:00

I'm planning on helping with the MSU BCoE Summer Bridge program. I'm planning on a 10-day portion, having the students build a WareBot: a robot which follows line to deliver packages, avoiding obstacles along the way. There are two portions: the mechanical platform and the microcontroller. I'd like to develop a simple tracked mechanical platform to use DC motors, a servo and an IR distance sensor, and line sensors. I hope to have a student complete that for me this semester; the question of how difficult it is to build these remains. The microcontroller question is more complex. I could use a PIC24, but C programming for it would be painful. A second option is the BASIC Stamp; a third option would be some sort of Python-powered uC (perhaps an ARM).

Investigating the BASIC Stamp, I'd think that a BASIC Stamp II would be fine. It needs a serial connection to the PC at RS232 levels per the schematic (sigh), so just an FTDI cable doesn't work (here's an example of using an FTDI chip plus interfacing transistors). The USB Board of Education provides a nice setup, but the prototyping area is too small, plus it's somewhat expensive. I'd need to add an additional breadboard to this for the sensors/motors I've chosen. PBASIC is OK, but I'm not that excited about it. Their IDE is nice, and integrated with a bootloader, which is very good. However, it doesn't have any analog inputs, which is bad; an alternative is to use an RC delay to read an analog voltage.

The alternative would be Python running on a uC, supplemented by I/O libraries. That's a lot of work, especially if I'm not planning on using it elsewhere. However, it looks like I could buy one and follow the tutorial; the library looks reasonable. However, I don't fully understand how to send it code / bootload it. I've downloaded the code and now need to update my Cygwin install to build it. Looks like more work, but also looks promising...

Update: UNIX builds are always painful. PyChip built fine, after I found the docs/src/BuildSystem.txt to help me. I needed docutils to built the html files, which was easy to install after finding it. make check fails with a compiler error on ut_dict.c, which wasn't encouraging. Reading the docs/src/InteractivePython.txt, it seems like the interactive mode does what I'd hoped: transforms source code to bytecode, sends it to the target, then prints the results of executing that code on the target. Given that the PIC24HJ64GP502 has 6K of RAM (plus 2K of DMA space), perhaps I could run on it; docs/src/FrequentlyAskedQuestions.txt recommends 8K of RAM, with 4K as an absolute minimum. Of course, I'd then need to wrap many of the C functions in Python, which would be a pain.

Hardware update: PyChip has some support for the a very nice STM32 board which costs just $25! However, it uses an RS-232 connection, which is a pain. I'm not sure if the TX and RX pins are accessible at TTL levels.

Interesting articles

2010-01-21T10:14:00.001-06:00

Reading in the IEEE Spectrum, I ran across two interesting articles. First, an interesting perspective from a University of Alabama professor on the climate, contrasting strongly with claims that climate data is unquestionable. (Note that the second article gives a series of opinions from the pro-change perspective, rather than factual claims, though it sounds factual.) Second, an interesting article on the China's Great Firewall gives a graphics below of what's censored as the image below:

In addition, a friend of mine with MS pointed me to some very exciting news: narrowed veins (note the PDF is freely available) which do not carry enough blood away from the brain may be the root cause! There's a TV news story and web info on it as well.

Micro updates

2010-01-20T16:44:00.001-06:00

I spent some time today working on an updated slide for Micro based on what I taught; I think it does a better job of capturing the MOV instruction's abilities.

I've also been thinking about re-doing the course using video supplemented with in-class exercises. I feel like I know what I'd like to do in these videos and how to do so reasonably efficiently. Now, what should I cover in the classroom without overwhelming myself?

Based on today's lecture, I need to have two levels of exercises: simple problems which verify what was taught, versus more difficult problems that require a bit of reasoning. For example, I task students with swapping data between two registers or memory locations as in-class exercises. I was surprised at how many questions and how much confusion this could generate. For the video portion, I'd go with something simpler: what happens after a sequence of MOV instructions? For the in-class exercises, I can ask them to perform a task (swapping) using these instructions.

The second in-class question is how to use in-class quizzes or something like that to reinforce the lecture. My guess is that I'd start with exercises, develop a good set of them, then move up to creating quizzes after the exercises are done.

Now on to my annual review, which I've been avoiding all day...

Tutorial created

2010-01-19T16:14:00.000-06:00

Pondering a bit more on better ways to teach, I think my last few problems are resolved. In particular, my plan is to create a short (~7 minute) lesson which ends with an example, then an exercise based on that example. The exercises can and should be PC-based, such as writing and simulating some assembly code. I'm planning on recording in Camtasia from PowerPoint slides, supplemented by bringing in demos on MPLab, Quartus, etc. and showing data sheet, web sites, etc.

As a first pass of doing this, I've created a dataXfer tutorial video and accompanying docs. It took longer than I'd planned and I see several things to improve on in the future. However, I think the idea is sound and fairly do-able.

PC tools:

ZoomIt is a nice way to draw things while recording a video.
The latest version of Doxygen (1.6.2) doesn't work with my #ifndefs. After much playing, downgrading to 1.6.1 solved the problem. It now includes a nice search feature build into the docs!

But these things have eaten so much of my day and there's lots I haven't done yet...

Improving micro

2010-01-17T15:36:00.001-06:00

Three of my group's videos are now featured on the IEEE RAM YouTube channel. That's marketing progress! I tried uploading the 2007 SECON video on Friday, so I can replace the audio with something legal. The upload failed, however, so I'll try again Tuesday.

One my my Micro students sings in a barbershop quarter. How neat! Here's the podcast:

Note: this slick player came from here.

One thing I've been thinking about is how to improve Micro. One suggestion by Mark Taylor involves placing all the lecture content in videos which students watch, then using class time to build problem solving skills. I like the idea, but there are several problems I need to work through to get there. My thoughts:

I typically include a lot of group work / discussion as I give the lecture. This gives me a chance to correct wrong impressions, etc. How can I incorporate this into a video lecture?

Just giving the correct answer after an exercise encourages not doing the problems: I know that I'd just watch the thing rather than work the exercises.
Not giving the correct answer might leave students confused when I tried to build on that concept later in the lecture.

How do I make the lecture interesting? I know that I'd be bored by lecturing to my PC for an hour.

Throw in video clips of me? If so, when and why?
Break the lecture up into 10 minute pieces, ending with an exercise due in class?
Throw in some background music? See it more like a radio program?
Perhaps use screencast advantages: show MPLAB doing something, pull up and highlight data sheets, refer to book pages.

Techincally, what's the best way to do this?

