.03.02.08

Our car didn't perform quite as well as we had hoped. I'm also not going to make a page about it, because there is way more to it than I could ever hope to document. I did manage to build a fire tornado over the summer, however, as well as some other cool things for one of our parties.

.05.22.07.

I'll be working on Alice, Caltech's entry for the DARPA Grand Challenge, over the summer. I'm currently on the navigation team, which is responsible for planning the vehicle's decisions and actions based on the traffic situation - difficult, but fun. Anyway, I'll hopefully have enough time (though not money) to build a few other things over the summer - my current project is an 8' fire tornado; we'll see how that goes. It's expensive.

.04.23.07.

Added some example code to the FFTW wrapper page. I really wasn't kidding about sparse updates. I also built a neat loft for my room this term.

.02.18.07

Figured out how to program Atmel microcontrollers - recommend all you hobbyists look into it, it's a great, simple way to control projects. I first build an SP12 programming board exactly as it appears on this page, but ended up using the latest WinAVR software to program it. All you need is a parallel port, an SP12 programmer, an ATtiny2313 (or chip of similar pin config) and WinAVR, and you can be programming microcontrollers in C. The first thing I did was modify a "vectored thrust" RC plane I had (~$40) and added cheap RC servos (smaller versions of the ones used in the autoturret). I used the chip to convert the output from the receiver into servo pulse signals. That part worked beautifully, but I ultimately lost the plane because the nylon I used for control wires stretched too much. Oops.

.09.15.06.

New website is done. Enjoy, but do not expect frequent updates.