Ok, school and work have been slowing me down a lot lately but I've managed to assemble more things. I got the camera system in the mail last week and briefly tried it out. Here's the links for the
camera and
transmitter. Hopefully I'll get to test the half mile range sometime this week. But it looks good so far and hopefully I'll have some video for ya.
I found and joined a website called
GrabCad that has saved me a bunch of time of drawing the Arduino boards. So all I had to do was quickly draw the servos and camera for this latest drawing:
I'm still working on the camera arm as well as the front arm. I'm leaning towards a metal detector system instead of an electromagnet for the rock sampling part of the front arm. I really have no intentions of collecting the rocks so I guess I really don't need to try and pick them up. Just sending a signal back saying how metallic the rock is, would be just fine. And actually now that I think of it, that would be a bit more informative than simply trying to pick up the rock.
Let's see, what else have I done so far.... Oh a video!
Since the suspension is taking a lot longer than I thought, I just glued the motors and wheels on so I could at least test code and stuff while I'm waiting for a laser cutter and/or a 3D printer like
this one that I'm currently a backer for. If all goes well, I'll have my very own desktop 3D printer by April. *Fingers crossed*
So that's about all I've got so far. I'm still working on the solar panels and monitoring the voltage. Hopefully I can do that soon since the sun is now starting to go away for the winter. I'm off school for 3 days this week so hopefully I'll make some serious progress during this time. Stay tuned!
