To do

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:

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

Quad-rotor and LiPo

Some notes on LiPo batteries:

1. Here's a good summary. In particular:
1. 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.
2. We need a safe charging set-up, with a bucket of sand handy and probably a Pyrex dish with sand to charge batteries in.
3. Don't charge at more than 1C.
4. 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:

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

To do

The list for today:

1. Paper review?
2. XBee
3. Meeting notes
4. Schedule pest control
5. Dynamics

Today's plans

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:

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

The morning disappears

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

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

I've noticed several things about my netbook

1. 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.
2. 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:

1. Read
1. The quad-rotor thesis
2. Adam's paper
3. 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.
2. P&T
1. Determine a list of reviewers
2. Write a cover letter
3. Fill out the forms
4. Ask Tommy questions on his students for CV
5. Get CV reviewed
3. NSF
1. Read reviews
2. Look up references and incorporate
3. Start reading and editing
4. Quad rotor
1. Order a MAX3232 to interface with the Microstrain / call Microstrain (look at IMU part number)
2. Talk about DC-DC converters / power supply for PIC, speed controller
5. Summer bridge
1. Order parts: breadboards, PICKit 2s
2. Debug / work around motor noise problems
3. Build up alternate platform with encoders
4. p14p development work -- GPIO testing
6. Other
1. Talk with Ben
2. Schedule a meeting with TJ

Video tracking on a microcontroller

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?