October Already?

Wow! Another summer has come and gone. Didn't get as much time outside with Inspiration as I had hoped but I believe some lessons have been learned and some significant upgrades have been made.

In April, we found out that the little foam wheels and continuous rotation servos driving them failed to climb over pretty much everything. It also didn't have enough power to climb hills. So we set out to find some better wheels, better motors, and better ways to mount the wheels to the motors. 

I found some motors that, I felt, had the right size, speed, and torque combination out of  Pololu's huge motor selection.  Then I picked up the 12mm Hex adapters for RC truck wheels and some aluminum motor mounts. Once I was happy with the motors and adapters, we set off to our local hobby shop King Kong Hobbies and found some tires for a small scale Traxxas truck. After the testing of these new tires and motors (shown in the previous post July Already) I needed to design the new steering brackets to mount the new motors to. I drew the brackets up in Autodesk Inventor and sent the file off  to Shapeways to be printed.

New steering brackets after printing

4 out of 6 wheels mounted

Made some adapter blocks to mount the middle motors to

A close up of the blocks

When all of the wheels were on, I noticed that the new steering arms that I made were so big that they were going to hit the bogie arms when the rover goes to turn in place. I had to dremel off about an inch of plastic to provide enough clearance.

Showing  the dremel modification 

All the wheels on

Once all of the new wheels and motors were mounted, it was time to take the body off and get down to just the suspension so I could program how the steering servos work and the speeds and direction of the wheels.

It's a mess but it works

Here's a little video of the suspension hanging from the ceiling so I could test the code. At this point I was starting to see some serious lag from me sending a command and the rover actually executing it. You can see it in this video whenever it seems to do a command for too long or when the steering servos don't continue moving and just snap back to center. 

I later found out that the Xbee transmitter and receivers are not really designed to receive a command and send info back in such quick succession as to necessitate driving and getting responses from the commands I sent. I guess I could solve this by having the Arduino just execute the command without replying back with text like "Forward" or "Turn Right". For now most of the driving is done a few feet away from the laptop so I've decided to go with a blutooth adapter instead of the Xbee. I recently found out how to have an Arduino read signals from a RC receiver and execute commands based on thumb stick positions on the transmitter. That should really give Inspiration more range and better fine control. 

This whole suspension overhaul was done over the course of about 3 weeks. Every night after work I'd come home and spend about 3 to 4 hours replacing the old suspension parts with the new ones and re-wiring all of the servos, motors, and part of the power distribution panel. It all had to be done for a fantastic event called Girls in Aviation Day put on by the Women in Aviation and Stars of the North organizations. Cristin and I took off our Stray Robotics hats and attended this event as JPL Solar System Ambassadors. We brought Inspiration there to talk to kids about robotics, Mars rovers, and being Makers. It was a lot of fun and we actually learned a few things too! 

Here's a picture of Inspiration in our little Mars sandbox:

A big thing we learned at the event was that a fully charged battery lasts about 5 hours before the Arduino shuts everything off. It's great for run time but that also means it'll die over night when outside during Inspiration's eventual mission to a gravel pit or at the Mars Desert Research Station that we are currently planning for. I think a simple clock, battery monitoring circuit, or light detector could help Inspiration sleep at night. This would allow it to be able to receive commands the next day. The power distribution panel is designed to charge the battery in the case that it's too drained to power the Arduino so I'm not too worried there. It just means a day of charging instead of driving. 

After the event we did manage to get Inspiration outside to see how it handled hills and grass. Here's a quick video of Inspiration testing its hill climbing ability. (we have a lot more video coming. hopefully next blog)

Here's a video of what it looks like sampling rocks with the metal detector. It's actually pretty tricky with one camera. You don't get depth perception which is one of the reasons I chose to mount the camera on the back so you can see where the rover is in comparison to other objects. 

Driving Inspiration around in the yard has taught me the value of  a pan and tilt camera so I think the next big upgrade will come to the camera arm. Being able to look up and down is very important when you want to see where to go. The way the camera is aimed currently is good for things up close but you can't always see the horizon so you really have no idea which way the rover is facing. Yes eventually there will be GPS and a compass but even then, it'll be really handy to be able to survey the area. The ability to turn the camera all the way around would be helpful for backing up (which, I also learned, is the best way that this suspension climbs over large objects). 