The simplest approach, probably a good place to start, is to narrate my PowerPoint slides.
It would be nice to splice in a screencast, etc. Perhaps make that a movie then embed in PowerPoint?
Adding some video (here's a motherboard, etc.) would definitely add some interest.
However, editing this might become a lot more painful.
I'd no longer have a simple set of slides to distribute, but a whole production. I'm not sure whether book adopters would like the multi-media version or not.

Tommy pointed out that this would be a great tool for a week when I was gone: record my lectures!
In the end, I'd like to just try it: record one lecture and see how it goes.

Meetings and e-mail

2010-01-14T11:59:00.007-06:00

Bob passed on a neat quiz on embedded C. Wow -- I only got a 70%. Good stuff! The only annoyance is the registration requirement.

I've spent most of my morning working through e-mail, scheduling meetings, etc. It's amazing how just e-mail backs up.

Today is our research group meeting. Topics:

Introductions - Justin and Jae-Pyung are new.
Videos - from Ankit and a paper to review.
Machining help - the Industrial Technology group is will to make things for us.
Research update - everyone talks about what they're doing and any recent progress

Me - My focus is marketing, followed by the paper with Durga.

Ankit's movie
Summer bridge / Micro demoBot / Intro to Robotics base - with Cory
The SECON movies are now on my YouTube channel.
Three of our group's videos will be featured on the IEEE RAM YouTube channel.
Prepare a quad chart, two slide summary, three slide summary of the group's research.
Brainstorm on a good image / movie to showcase our group.
Web site updates and improvements.

Buddy - dynamics works!

Procedures

Review group policies. New: responsible conduct of research requirement to receive NSF funding.
YouTube videos and audio tracks - from what I can tell, our videos don't constitute fair use. We need to use only free music. Sources:

http://freesologuitar.com/, -- checked; this is truly FREE.
YouTube's AudioSwap -- but they reserve the right to put in ads.
Google for "free legal mp3" gives http://www.bestmp3links.com/ (unchecked), http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/08/31/35-places-to-download-free-legal-mp3s-music/ (unchecked), and more.
http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_audio (unchecked)
NOT FREE: http://freeplaymusic.com/ prohibits free usage for Internet videos (see item h on their terms of use), charging $100 per song!

Marketing, maybe?

2010-01-12T15:20:00.003-06:00

Tuesdays and Thursdays are my marketing (and research) days. However, there's always the odd task or two that still needs doing before I get to that. Today's surprise: converting the bootloader to 2005 forced me to fix some whar_t to char conversions I'd ignored earlier. That turned into a project, but is done now.

While I still have the trial version, I'm now working on converting the full SECON movie to YouTube.

Sounds like military robotics is hot!

For marketing, things I can think of:

Publicity

Submit my robotics movies to the IEEE RAM YouTube channel by e-mail to Johnanthan Roberts (videos at ram dot ieee-ras dot org).
Send my robotics photos to srikanth dot saripalli at asu dot edu for use in a Robotics and Automation Magazine cover.
Publish something in the department newsletter

Marketing

Post Ankit's video when it's ready
Improve our group's web site
Come up with an idea for an amazing image or movie to showcase our group.
Create a quad chart to summarize research group thrusts.
Put together a one-slide, two-slide, and three-slide research group summaries then meet with Lori, Gary to get their feedback and ask them to shop these ideas for me.
Work with Jean, Mike to publicize and recruit.

Funding

Look for and apply for funding of any sort I can think of.
Continue writing and revising my CAREER proposal.
Schedule an Eglin visit.

I figured out how to embed a playlist without creating a custom player: it's hidden in the "Edit playlist info" dropdown. Here's the SECON 2008 full version:

Family favorites

2010-01-12T12:06:00.003-06:00

It's always interesting to see what Alex and Daniel like. Some of their favorites, found during the snow and cold weather recently:

Why it's important to drive carefully on ice.
What cold animals do in a Florida zoo.
A water balloon to the face.

Administrivia

2010-01-11T16:46:00.001-06:00

It seems like I'm just tying up lots of loose ends today. That's not much fun, but certainly is necessary.

Micro:

Attendance sheet
Prereq checks
File folder labeling and clean-up
Lab writeup editing
Create a ZIP with the latest library
E-mail Tommy re: Summer bridge purchasing

Yearly review writing
Record laser cut tutorial again
Return a call

In working on some YouTube videos, I'm now trying to only use free audio tracks. Though it's still confusing how all this works (when does this constitute fair use), using only free music is best. Which leads to the question: what are good free music sources, not contaminated by commercial songs from a website which claims only free content? Perhaps YouTube's AudioSwap is easiest, and should be 100% legal. But it seems like I can't mix in more than one song and ads may still be displayed.

SECON movie uploaded

2010-01-11T13:55:00.005-06:00

I spent time with the DivX Author trial and split the shorter version of SECON video Graham created into YouTube-sized pieces then uploaded them. Here they are (as a playlist -- watch them in series). The first video is the teaser Graham produced.

To embed this playlist, I used a custom player (YouTube | My account | Custom video players). Then, I had to play around with the size to get the aspect ratio correct. I wonder if there's an easier way to do this?

Atmel

2010-01-11T13:18:00.002-06:00

A student in Micro asked me if I'd considered Atmel's AVR when choosing a microprocessor for the book. I knew they didn't offer a C compiler and were limited to 8 bits, but little else. I did a bit of research and was impresssed:

There's one AVR core; the various families (tinyAVR, megaAVR, etc.) add features but share the same core. See the diagram to the right. Nice!
The AVR instruction set contains two 16-bit pointer registers for indirect addressing, compares and signed/unsigned branches, 16-bit addressing for data, a multiplier, and a stack. It's nice.
As shown in the overview, there are lots of DIP packages, great for breadboarding.
There are third-party C compilers, but no well-supported free ones. That's a big minus.

I realized that I need to use tags (i.e. labels to Blogger) to keep track of my posts, so I've started using them.

Dropbox

2010-01-08T16:38:00.003-06:00

I'm using Dropbox to share a video editing task with a student. What a convenient thing -- it's so much easier to use than SVN.

Today's list:

Micro:

Work on a Micro exam 1
Look through and edit lab files
Fix homework #1
Prereq checks
Create attendance sheet

Work on my annual review
A bit more e-mail
Re-record bitmap to laser cut video

But instead of doing this, I went to an excellent lecture on Gen NeXt by Mark Taylor. He had some neat ideas: moving lectures onto video and using class for problem solving. I'd love to do that, but it's a lot of work. Getting some in-class demos working this semester will be a good step in that direction, however. I also still want to re-record my tutorial on laser cut conversions.

