Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Sycophant 2 Work

The mechanical elements of Sycophant were put together very rapidly and I learned much since then. I walked into a Radio Shack and picked up the first R/C car I could find. The active IR sensors had limited range, and I was operating them on their "hairy edge" where they would get many false alarms.

Sycophant 2 will be based on a more powerful 9.6V R/C car chassis with a much lower center of gravity. I will be using Maxbotix "quiet" ultasonic proximity sensors, which have a longer range and a slightly wider cone of detection than active IR proximity sensors.

Because I'm lazy, instead of spending sleepless nights trying to get PIC assembly code to work, I am pulling out my old RVHE boards, which are apparently no longer made. The RVHE boards run on BASIC, interactively programmed over a serial port. The programming should go very quickly.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Your Two Cents Update

The Kiosk for Your Two Cents is coming along well, here are pictures (note that is one of my collaborators, Philip Kohn, in the pictures):