Another thing in the works is a better way to charge the battery. Either the 2 battery system I had before or a way to sleep and charge. I found out that the solar panel doesn't actually charge the battery while sitting outside in the sun. The Arduino, Xbee, and motor shield together draw about 250 mAh. The solar panel has about 200 to 300 mAh capability so when I measured the solar panel while plugged into the rover, it read about .2  volts so it looks like it doesn't have the power to charge and power the Arduino at the same time. This means the Arduino needs to sleep or there needs to be a second battery. One charging and the other in use. That setup worked great before but I thought it would be more weight on an already heavy rover that is suppose to eventually fly on a large hobby rocket. 

I guess we can always make the rocket bigger...

Anyway, that's it for now. Hope you enjoyed this long over due update. Now get out there and make something. Oh and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. There are usually more updates there.

July Already?!

Wow, this summer is moving fast! Let's see, where did I leave off? Oh yeah, the Mars Desert Research Station rover project. We have a few obstacles for getting the new rover done so we've been testing the capabilities of Inspiration so at least they would have something to do rover experiments with. Here is a video of us testing Inspiration on some rocky hilly terrain we found up on the iron range to best mimic the terrain that would be found out in Utah.

During this test, we found that inspiration just doesn't have the power or wheel base to do much of anything when it comes to hills and rocks. I've decided to upgrade the wheels and the motors to give it a lot more capability. These new upgrades are going to be heavy so I may switch back to this setup whenever we get around to launching it in a rocket. For now, however, Inspiration needs to be much more user friendly and able to climb over whatever the MDRS team needs it to climb over. 

One potential upgrade came in the mail a few months ago. That is the EZ-B board by EZ-Robot. 

 It has so many possibilities and it's very user friendly compared to the Arduino board that is currently in Inspiration. Unfortunately, it's also a whole new system that I would have to test, learn to program, and completely redesign the power distribution of Inspiration. I just don't have that kind of time so for now, we'll be sticking with the Arduino and its shields because most of the programming is complete and I know it'll work for what the MDRS crew needs.

Another thing that happened a few months ago was the Wings of the North museum open house that I mentioned in the previous post. I left the Stray Robotics stuff at home and participated in the event as my NASA JPL Solar System Ambassador alter ego. I created a nice little display for Inspiration to drive around in as I talked about rover missions on Mars, current NASA programs, and other robotic projects that JPL has going on. It was a lot of fun and got several kids excited for robotics.

 

Inspiration found a new friend at the museum open house

Recharging the batteries while watching a Mustang starting up

Shortly after that, we took a trip out to Chicago to visit with some friends and family. 

Had to drive down Lake Shore to kind of feel home again

Hanging with our friend Mark of the Fury Theater company

Then, about a month ago, we scored some free pavers at a garage sale and decided to do a little landscaping. 

After that, was a trip to Tucson for Spacefest! This was probably the best Spacefest that they've put on. There were so many great talks on space subjects from professionals in the field. People like David Levy who helped discover the Shoemaker-Levy comet that smacked into Jupiter, Alan Hale of the Hale-Bopp comet fame, Apollo astronauts, and a whole bunch of other people that you find on different Discovery Channel shows. So much fun to spend a whole weekend talking with them and space authors and artists! It's an almost indescribable event that a person just needs to experience. We met with so many old friends from around the world and met so many more new ones. A truly amazing experience!

Hanging out with friends, Geoff Notkin and Steve Arnold of Meteorite Men 

Cristin having fun with
 artist Michelle Rouch

Cristin getting to talk with Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart
about space law.

Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell giving fellow
astronaut Jim McDivitt a hard time
about it being his birthday.

Cristin showing Apollo 13 astronaut Fred Haise a project
her co-worker's son put together. 

Our view from the room at Star Pass Resort
that was hosting the event.