Alex is tired of doing his weekly reports. Maybe I should stop requiring these for him.

Neat products alert

2010-01-07T16:18:00.003-06:00

Ryan, one of my Micro students, pointed out a neat product from Sparkfun, their LCD display. It's $35 and has an easy-to-use interface (serial commands to an attached ATMega), which is great.

Reading the latest IEEE Spectrum, here's a Roomba competitor which uses a laser rangefinder to SLAM the room it's in. Wow! I'd certainly love to play with one of those...

Camstudio bring-up

2010-01-07T15:56:00.004-06:00

From what I can tell, development on Camstudio has died. I'd prefer to use Camtasia Studio, but don't have the money to purchase it (sigh). However, it does work. Here are my setup notes:

I prefer the Beta version, which shows corners around the area you record. Download it from the Camstudio blog.
Fix the audio settings, which don't work on Vista: per this video, from the Recorder choose Options, Audio Options, Audio Options for Microphone, then use PCM, 22050 Hz, 16 bit, Stereo, 88200 Bytes/sec.
I prefer something other than the default Microsoft Video 1 video codec, which does a poor job. The DivX codec I have is compatible with YouTube. The CamStudio lossless codec also works with YouTube.
Be careful -- don't record movies longer than 10 minutes, or YouTube won't take them.

Using that, here's a tutorial on how to convert a bitmap to a laser-cuttable vector image. I chose an octopus from the web; below are the before and after images.

I made a video tutorial of the steps. Then I discovered the my microphone died right before I recorded this. Aargh. I'll re-do it when I'm back in operation...update: it's finally done.

Today's PC task: convert movies on a DVD to YouTube. While Google shows lots of commerical apps, I'd like something both trustworthy and free. So, I downloaded the DivX Author program, which allows me a 30-day trial, and I'm converting. So far, so good. Though somewhat tedious, since I need to break the videos up into 10 minute chunks.

Snow day

2010-01-07T13:28:00.002-06:00

Amazing -- today is a snow day. I'm working from home, which is nice. As always, a big goal is sorting through my e-mail inbox, which still needs some work.

Random PC stuff: I'm trying to figure out how Google docs folder permissions interact with per-file permissions. I'd like to handle all sharing of the Micro labs using a folder, instead of changing the permission for each file. It seems like the permissions last edited take priority -- that folder permissions simply modify each file's permission. This would make sense in the case that a file can live in multiple folders. As long as I can get all the permissions looking the right way, I'll be happy for now. Part of the confusion is a lag: it seems to take a couple of minutes before the revised permissions take effect, which makes it harder to determine.

An amazing video Ricky found:

Today's goal is marketing: I'd like to look for proposal possibilities, develop PowerPoint slides to market our research, etc. More soon.

Classes have started

2010-01-07T09:26:00.002-06:00

Classes started today; I've finished my lecture. Although enrollment for the last two spring semesters exceeded 60 students, we're at 50 this semester, so I've started the process of canceling a lab section. I also spent some time updating my syllabus with reading assignments. I'm thinking of trying some selective release features on myCourses to remind students to read; we'll see.

One big problem right now: I can't log in to the Wiki in order to edit it!

The list for today:

Micro:

Read through Micro papers
Updated permissions for Google docs access
Get Micro e-mail lists organized
Work on a Micro exam 1
Schedule room for Micro exams
Send lab files to Steve
E-mail Justin re: time change
E-mail TAs re: meeting and plans

Reply to Ian's e-mail re: trunk kinematics
More e-mail work and cleanup
Schedule a review with Nick
Work on my annual review
Schedule lunch
Schedule a research group meeting

Whenisgood makes scheduling a meeting soooo easy. I've got two pending.

Shape sensing

2010-01-05T17:04:00.002-06:00

Krishna found a neat shape sensor that might work for a continuum robot; it looks similar to ShapeTape. Some videos (here, here) nicely illustrate its capabilities.

More random PC fixes:

Annoying MS security: viewing a downloaded .chm file doesn't work until you unblock it. Here's another method.

I'm mostly ready for classes with an updated schedule for Micro. I think I'll try some conditional release use this semester to assign homework, etc. Or perhaps I'll stick with e-mail, since that seems to work.

Getting organized for the new year

2010-01-04T17:10:00.002-06:00

I'm back at work -- it's been two weeks. Wow.

Some random thoughts and links I haven't had time to really categorize yet: the MSU budget (where is research spending shown?). The ARM Cortex-M3 Technical Reference Manual gives general ARM info, but lacks and instruction set encoding. That's in the ARMv7-M Architecture Reference Manual, which ARM doesn't publicly post (annoying). Of course, it's findable via Google. I wonder if there's a good textbook for the ARM Cortex? I haven't found one yet.

PC fixes:

Windows Defender kept complaining and couldn't auto-update. The manual install method worked fine (follow the link from here).
To define a custom paper size in Windows, use File | Server properties from the Windows Explorer when viewing Printers in the Control Panel (I'd never seen that one before!). However, the laser printer seems stuck on a max page size of 11x11 in. Grrr.
After playing with it, I've decided that Photoshop Elements is a disappointment. I keep wanting to use tools from the full version, which I have on the laptop. Sigh.
Perhaps this is why the laptop takes forever to resume after sleeping. We'll see.

To do:

A class schedule for Micro. I need to replace section numbers with page numbers for the reading assignments.
Better plans for what I'd like to accomplish this semester.

Painting in the new year

2010-01-03T22:49:00.004-06:00

Vika and I decided to repaint our kitchen. The old paint demonstrated several big problems. First, because it was a flat sheen, it both showed food stains, hand prints, etc. Second, washing it (even with a damp rag) discolored the wall, meaning any stain was for all purposes permanent. Third, it flaked off easily, so that any semi-vigorous rubbing would actually remove the paint from the wall! The color (an earthy tan) was nice, but definitely not kid-friendly.

