I have been fooling around with PHP today and I made a simple hit counter and a guestbook. I am not really using the counter yet because I have more advanced web stats already. Here is the link to the guest book. Please sign in!

There is still a lot to do, but I am finally getting around to updating a little bit more. I just changed servers from Windows to Linux so that I could have PHP hosting. As I learn more PHP, I will transform the site into something a little bit more dynamic.

I had been planning on waiting until I got all of the pictures and videos for the trebuchet. That hasn't happened yet so I figure that I will go ahead and post what I have. Whenever I get the rest, I will post that too. You may notice that I am adding stuff to the projects page. It will probably just start out with pictures. Then maybe I will add some text as well.

I am not exactly sure what I am going to do with the articles page yet. I will go ahead and post the Tetsujin articles I was in, but seeing as how I do not have many articles nor any publications, the page will probably be mostly dedicated to articles that I find interesting. The tutorials page and the resources page will probably be slowly updated.

Recently, I have been reading Robot Programming--A Practical Guide to Behavior-Based Robotics. It is a VERY interesting and informative book. If you have not read it and you are interested in robot theory, this book is a must. The concept involves controlling robots with a series of simple behaviors controlled by an arbiter to produce a complex result. The idea would make a nice science fair project. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I will probably only be able to continue my PID experimentation for science fair. My goal is to get to Intel. Another idea that crossed my mind was creating a robotic arm that could grab an object using computer vision based techniques. That is a really complicated task and I have yet to figure out how to use my new CMU Cam 2 so that idea will probably have to wait. Eventually, I would like to add more about my robotics ideas and projects. I have tons, but this post is already getting very lengthy so I will have to save that for another time.

The first robotics club project will start next week. We are going to be building simple beam-photovores as a really quick and fun introduction. For the next series of projects, I would like to discuss more on the behavior based programming and possibly work out a competition.

Trent, Tolu, Zach and I recently built a trebuchet for a physics project. We decided to go slightly above and beyond last year's balsa wood trebuchets. After $150 several Rodeo Cheese Burgers and three 8 hour building sessions our trebuchet towered 16'. Amazingly, I could walk beneath its axle. Yesterday was the launch sessions at school. Our sling was so large that small objects, such as tennis balls, got caught so we had to use basketballs! We only had about an hour to put the peices together (we had to bring it to school in sections) and to make our launches. In the limited amount of time we had, we managed to throw a basketball 175 feet. Maybe not the greatest displacement possible, but with 240 pounds in the counterweight box the ball went very high. I am guessing it must have gone 300 feet high because it was going much higher than its total displacement. Of course the ball would bounce roll to about 300 feet but 175 was where it would land. We may try to experiment more with different weights and launch pin angles to try to get a larger displacement. We may even try to launch some melons and try to get some explosions on impact. Anyway, the trebuchet project was unanimously agreed upon as a success. It even looked impressive! You can see all of the pictures in the project page.

I just gave the site a major facelift. Everything is pretty much the same except it has a slightly different look. Updates will be easier now that I have an idea of what I want the site to look like. Any suggestions for layout or content are welcome.

Here is a photo of the linear encoder I will be using. The electronics the encoder is connected to logs the encoder counts and tells its direction. In the video you can see the LED change colors when the encoder strip changes directions. Check it out! (you might need to hit refresh to view the video..otherwise you can just right click and save it)