And our first time seeing a Javelina

Back home after an amazing trip, we started working on Inspiration again. We picked up the new wheels and motors that will be replacing Inspiration's current foam wheels and continuous rotation servos. I hot glued the new motors and wheels to a bread board, strapped on the Arduino with its shields and battery, and went outside to see how fast and powerful the new setup will be.

I think this is going to work just fine for the MDRS crew. It'll be just fast enough to keep up with someone walking yet still powerful enough to climb some small hills. My next step is to design the new suspension parts that these new motors will mount to. I'm trying to make them out of aluminum for strength and a lower center of gravity. Since I don't have any way of machining aluminum, this could take a little while. But stay tuned and check out our Facebook page for more updates. Now get out there and make something!

 

(Not so) Small update

Ok I'm back. It's been a while but I'm still doing some pretty awesome things. First let's recap the past couple of months. We built a huge work bench for the shop. Here's some pics:

Cristin cutting the boards for the new work bench

The new work bench! Only 5 more to go.

The work bench turned out great! (The top isn't attached to the legs yet but we'll get there.) It's huge and stands about elbow height so no need to bend over or be uncomfortable while working. 

This table has been very busy this winter. I decided to change a bunch of things on the rover to make it more user friendly and programmer friendly as well. I changed out the Pololu Maestro servo controller for a 16 channel servo controller from Adafruit. The programming for this is pretty straight forward and easy to understand. I haven't figured out how to change the servo speeds yet with it though. Something about changing the pulse width in the programming. So far the things I've tried in the program haven't done anything. The servos still move at full speed. Because of this constant adjusting of code, I decided to find a way to program the Arduino wirelessly. Adafruit again had what I needed (I really should almost ask for a small sponsorship since most of the electronics have come from them). They have a great product that provides a bluetooth serial link between a PC and an Arduino and allows for wireless programming. Unfortunately I could never get the programming part to work but the bluetooth capability is amazing and it opens the rover up for mobile apps for demonstration purposes. 

Once I got the new servo driver and bluetooth adapter working, I decided that there was a big flaw in my design for having 2 batteries for the rover to switch between. Since changing from LiPo packs to solid celled packs (for safety sake), I lost the extra wires that the LiPo's have that I was going to use for sampling battery voltages. So I needed a way to measure battery voltage with the arduino while using the battery and while the other battery was charging on the solar panel. It just wasn't going to work with my setup anymore because of the way I had things wired. The other problem was how much heavier these packs are compared to the LiPo's. It was causing the rover's suspension to sag and the wheels to tilt in. I decided I needed to redo the power panel for 1 battery. I spent quite a few hours drawing the circuits and re-soldering everything. Eventually I put together a pretty simple circuit where the battery and solar panel feed into the main power board where there is a voltage divider that turns voltage from the battery and solar panel to a safe under-5-volt range for the Arduino to measure. The solar panel is toggled on and off with a relay so when the battery voltage reaches just over 8 volts, the solar panel will turn off and then turn back on again when the battery voltage gets below 8. The Arduino stays on all the time and can toggle the camera, motors, and metal detector on and off depending on batter voltage. This process I managed to test on my lunch break a few days ago. 

Solar panel and battery powering the Arduino which is talking to the laptop

Showing that the battery can actually charge while the Arduino is on and talking

Judging by the time it takes to charge, which was 0.04 volts in a half hour, I figure if the rover were to just sit and do nothing but communicate day and night, the battery voltage would get below the necessary 5 volts for the Arduino to stay on, after about 3 days. So my next step is to develop a way for the rover to sleep at night. Either through programming or a circuit with a photo resister in it. 

But first, I need to still upgrade the metal detector arm because it no longer reaches the ground and also add a new pan and tilt camera mast (once again from Adafruit. Check 'em out if you haven't!) so I can look up while trying to navigate using just the camera. 

These upgrades should probably happen before the Wings of the North Museum grand opening events in early May that I have been asked to show off the rover for as part of a space related display. This should be a lot of fun! I actually just figured out a way to drive the rover using a gamepad to make it easier for people to drive it if they wanted to. I just downloaded a simple program called JoyToKey that converts button presses to keyboard commands. Super easier and makes driving the rover a breeze! 