So, we began by asking friends, reading a book, borrowing some tools, then making many trips to Lowe's for supplies and more supplies. Neither Vika nor I have any painting experience, so we began without a clear picture of how to do this! It made for an adventure, a learning experience, and a fun time. To work around our kids' schedule, we painted in afternoons when they took a nap, then again in the evenings after they were in bed. We ended up painting until midnight or so for two nights, including new year's. There's nothing like doing something to really learn it. Lessons learned:

The AccuBrush (on the left), which I received as a Christmas present, works wonderfully. It takes a bit of time to learn and can't paint all the way into a corner, but it's very fast. The thing that took me time to realize was that the brush needs to paint in one direction: backwards when doing a long section of wall to avoid marks from the wheel, brush, etc.
A corner brush (on the right) was fairly useless. It doesn't paint the seam when the two corners meet. I found using a standard paint brush easier.
The paint stirrer was fairly useless. It works, but leaves a lot of paint on the stirrer afterwards. A free paint paddle would have worked better. Live and learn...
A trim edger is very, very helpful. However, be sure not to paint against one side, then place that painted side against something you don't wait painted. Oops.
Painter's tape it good, but not a cure-all. Some paint actually seeped under it. In other places, pulling the tape off de-laminated the paint, since the paint formed a continuous sheet from wall to tape. So, it helps but don't rely on it too heavily.
A paint stirrer isn't that helpful -- a lot of paint sticks to it. A free paint paddle would have worked fine.
Rollers are wonderful. Brushes are much slower and harder to use.
It's really fun to see the results after you're done! Not perfect, but much, much better than it was...

Here's the final result. If only I could paint that fast in real life...

Christmas news

2009-12-25T00:14:00.002-06:00

I've been away from the blog for several days and I miss it! So, here's my catch-up edition. First, the sad news: our faithful Canon Digital Rebel XT died last night. An error 99 led me to a nice site with debug info (see update #2). After a bit of debug (shooting with no CF card, no lens, and a recharged battery) still showed the error, I noticed that the sensor cleaning mode didn't open the shutter. Oops -- almost certainly, the shutter is dead. We've used it for 4 1/2 years and close to 100,000 photos, so we've definitely gotten our money's worth out of it! It's now a toy for Alex and Daniel, so they're having a great time with it.

I've been doing some fun reading. It sounds like Boeing is finally ready with their latest plane, a small, economic airliner. It's a stark contrast to the gigantic Airbus A380, a concept I never liked. I've always preferred smaller airports to giant hubs and hope that Boeing wins out with a regional jet instead of a hub-to-hub behemoth from Airbus.

Another fun thing I ran across: nuclear reactor drawings (here are hi-res versions).

I finally had time to play with Skype and the Logitech Quickcam E3500 we bought several months ago. The two didn't work together and, reading on Google, I saw lots of complaints that the two companies blame each other for the problems. In particular, the webcam microphone wouldn't work, or sometimes worked inconsistently. I installed the latest drivers and software on the laptop and desktop to try again. The laptop worked fine; the desktop didn't. More Googling finally yielded the answer: if the mic volume is too high (>90% or so), then the webcam mic doesn't output anything. Unchecking the "Automatically adjust microphone settings" checkbox then manually bring the volume down fixed it. Amazing. Vika had a nice conversation with her family. There's lots of snow on the ground in Almaty -- they showed us a webcam shot of it!

I made some exciting progress on the professional fronts: I finally figured out how to deal with a troublesome term in the limiting-case analysis I'm doing with Durga. I'd thought about looking at a Taylor expansions, but didn't see any nice simplifications from that. However, playing with Maple, expanding just the first three terms produces a very small error. Wow -- I'd been puzzled by that for a long time!

I'm still excited about ARM stuff; I think I'll probably buy the proto board and see if I can find time to play with it during the semester. Speaking of the semester, some thoughts and plans:

For Micro, I hope to improve the course in three areas:

Make tests before I begin covering the material. That's just planning, preparation, and discipline.
Revise the labs and homework to require students in later labs to get an I2C, SPI, and A/D peripheral up and running. My plan is to develop that in the Spring then implement it in the Fall.
Create an in-class demo robot / revised Intro to Robotics robot / recruiting platform / summer camp robot. I think the same robot can serve all these goals, or at least the same basic robot with various minor modifications. Again, I'm planning on developing this in the Spring.

We'll see what I actually get done. That's quite a bit of work! I'll definitely be asking for some help with all this.

ARMed

2009-12-18T11:04:00.003-06:00

I'm at home this morning. I tried using xUnit on my PC here and also ran into problems; it looks like xUnit is generating an "unable to load assembly" error. Sigh. I'll have to track that down. It might be easier just to create a console app and run that instead, though. I really miss not having a working test framework.

I did lots of clean-up yesterday, going through almost all the unread items in my inbox. Wow. That was really nice. I reviewed several SECON papers and was disappointed by the low quality.

Before I wrote Microcontrollers: From Assembly Language to C Using the PIC24 Family, I considered adopting an ARM instead of the PIC24. The main problem was the lack of prototype-friendly packing (all the parts were surface mount), but otherwise I really liked the parts. I ran across a nice ARM part again that I'm excited about, a family from ST, the STM32F series:

It's based on an ARM Cortex-M3. I'd prefer an ARM Cortex-R4, since that has an optional FPU. While some companies have licensed it, I can't find any products from them yet.
They have a small package (36 pins, QFN, 6mm x 6mm = 236 mils x 236 mils). Note that a standard DIP is 300 mils wide.
Their best part in that package, the STM32F103T8, features a 72 MHz clock, 20 KB RAM, 64 KB flash, 2 UARTs, 4 timers, 10 channels sampled by two 12-bit 1 MSPS ADCs, 26 GPIOs, and one each of SPI, I2C, USB, CAN, PWM timer. The datasheet gives part-specific features, while the reference manual gives info common to all the STM32 parts. The programming manual discusses the core and its instruction set.
They have what looks like an excellent standard peripheral library, which looks equivalent to the library I co-wrote for the PIC. It's well-documented and looks fairly useful. It comes with example code for every peripheral and seems to include clock config and everything!
Their programmer/debugger, the ST-LINK, is $24. Wow. I like that. The user manual gives more details.
They have a bootloader with dlls to link to plus a GUI; I haven't tried it, though.
The errata list looks reasonable, a contrast to PIC24 errata.

The biggest cons:

No DIP package. Doing a quick search, there's an adapter board out there, thought it's fatter than I'd like (600 mils). Here's another option. It would mean having someone build these boards; I bet SparkFun would do it for us.
It's soooo painful to get another micro up and running. It's even more painful to turn this into a class. Writing another book adds another level of pain.
There's no reason to do this. The PIC24 is fine for what I'm doing, even in the foreseeable future. I don't see any new things an ARM would enable me to do in terms of research.

