Pair/Team Programming

Too often ends in discussions of who obeys the published style guidelines. Roger has worked at too many companies. Roger sticks his fingers in his ears "LA LA LA LA".

NXT Line Follower (via RobotC)

This time via RobotC (http://www.robotc.net)

const int thresh = 50;      // light sensor thresh
const int power = 40;       // motor power
const int factor = 2;       // multiplicative sweep increase
const int overshoot = 20;   // turn additional after line found
const int initialTurn = 8; // first sweep size

int spin_left(int deg) {
 nSyncedTurnRatio = -100;
 nMotorEncoderTarget[motorA] = deg;
 motor[motorA] = power;
}

int spin_right(int deg) {
 nSyncedTurnRatio = -100;
 nMotorEncoderTarget[motorA] = -deg;
 motor[motorA] = -power;
}

int straight() {
 nSyncedTurnRatio = +100;
 motor[motorA] = power;
}

void stop() {
 motor[motorA] = 0;
}

bool online() {
 return SensorValue(lightSensor) < thresh;
}

void resetMotorEncoder() {
 nMotorEncoder[motorA] = 0;
}

bool stateIdle() {
 return nMotorRunState[motorA] == runStateIdle;
}

task main()
{
 bFloatDuringInactiveMotorPWM = false;
 nSyncedMotors = synchAB;

 int lastDir = 0;
 while (true) {

  while ( online() ) { straight(); }
  stop();

  resetMotorEncoder();
  int turn = initialTurn;
  for ( int i = lastDir; !online(); i++ ) {
   lastDir = i%2;
   for ( int j = turn; j && !online() ; j-- ) {
    if ( lastDir ) { spin_left(1); }
    else { spin_right(1); }
   }
   turn *= factor;
  }

  if ( lastDir ) { spin_left(overshoot); }
  else { spin_right(overshoot); }
  while ( !stateIdle() ) { wait1Msec(1); }

 }
}

transcoding for IPod Touch


$ ffmpeg.exe -y -i INPUT -f mp4 -vcodec libx264 -level 21 -s 480x266 -b 768k -bt 768k -bufsize 2000k -maxrate 768k -g 250 -coder 0 -threads auto -acodec libfaac -ac 2 -ab 128k OUTPUT


I think I used higher audio bitrate. Had to back it off to transcode video off my Olympus camera.

NXT Line Follower

Programmed with the NXT-G (LabView).

Cribbed from http://www.bnxt.com/paper/line_follower

NXT Marble Lift

Trying to figure out the Mindstorms / NXT. Simple robot to save Daniella and I from having to manually move the marbles to the top of the marble run set.

trackpoint config

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_configure_the_TrackPoint

Sea horses and sea dragons

Tonight seahorses came up while we were playing with play dough. Some google videos of said, and something I had never heard of: sea dragon.



Sea Dragons