And in other news, this rover project may have to get put on hold a little bit while Cristin and I work  on another rover project for the...Mars Desert Research Station! Big project that we got asked to do last week by friend who is participating in research out there. It'll involve a similar rover but a little bigger and able to drop off a small "CubeSat" to study plant growth and then follow the teams on EVA's. The rover will be driven by a team member inside the habitat module and then as a proof of concept, it'll be able to be driven by Cristin and I from the University of North Dakota's Lunar Habitat module. This is going to be awesome! We'll be driving the rover from 1000 miles away! I might start a new blog for this project so everyone can follow along. The plan is for the team of scientists to be out there around March of next year so we have just less than a year to have it done. In the mean time I will be trying out new products like EZ-Robot's kit and also testing the crap out of Inspiration to make sure the concept of this rover will work. So stay tuned!

Post break update

 Ok, so I haven't really done much with Inspiration in the past month and a half. I've kind of been taking a break on building and focusing more on rethinking ideas. I did manage to get some tests done before the sun went away for the next 5 months. (Well it doesn't totally go away. We have 8 hours of light but it's not very useful for what I need it for. Plus it's really darn cold out most of the time.) But anyway, I had noticed during our demonstration at SpaceFest that the inside of the rover got really warm when the sun came through a sky light and lit up the solar panel. So eventually I got around to testing the solar panel in direct sunlight and recorded a temperature of 115 degrees Fahrenheit on the under side. So I got to thinking, what is light weight and insulates well? I then looked down at the Styrofoam cup in my hand that was, very effectively, holding back the temperature of my morning coffee. Bingo! So after work I raced home and cut apart a Styrofoam container of some fantastic Thai food we had leftover from the night before.  I cut some holes for the wires to fit through and stuck it to the underside of the solar panel.

I put the solar panel back on the rover and pointed it at the sun for a half an hour.

The results were a very comfortable 80 degrees Fahrenheit on all of the components inside. 

About 3 weeks ago, I decided to get Inspiration outside and prove that the new suspension can do what I designed it to do. This was my last chance before winter so I apologize if the drive doesn't seem very well thought out. It was kind of a last minute idea to hurry up and record a video before the sun went down. But here it is, proof that Inspiration does, in fact, go outside and that the new suspension design actually works...except for a part I forgot to screw in place.

 

After we made the quick video demonstration, I started focusing on simplifying the code and making it more user friendly for the eventual graphical interface. Nothing fancy but a much needed command to stop before executing any other drive commands. The problem I had was that if you told it to turn and then mid turn, you told it to go forward, it would attempt to drive forward with the 4 corner wheels not pointed straight yet. So now the wheels stop at the beginning of each drive command and then it turns the wheels to the proper direction before proceeding with the drive. This should make it less prone to driver error and possible damage. 

In the past couple of weeks I managed to join 2 different groups that will allow me to learn skills I will need for this rover project. 

One is the Autonomous Snow Plow competition at the St. Paul Winter Carnival. I am on the planning committee and greatly look forward to seeing how people accomplish building a robot that can see and navigate a course on its own.

The second group I joined is a team of University of Minnesota students called LPRD who are designing and manufacturing a liquid fueled rocket. As of this evening, I have joined their launch sub-team and will be helping with fuel delivery systems for the engine. This is a very exciting project and they're always looking for help so if you're interested and can spend time working on rockets, click on the link I shared and sign up to help.

I hope to get moving on the rover project soon. SpaceFest VII is coming up in just over 6 months and I wanted to have some kind of lander put together by then. But first I need to finish the upgrades to the camera and metal detector. I think this is going to be a very busy 6 months.

Stay tuned!

It's Aliiiiive!!! (and has a lengthy story)

 For the past 3 weeks I have been scrambling to get Inspiration operational again in time to present at the Girls in Aviation Day at the St. Paul airport last weekend (9/26/2015). Working 9 hour days means I usually only get about 4 hours to work on the rover each night. It's not entirely flight ready, but the bulk of it is done, now, and that is a very exciting feeling! I can now focus more on code and sensors rather than design-test-redesign.   