Some getting started notes:

Bootloading:

To enter the system bootloader, set BOOT[1:0] = 01. However, the STM32F103T8 has only a BOOT0 pin in the 48 and 36 pins packages. It looks like BOOT1 is shared with PB2 per the pinout in the datasheet (page 27). I could do this via the FTDI cable with a weak pull-up on PB2 and RTS connected to BOOT0 (see e.g. page 14 of AN2586).
Per AN2606 page 6, the built-in bootloader runs off the internal oscillator at 24 MHz. It uses PA10 and RX and PA9 as TX and operates at 8 data bits, even parity, 1 stop bit. Per page 8, it uses autobaud and works from 1200 to 115200 baud. It's possible that higher rates would work, though.

AN2586 is a hardware getting started guide.

The NRST (low-true reset) has a built-in pullup, per page 10; all that's needed is a pushbutton!
Per page 52 of the datasheet, the internal clock is accurate to +/-2% at 0-70 degrees C.
There are 5 pins for program/debug; however, user software can take control of them as code executes, disabling debug abilities. However, the standard connector is a 20-pin beast, only 5 pins of which must be used. There's a 2-pin mode, which would be nice. I'm still not sure how these work.
From the clock tree (page 78 of the reference manual), it looks like picking the internal 8 MHz source / 2, then using an x18 on the PLL gives 72 MHz for full-speed operation.
An odd thing: since the bootloader is permanently burned in the part, I don't need a programmer; I'd only want that for debugging support. That's nice.

I found a neat trick: to create outlines of text for laser cutting, Word plus Visio works: create WordArt in Word (Insert tab, click WordArt). After creating it, click on the shape, select the WordArt tab, then choose Shape Outline, Width, Weight of 0, color red, no fill. I can't figure out how to set the proportions correctly, though.

Now back to work. Forms to fill, e-mail to answer...

Testing code

2009-12-17T11:32:00.000-06:00

The more I use it, the more I like it:

All code should be tested, if at all possible, using unit or functional tests.
All builds should be automated, particularly for complex builds.

The interval analysis paper I'm working on has benefited from these two: I've started a simple functional-test framework which has found several bugs. Work on an auto-build also makes life much simpler.

xUnit / TestDriven.net stopped working mysteriously and I can't get them going, in spite of updating to the latest version of both! Ouch.

The weeks is vanishing

2009-12-17T10:13:00.004-06:00

I'm shocked and amazed -- the week is vanishing. Wow. Today and tomorrow, then I'm done for the year!

Some fun reading: from the IEEE, automated to death (including a truly scary video simulation of a 777's autopilot going crazy).

I found another possibility for a demo robot chassis: a simple tracked robot. I'd like to use one robot for both Intro to Robotics, a summer camp, and a Micro demo robot. The one thing I'd like is encoders; the other question is power -- can this robot carry an arm? Update: here's a better link, including a video, plus a post on hacking in encoders.

I merged the data transfer code in to the main ECE3724 development line. That was more painful than I'd expected, but I think it all works now. I need to document what I've done, so others can use it.

The end is near

2009-12-16T10:21:00.002-06:00

I've decided to work the rest of this week, then spend the rest of the year at home with my family. That's not much time to wrap everything up! As always, I need to select the most important things and work on them.

I spend half of yesterday in a meeting on ABET data collection. Our next program review comes in Fall 2011, which means I'll need to start copying three papers each of good, average, and poor students for EVERY assignment I give in every class I teach. Fun. Time to kill some trees. I'm still finishing up this semester's data collection task to enter my ABET data for Micro. Fortunately, I developed a spreadsheet that makes this much easier.

I came to the meeting at 8:00, but it really started at 8:30. Sigh -- while our department uses Zimbra, I certainly don't. I tried it which just released and found it buggy, under featured, and slow. Perhaps one day we can move to Google (Calendar/GMail/Sites/Docs/etc.). There was an update on the time, but I somehow missed it.

On Monday, I submitted the Jacobian paper a day early. I'm glad I did, because MSU's internet went down yesterday afternoon, which would have made it hard to submit the paper.

I finished up the data transfer program, getting the GUI fully working. It took forever for me to figure out that I needed to specify an Windows-1252 encoding to get binary data passed through correctly. I'd like to post a few docs and demos when I have time. It's a nice interface, though some improvements still need to be made. The next big coding project will be adapting this for use with MATLAB by adding a C-callable backend for the GUI. I'd found earlier just the right class to help, but now I don't remember. InvokeAction? InvokableAction? Perhaps using a Control.Invoke (here's a tutorial) will work to make thread synchronization easier.

Today is mainly a catch-up day: go through e-mail, etc. I hope to at least look at Durga's paper, though.

Busy as always

2009-12-14T10:55:00.001-06:00

Somehow, I tend to think that during the holidays I can finish everything, do a few fun things, etc. Sigh; that doesn't seem to be the case. I think the list is growing, rather than shrinking! The updated list:

Move ahead on Durga's paper. It's due tomorrow. The text is in fairly good shape, but the plots all need to be re-created from code yet to be debugged.
Marketing! Come up with slides, videos, etc. to communicate our funding ideas. Meet with Lori, Gary, etc. to ask for their help.
Work on my data transfer code. Just a bit of GUI tweaking and it's ready for release! It (basically) works!
Learn more about continuum mechanics:

Read through the nice thesis Krishna found, read the book Buddy found to better understand continuum mechanics.
Read up on and post ideas on using MATLAB's boundary-value solver.
Read up on Buddy's progress through Antman's chapter on numerical solutions to continuum dynamics.

Review SECON papers.
Improve the SECON spreadsheet to add in the motor calculations. I found a silly mistake in my write-up, I'm thankful I saw it.

I spent some time with Inventor Professional on Friday trying to clean up mechanicals for the Intro to Robotics laser cut, which has two servos mounted in it. Inventor is such a terrible tool. Trying to export it to anything useful completely failed; only AutoCAD can ready the dwg/dxf Inventor produces; Illustration can open a PDF, but that file doesn't quick scale right when pasted to Visio. Grrr. There's some mechanical info from Servo City, but I'm guessing the controlling dimension really should be mm instead of inches. I say this because Hitec gives servo dimensions mm; both Hitec (Korean) and Futaba (Japanese) are not US companies. However, being off by a few mils probably won't matter.

Video and grading

2009-12-10T09:40:00.000-06:00

I ran across a fun video reading IEEE Spectrum. It's amazing what fun and creative things are out there!

Today is a grading day; I'll be going through the Advanced Robotics stuff. I'm also now trying to get Durga's paper ready to submit by Monday (yikes!).

I worked a lot on the data transfer code and got a preliminary version up and running. It works! I'm very excited. Now I'm puzzling about how to nicely format and print data: if I have the data as an array of bytes, how can I easily format it using printf format specifiers, etc.? To do so, I'd need to cast the data to the correct type, which involves parsing the format spec, which isn't fun. In contrast, scanf will read data from a format specifier into any pointer, which is exactly what I want done on the write side; I'm just missing the read side.

Mobile computing

2009-12-09T09:15:00.000-06:00

I'm waiting in the health center for lab work for my annual check-up. I'm soooo thankful to have a laptop, where I can get a bit of work done.

Alex and I hung lots of Christmas lights on our house this morning. That was fun! He handed me clips while I hung lights. He got tired after a while, so I finished the last string by myself. I was surprised -- his help really made the job easier!

Something neat: I found a conference in Novosibirsk; I've e-mailed the organizers to see if the Jacobian paper might work. I'd enjoy getting to go there, if that's possible. If it is, I'll really need to jump on the paper to get it in conference form.

I'm done with Micro grading; now, on to Advanced Robotics as papers come in.

Tommy pointed out an MSU robotics team from Industrial Technology; I need to meet with the group to see what they're doing!

Embedded Python

2009-12-08T14:02:00.000-06:00

I heard that a company (Synapse Wireless) can run a Python subset on an 8-bit micro with 40K of program space left over! Amazing. Searching the web, I found the Python-on-a-chip project, which looks quite interesting. An associated discussion group has a nice list of embedded Python projects and their status. Very interesting. I wonder if they have a PIC port.

Finals are done, I'm grading now...

Final final

2009-12-08T09:09:00.002-06:00

I'm current giving my final final. The semester is almost over! It's time to get organized by planning what I can do now, between semesters, while it's still quiet.

Grading - of Micro and of Advanced Robotics. I'll start Micro this afternoon, after my students have finished taking it.
Setup and software install -- I need Visio on my laptop. I've already install Dropbox, Chrome, Testdriven.net, xUnit.net, and got MSVC++ configured.
Develop Micro - I'd like to create an in-class demo robot plus use that for a minority-focused summer school. I'd like to have a preliminary budget by this afternoon for my 3:30 meeting with Tommy.
Marketing! Come up with slides, videos, etc. to communicate our funding ideas. Meet with Lori, Gary, etc. to ask for their help.
Work on my data transfer code. It's almost done...just added another unit test...
Move ahead on Durga's paper. Still a fair amount to do there.
Learn more about continuum mechanics:

Read through the nice thesis Krishna found, read the book Buddy found to better understand continuum mechanics.
Read up on and post ideas on using MATLAB's boundary-value solver.
Read up on Buddy's progress through Antman's chapter on numerical solutions to continuum dynamics.

Review SECON papers.
Improve the SECON spreadsheet to add in the motor calculations.

One thing I learned: have a final draft of papers due earlier and carefully edit those. I'm reading the final versions of these papers, but my comments don't help my students by leading to corrections and improvements, since I'm reading their final paper, not a draft.

I just switched to Google Chrome instead of IE, so I can read my e-mail there while Vika works in Firefox. So far, I like it!

Inbox fun

2009-12-07T10:15:00.001-06:00

Krishna found some interesting links to various snake-like robots that I'm working through this morning.

The NASA space SnakeBot looks interesting, but the creator of the bot seems more focused on reconfigurable robots. His most recent paper (a review) reference work from 2002, suggesting it's not a current topic.
The Cornell SnakeArm team: I'm not sure if this is an undergrad or a graduate effort. The professor (Francis Moon) listed on their page doesn't seem to specialize in snake robots. Their video (see below) sugests they have a great mechanical design, but no kinematics. It's probably worth contacting them!

Other than that, I'm just working through my inbox, preparing a final, etc. As Krishna says, we really need a good video of our robot to show the world!

Also from Krishna in my inbox, a nice thesis provides a good background an introduction to Cosserat rods, plus good diagrams that explain shear and bending strains.

Still sweeping

2009-12-03T10:04:00.000-06:00

I'm still sweeping away, getting lots of random things done. Praise the Lord for time to do this! I even had a chance to work on the PIC/PC data transfer code, which I enjoy.

I saw some solar cells from Edmund Scientific that output 8.5 V at 250 mA. That sounds fairly attractive, since it should avoid most of the boost/charge pump frustrations for the team.

I got an e-mail from a faculty member adopting the book I co-authored. That's very encouraging!

Sweeping

2009-12-01T09:42:00.000-06:00

I realized yesterday that I'm sweeping. After building something in a workshop, the final step requires putting away tools and sweeping up wood chips. Likewise, the end of a semester is an end of project time, so I'm filing, cleaning, reporting, updating, and so on. It's good to understand the time I'm in, since I'm making little research progress. However, this time of preparation will enable me to begin the next semester well, when I start another project.

To be swept:

Update the research group home page with recent pubs
Finish grading advanced robotics
Finish and submit the SECON paper
Submit the ONR application
Work on the Air Force application
Prepare a Micro final
Clean my desk
Go through e-mail
Attend the SECON presentation

I'm working with latex again. Ugh. I still prefer Word's quirkiness with figure placement and creation over Latex's cryptic commands and the edit/compile/verify cycle.

Back to work

2009-11-30T10:06:00.000-06:00

Vika answered some blog questions for me. To include a subscribe link: it's included automatically, but not after every post, only at the end of the entire page.

Today is the last day of classes. The to-do list:

Write a paper for SECON, due tomorrow
Submit recommendations (tweak and PDF them)
Grade, finish up advanced robotics
Revise the Micro final
Enter absences for Micro
Submit ONR application
Write AF proposal and recommendation letters

...plus the bigger-picture items from earlier. A fair number of these should go quickly, though.

Recommendation done

2009-11-24T17:05:00.002-06:00

The recomendation I needed to write is now done. I'll PDF and post it next week when I return to work. Now, time for some Thanksgiving fun!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

ONR done

2009-11-24T16:05:00.000-06:00

It turns out that the ONR program is fairly easy to apply for, while the Air Force program requires a lot of writing. So, I've essentially finished the ONR application while there's still lots to do on the other. Sigh. Now, time to write some reference letters.

I know someone who has a nice "Subscribe to post via atom" link on their blog. I don't see an easy setting and found a way involving template modification using Google. What am I missing?

Laser cutter

2009-11-24T11:39:00.002-06:00

The laser cutter worked like a charm cutting some Plexiglas. Lexan doesn't dirty the lens, but it's not consistently cutting. We're making progress...