 To catch up with the past month or so, let's begin somewhere after my last blog post. I think the last post explained how much better Shapeways was at 3D printing than our Zeepro 3D printer. So we ordered the rest of the suspension parts from Shapeways and waited; it takes about 2 weeks from ordering parts to get them in. Unfortunately, I made a mistake several months ago while saving a servo bracket design and ended up sending Shapeways a file that was no longer useful. So when all of the parts came in, I had 2 parts that didn't work with the steering servos. A rush to order the correct part ensued since the weekend of the Girls in Aviation Day was coming up in just a few weeks. While I waited, I used the 2 bad parts as a stand in so I could work on the rest of the suspension.

 The new suspension required a longer shoulder mounting shaft to be cut to length and grooves to be machined in for the locking 'C' clips. I spent a few days going to different hardware and auto parts stores looking for the type of aluminum pipe from which I had made the previous shoulder mounting shaft, but didn't have any luck finding it. 5/16'' aluminum tubing is apparently hard to find. On a hunch, I stopped in at Ax-Man Surplus to see what they might have for aluminum tubing. After about 20 minutes of scrutinizing everything that might work, I found fiberglass tent polls. I asked for calipers to measure one and sure enough, an exact match! So now the shaft is cool-looking black fiberglass.

 After mounting the servos and servo brackets to the shoulder joint, I had to put the body on. I then piled in batteries and electronics to see if the suspension could hold the weight... it couldn't. The spring inside of the shoulder wasn't strong enough anymore to hold the new electronics I wanted to add. So Cristin and I sat down one day to bounce ideas back and forth and came up with the idea of putting a "locking" latch on each shoulder. Now, with the latches, when the rover is in flight mode, the shoulder arms will be spread out. After landing, we can command the front wheels to drive backwards which will raise the body and bring the shoulder arms together where the latch would then catch and keep the arms from spreading apart again. This latch can be seen in this picture:

Some days during my lunch break, I squeeze in a couple of pages of Sojourner: An Insider's View of the Mars Pathfinder Mission by Andrew Mishkin. (yes, I've been working on reading this for a couple of years now during down-time. You can actually see a picture of it in a much earlier post.) Oddly enough, in my own way, I've been on a parallel path with Inspiration and Mr. Mishkin's book. I come across an issue with the rover and then read about a very similar issue on Sojourner. This was the case with the shoulder latch. I thought for sure this problem was unique to Inspiration because of the inexpensive and easy way I designed the shoulder. So to my surprise, after coming up with a latching idea, I read about a very similar latch that they had to put on Sojourner. So I must be doing something right if I'm unwittingly following in JPL engineers' footsteps.  

Here is the suspension waiting for the electronics to drive it and the correct parts to come in the mail.

 After getting the suspension together, it was time to give Inspiration a whole new electrical system. 

 Over the winter, I programmed a way for the Arduino to sense battery voltage for 2 lipo batteries and switch between the two as one would drain and the other would charge from the solar panel. Making these changes between 3 power sources required 3 relays and a 4th for main power on and off. It also needed 2 more relays to turn the power to the camera and metal detector on and off. To feed these relays, I needed a board for the batteries to plug into and a couple of power rails on that board to supply power to the different systems.

 This new power distribution panel was also designed to eliminate the jumble of wires piled inside the rover's body which made access to the battery and components almost impossible. 

Here's an older photo kind of showing this pile of  wires:

Here is the new more organized wiring. Battery removal is MUCH easier, now, and access to the Arduino's USB port is possible if I need to upload a new sketch. 

  About a week before our presentation, Cristin came home and found me outside with this new power panel, 2 lipo batteries, and safety glasses on. She asked me why I was testing the power panel outside and I said that I didn't want the batteries to explode in the house in case I screwed up on the wiring. After some thought on how volatile lipo batteries can be, we decided that it was probably in everyone's best interest to not have the rover go up in flames during our presentation. (This was a mistake that could have ended our dreams of doing anything space related... or anything at all, really... had a battery exploded while pushing temperature limits) 

 We decided to fix this before it became a problem. I did some research on batteries and found these  7.4 volt 2600mAh Lithium Ion batteries and a nice little charger for them. They have a maximum temperature rating of around 450 degrees Fahrenheit which is way better than the 114 degree limit of the lithium polymers. These also have twice the power capacity so drive times are now around 2 hours per battery. The down side is that they are a little bigger and heavier... and needed to be in the rover within the next 4 days. We checked many websites and finally found one that had 2-day shipping on these batteries. 