New editor

2009-11-24T10:31:00.001-06:00

I just enabled the new Blogger editor. Wow. It's nicer. The main improvement for me is a larger (resizeable) edit window. Hopefully, this will make posting a bit simpler. For the full solution, Windows Live Writer is even better; you edit on your PC, then upload the results.

Back to blogging

2009-11-24T10:13:00.002-06:00

I've decided to try doing a bit of blogging, to better communicate what I'm working on right now.

Today, I'm trying to make progress on applying for the Air Force Summer Faculty Fellowship Program, which is due Dec. 7th. I need to write a two-page statement, gather references, etc. for this. Next up is the ONR Summer Faculty Fellowship Research program, due on Dec. 4th. I'm also working on writing a recommendation, plus various administrative things (i.e. entering publications into the BCoE database).

I'm out all afternoon watching the boys while Vika goes to a check-up. Then, I'm out Wednesday to Friday enjoying Thanksgiving!

The semester's gone by so quickly. It's amazing.

Still to do: Durga's paper; search for more funding; improve our group's home page; work on planning a workshop and building collaborations for Cosserat rod robotics (I call this Cosserbotics); plan for an in-class demo robot for Micro; and so on.

Misc thoughts

2009-05-08T14:03:00.002-05:00

I've decided to move my e-mail to gmail. Observations:

The use of labels vs. folders seems nice, but I miss the hierarchical nature of folders which I can't seem to obviously replicate in labels. In addition, if I create many labels, I don't see any way of putting more important labels higher up, making them easier to find.
Moving my old mail over is painful; the only way I know of is to dump mail from a folder to my inbox, then label it after gmail slooowly sucks it in.

I'm mostly working from home. Hopefully, the use of svn, gmail, google sites and docs, and the Windows remote desktop + openVPN will make that fairly productive for me.

Since Vika also uses lots of google stuff, I do all my work in IE (ick) while she uses Firefox, so we can keep both accounts open at the same time.

Getting organized again

2009-05-07T13:58:00.002-05:00

It's time to get organized and try to keep track of what I'm doing:

Participate in group site redesign
Write a summary for the group web pages plus an extended summary / mini-paper.
Write a "how to read a paper" set of questions
Finish the review paper
Present / introduce twist theory
PIC24 debug / improved comm support

Tuesday in hiding

2009-02-10T10:04:00.003-06:00

I'm hiding this morning, doing research (or at least trying to). I modified the Windows bootloader last night to allow typing into the upper text box plus a command-line bootload then quit option. That should make Intro to Robotics much easier. I'd like to dramatically improve the speed, but that's a bigger project I probably don't have time for.

On the list for today: more tweaks of the inverse kinematics paper. Plus SECON registration.

MATLAB makes creating GUIs easy! And Google Docs is great.

Weekly meeting (5-Feb-2009)

2009-02-05T13:52:00.003-06:00

Agenda

Durga: limiting case introduction. To be continued next meeting.
Next week: Dr. Jones will do some statics, showing some 2-D and 3-D derivations.

Dr. Jones

Admin
1. Increase print quota. E-mail sent.
2. Find funding to pay for CNC work for v2 of robot. Estimated cost: $250. Done.
3. We have Maple 12, EndNote x2 CDs - install and return. Done.
Research topics
1. Revise inverse kinematics paper -- currently editing
2. Finish review paper -- on hold for now
3. Finish limiting-case paper
4. Begin work on NSF proposal

Weekly meeting (29-Jan-2009)

2009-01-29T13:55:00.000-06:00

Agenda

Dr. Jones: Distribute photos/video from the going-away party. Oops -- forgot!
The workshop policies have been updated. Action: read the updated policy and complete the table by placing dates in cells indicating when you took the workshop. Durga, Ricky: done. Krishna: to do. Action: everyone will find dates for workshops and post the date on the policies page.
Durga: limiting case introduction. To be continued next meeting.

Dr. Jones

Admin
1. Increase print quota. Print quota not increased. To do.
2. Find funding to pay for CNC work for v2 of robot. Estimated cost: $250
3. We have Maple 12, EndNote x2 CDs - install and return.
Research topics
1. Revise inverse kinematics paper -- currently editing
2. Finish review paper -- on hold for now
3. Finish limiting-case paper
4. Begin work on NSF proposal
Students
1. Durga: Jacobian works well, but interval analysis fails on one term.
2. Ricky: waiting to have v2 trunk cut; working on thesis presentation
3. Krishna: looking at verification
4. Buddy: working through Antman

Weekly meeting (22-Jan-2009)

2009-01-22T12:28:00.000-06:00

Agenda

Dr. Jones: Distribute photos/video from the going-away party. Oops -- forgot!
Weekly meeting times: group at 2:00 PM every Thursday, starting the 22nd. Individual meetings: weekly on Thursday starting on the 15th. Durga: 3:00 PM; Buddy; 3:30 PM; Krishna: 4:00 PM.
The workshop policies have been updated. Action: read the updated policy and complete the table by placing dates in cells indicating when you took the workshop. Durga, Ricky: done. Krishna: to do. Action: everyone will find dates for workshops and post the date on the policies page.
Durga: limiting case introduction. To be continued next meeting.

Dr. Jones

Admin
1. Give Buddy access to the robotics lab. E-mail sent requesting access; access now granted.
2. Increase print quota. E-mail sent requesting 500 pages/month.
3. Find funding to pay for CNC work for v2 of robot. Estimated cost: $250
4. Get Maple reinstalled. Need to pick up CD to re-install.
Research topics
1. Revise inverse kinematics paper -- currently editing
2. Finish review paper -- on hold for now
3. Finish limiting-case paper
4. Begin work on NSF proposal
Students
1. Durga: Jacobian works well, but interval analysis fails on one term.
2. Ricky: waiting to have v2 trunk cut
3. Krishna: looking at verification
4. Buddy: working through Antman

Weekly meeting (13-Jan-2009)

2009-01-13T09:48:00.005-06:00

Semester plan - implement

Implement statics and dynamics. Measure and verify. Work on real time.
Write up results. First a presentation, then a paper.

Agenda

Thanks for a great going-away party. I'll gather the video soon. Vika has a photo or two on her blog.
As decided earlier, the group will use a blog for all weekly reports. Policy update: put updates / action items on your blog the day of the meeting.
Durga: limiting case introduction. To be continued next meeting.
The workshop policies have been updated. Action: read the updated policy and complete the table by placing dates in cells indicating when you took the workshop. Durga, Ricky: done. Krishna: to do. Action: everyone will find dates for workshops and post the date on the policies page.
Establish weekly meeting times for all students. Verify that 10:00 AM on Tuesday as a group meeting time works.
Buddy: take Anthony's spot; re-format his PC.

Dr. Jones

Admin
1. None yet.
Research topics
1. Finish review paper -- making great progress.
2. Finish limiting-case paper
3. Begin work on NSF proposal
Students
1. Durga: Jacobian works well, but interval analysis fails on one term.

Weekly meeting (4-Dec-08)

2008-12-04T10:26:00.001-06:00

Agenda

As decided earlier, the group will use a blog for all weekly reports. Action: all group members will start a blog and post a link to it on the Wiki. Group members will post a link to their blog on the Wiki. Krishna, Ricky: to do. Ricky: enable comments. Done. All: make comments in-line. Policy update: put updates / action items on your blog the day of the meeting.
Final report schedule:due at end of finals.
Durga: limiting case introduction. To be continued later.
Anthony: visual servoing tutorial.
The workshop policies have been updated. Action: read the updated policy and complete the table by placing dates in cells indicating when you took the workshop. Durga, Ricky: done. Krishna: to do. Action: find dates for works

Dr. Jones

Admin
1. Provide breadboards for Durga, Krishna. Requested from Dr. Younan. Remind Dr. Jones at the end of the semester to request these again.
Research topics
1. Review DIS final reports
2. Finish review paper
3. Finish limiting-case paper
4. Begin work on NSF proposal
Students
1. Durga: Jacobian works well, but interval analysis fails on one term.

Thansgiving

2008-12-02T10:57:00.007-06:00

Thanksgiving was fun!

Meeting agenda

2008-11-25T10:08:00.006-06:00

Agenda

Fun stuff: come for Thanksgiving! (Around 5 PM). Durga, Anthony, Krishna, Ricky.
As decided earlier, the group will use a blog for all weekly reports. Action: all group members will start a blog and post a link to it on the Wiki. Everyone started their blog. Dr. Jones has posted a link to his blog on the Wiki. Group members will post a link to their blog on the Wiki. Ricky: enable comments. All: make comments in-line. Policy update: put updates / action items on your blog the day of the meeting.
Misc: I need a receipt from Ricky and a link to Buddy's blog.
Robotics research group: no one wants to rename; dropped.
Discuss weekly report. Group members will print a copy for each person and include their name or some distinguishing title on the hard copy.
Final report schedule:
1. 25th – second draft.
2. 2nd – final draft.
Durga: limiting case introduction
Anthony: visual servoing tutorial.
The workshop policies have been updated. Action: read the updated policy and complete the table by placing dates in cells indicating when you took the workshop.

Weekly meeting (20-Nov-08)

2008-11-20T09:30:00.004-06:00

Agenda

Fun stuff: Friday for lunch'n'bowl? Who's coming to my house for Thanksgiving? (Around 5 PM).
As decided earlier, the group will use a blog for all weekly reports. Action: all group members will start a blog and post a link to it on the Wiki. Updates: Dr. Jones, Ricky, Durga, Anthony, Krishna have started their blog. Dr. Jones has posted a link to his blog on the Wiki. Helpful hint: by following other group member's blogs, it's easier to track these updates. You can also add a blog list to your blog with links and latest updates from everyone else's blog.
Robotics research group: a good name? A naming contest? Everyone will bring some new group name suggestions to the next meeting.
Discuss weekly report. Ricky, Buddy - will bring copies for all group members. Durga, Krishna, Anthony - will create a first-pass weekly meeting blog based on items from the previous meeting. Updates:
Final report schedule:
1. 20th – outline to text (rough draft). Has the text been reviewed by other students?
2. 25th – second draft.
3. 2nd – final draft.
Anthony: visual servoing tutorial. Great info! Anthony will post / e-mail his slides for the team to look at. (Done)
Durga, Ricky will take a thesis writing course from the library. Updates: it was excellent! They're in the process of developing a good Word template for the group.
The workshop policies have been updated. Action: read the updated policy and complete the table by placing dates in cells indicating when you took the workshop.

Dr. Jones

Admin
1. Provide breadboards for Durga, Krishna. Requested from Dr. Younan. Remind Dr. Jones at the end of the semester to request these again.
2. Krishna's PC is ready and in the lab. No official desk yet. Action item: request / find a desk.
Research topics
1. Finish review paper
2. Finish limiting-case paper
3. Begin work on NSF proposal
Students
1. Anthony: give an intro to the Matlab bridge. Done.
2. Durga: consider kappa = 0 case: fails for kappa < 1e-160. Durga found term causing interval analysis problem, but it's not this term.
3. Krishna: need to take training on the Robotics research group/Policies#Required training page. What's completed so far? Durga, Krishna have taken the TA workshop. No one has taken the plagarism workshop. Also, there's a harassment training workshop required for all TAs that will be added to the policy. Required workshops updated.

Blogger and math

2008-11-13T15:28:00.002-06:00

Putting a less-than sign in Blogger text confuses it, leading to some corruption. So, use the HTML code instead (&lt followed by a ;).

I don't see any easy way to put math into a blog, unfortunately.

MSU robotics research chronicles

Link

Collaborative bibliograhies

Bibliographies and collaboration

Pygments to the rescue

Documentation and more

Documentation ideas

Documentation ideas

Visual Basic for Applications

Back to blogging

Weekly meeting

Organizational meeting

Fun links

Links

Electric cars

Summer camp starting

Almost done

To do

Quad-rotor and LiPo

To do

Today's plans

The morning disappears

List-making

Video tracking on a microcontroller

Fun links and videos

Promotion and Tenure

Continuum robots

At Eglin AFB

Amazing bionic elephant trunk

UAVs galore

Python for robotics

Scary video

Clean up and catch up

Embedded Systems notes

Fractal fun and more

SECON frustration

SECON results

The competition begins

Beach and SECON

Back to blogging

Catching up

Fun links

Weekly meeting agenda

Today's list

Welcome

Test time

Organiziation

Update

Weekly meeting agenda

Python on a PIC

Building a bridge

Interesting articles

Micro updates

Tutorial created

Improving micro

Meetings and e-mail

Marketing, maybe?

Family favorites

Administrivia

SECON movie uploaded

Atmel

Dropbox

Neat products alert

Camstudio bring-up

Snow day

Classes have started

Shape sensing

Getting organized for the new year

Painting in the new year

Christmas news

ARMed

Testing code

The weeks is vanishing

The end is near

Busy as always

Video and grading

Mobile computing

Embedded Python

Final final

Inbox fun