 While we waited for batteries and parts, I started the programming for all 9 suspension servos. Getting the angles of the steerable wheels proved be a bit of trial and error. The Maestro controller didn't really work with degrees. Instead it worked with numbers from 5000 to 7000. 6000 being center but my brackets weren't mounted exactly straight so each corner servo had to have a different number for straight. One would be 6015 and another would be 5998. And then turning them inwards at around a 40 degree angle took even more tweaking. After a few hours, I finally got the lines of code correct.

Here is a video of the first time the electronics and suspension were integrated together and tested with the correct code.

 Once I got the suspension operational, it was time to install the XBEE wireless receiver, replace the desktop power supply with a battery, and stuff it all into the rover body. Once I got everything back together and driving around on the floor, I couldn't help but set up a ramp to see how it climbs.

Here, I found that the slow speed setting was not providing enough power to the servos to get the front wheels to climb over the front of the ramp. Going at it in reverse worked out, though.

And then I felt daring:

 Inspiration was now a capable rover. By Thursday of that week, the parts and batteries came in and I could finally take a breath. With Friday available for extra work, I decided to get the camera arm and metal detector arm programmed and operational. It's always impressive to see the camera rotate up from its stowed position over the solar panel and then pan back and forth. 

 Saturday came and we arrived at Holman Field in St. Paul at 8am. We set up our display complete with red sand, rocks, and information about Sojourner and Donna Shirley who managed the Pathfinder project for JPL. We had fun talking about how Sojourner *inspired* our little rover, and that's why we named it Inspiration.  

 Inspiration was a hit at the Girls in Aviation Day event. Kids and adults would hang out with us for long periods of time asking questions about Inspiration and engaging in some great conversation about NASA and all of the other space programs around the world that are currently working on robotic missions to the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. 

 Photo credit: ©2015 Larry Grace Photography

 So now that we have some down time, I can focus on getting other systems working. Next up for Inspiration will be to get the 2-battery system fully functional, design and build a new metal detector that will reach the ground with this new higher suspension, improve the camera arm, get the ultra sonic range finder on the front working, and then work on the GPS autonomy and graphical interface. 

Lots to do yet so stay tuned and remember to chase the challenge!

Magic smoke and the parts that use it.

Wow! Has it really been 2 months since my last post?! Well I've been up to stuff. I really need to be up to stuff now because there needs to be a working demonstration for an event next month. 

So I've been busy the past week trying to make some progress since basically gutting the rover a month ago to rewire it . In the process of rewiring, I realized the new steering controller needed to be wired so I started figuring out how to do that. While I was figuring that out, I started printing the rest of the suspension parts so the things that I was wiring had a place to go. I got about half of the parts made and started having printer issues. The parts all had some kind of flaw that had to be worked around or ignored. I didn't like that so I decided to outsource all of the parts to www.shapeways.com after doing a sample run of their services. 

You can see in the photo on the left, my misshapen part compared to the part I got from Shapeways and then the photo on the right is of the 2 parts I ordered. So needless to say, after I saw the quality of their parts, I immediately ordered the rest of the suspension parts. They should be here in a couple of weeks. So while I'm waiting for that, I started working with the parts that I do have.   

I plugged in 5 servos to the Pololu servo controller and then plugged in my 7.6v LiPo battery. The fact that my servos are only designed for 6 volts at most suddenly dawned on me as one of the more expensive metal geared high torque ones started to smoke. Not a pleasant little puff of smoke but a rolling black cloud that smelled a bit like burning tires. Just a few seconds was enough to leave a nasty smell in the shop for a day or so. Here is a photo of the damage.

So with that servo now liberated of magic smoke, I grabbed my trusty power supply and set it for a more friendly 5 volts (something I should have done to begin with) and plugged it in to the Pololu servo controller. I then worked out some quick code for manually operating the part of the drive system that I had left. Everything seemed to work. Then we went to the hobby store to get more metal geared high torque servos and was informed that these might not be powerful enough for what we want them to do. Since I hadn't actually tried them with any weight on them, I really couldn't argue so we went home empty handed and set up a test of the steering with about a half a pound of batteries on it. Since last we weighed the rover, it was about 3 pounds, we divided 3 by 6 and got .5 pounds for each wheel.

Here is that test: 

It seems like it should work. Carpet might be another story but with only a month before a demonstration, we decided to go back and buy the rest of the servos that  we needed to finish the new suspension. Now we wait for the Shapeways parts to come in. 

In the mean time, I need to finish the code for the rest of the servos, fix that wobbly wheel, and figure out how to fit everything back into the body. And also do some more research on these next couple of items.

http://infragram.org/

This website gave me a great idea for another sensor on the rover. With this site and another camera with their infrared filter on it, the rover would be able to take pictures of plants and tell how well they are growing. Kind of beats just sampling rocks with a metal detector. 

While searching for a way to have an arduino send back images from another camera, I came across this nifty little device used for multi-camera FPV (first person video) systems. 

http://www.bevrc.com/3channel-mini-video-switcher_p239.html

Since this little switch can handle 3 cameras, I figure I could have the main mast camera, the IR camera somewhere on the rover, and a hazard camera on the front. This could be a great little addition. I just need to find out if all 3 cameras will have power to them all of the time or not. If they do, I'll need to ditch the idea or work out a power switch for them.

And then lastly, this little 5 Volt 2.5 Amp voltage regulator that could replace the heavy relays that I currently have for switching between batteries. 

https://www.pololu.com/product/2850

These say they can be enabled or disabled with a high or low signal but it's not very clear whether that means the output can be turned on and off or just the regulating part can be turned on and off. I'll need to look more into this. 

So that's about it for now. I'll try and post more now that I have a bit of a deadline. Some part of the rover should be operational again by the end of next month so that means I should have plenty to write about. So stay tuned and have fun out there!

delayed but still going

Sorry for the month and a half long delay but... We're first time homeowners! 

We've been busy painting 

And doing yard work

We have a nice back yard that has filled in quite a bit since this picture. But I'd like to think there is a rover proving ground in there somewhere.

The shop is coming together. Just need to build a bunch of work benches and acquire a few more tools to make building robots a lot easier. 

 But since the last post, I haven't just been working on house things. I accepted a position as a Test Engineer at work so loads of training there and I also started work on the new steerable suspension. I spent a lot of time designing the new parts and even managed to print the left side components. 

I finally figured out the right combination of settings for printing in ABS without a heated bed or enclosure. No more curling parts pulling off of the bed. A short 'raft' of PVA and then the ABS on top of that, along with proper nozzle height, seems to work great!

This is Inspiration with its new left side suspension. Still unwired and kind of mocked up here but this is the idea. A ton more ground clearance and better turning ability. 

And just for kicks, I added a nice background from Inventor's stock background schemes. 

That's it so far. I hope to start printing the right side parts this weekend and get it driving around soon. But in order to get it driving around, I need to change out the motor driver for the servo controller which also needs a little programming and also updating the Arduino's program so that it talks to the servo controller. After all of that, I plan on making a new metal detector arm since the current one is too short and will also hit the new front suspension. And then I'd like to change out the camera arm for something that can pan and tilt. Lots of things to do yet but it's coming together.

We also attended our first Tripoli Minnesota rocket launch day last weekend with my nephew Will and met some great people and got some great advice for the up coming rocket that will carry Inspiration out to its eventual landing site. Apparently there is a group of students that are attempting the same idea of  launching a rover out into a field. We came late and missed them at the launch though. I'd love to meet them and compare ideas so hopefully they'll be around again.

Well.. stay tuned for more updates and have fun out there!
p.s.
 If I could, I would have this SpaceFest timer running on the side of this blog. But for now, you get a link.
 Can't wait! Time to SpaceFest VII