Yeah, I got a glass one too at first but it didn't last long! :)

The gameboy camera is a small b&w camera originally used in the
Gameboy Camera cartridge for the gameboy.
The advantage of this small 128x128 camera is that it does edge
extraction/enhancement in hardware.
But the actual chip is very hard to fine by itself as mitsubishi only
sells them in bulk.

--- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "donald_dansereau"
<donald_dansereau@...> wrote:
>
>
> I couldn't find a plastic ornament, so I'm using the standard glass
> ornament - like on the family christmas tree.  I thought it was
> plastic when I bought it, actually, until I tried to melt it.  Nope.
> Glass - very thin.  It looks pretty funny having a whole ornament
> perched atop the robot.  At $2, it still beats that $500 japanese
> model!  (found two companies over there... they wouldn't even give me
> a quote... buggers)
>
> What was the gameboy camera interface?  I'm looking for a good source
> of cheap cam modules right now... they seem to be phasing out the
> C3088 and M3088 modules used by CMUcam and AVRcam, and I'm not quite
> at the point of mounting up my own camerachip board.
>
> Regards,
> Don
>
>
> --- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "stephane641" <stephane641@>
> wrote:
> >
> > Actually, it's a cheaper plastic one. I bought a set of 3-sizes and
> > the one on that picture is the biggest one. It's too big though and
> > requires me to increase the distance to the camera in order to see the
> > whole thing.
> > Which is a big problem with Trinity's height limitation of 30cm!
> >
> > The sphere mirror is no good for most task except for bearing only
> > applications like trinity. A conic one apparently has the same issue
> > but I'd love to have one anyways. Hyperbolic and parabolic are the
> > right thing.
> > I'd love to see what you have as I spent all year looking for a cheap
> > omni-mirror alternative and I'm still looking...
> > I found a japanese source but they are 500+ USD$ ouch!
> >
> > Actually, my SRX1 robot for trinity 2002 was using a Gameboy camera
> > interfaced to a mega8 and was doing a very simple on-the-fly blob
> > tracking algorithm. But it was easily fooled by another light source.
> > The one I have now can return an array of blob with full
> > colour/geometric statistics so it's much more robust.
> >
> > yeah, I guess the problem is that I'm cramped for space right now so
> > even a big fan would be hard to install as I can't have anything in
> > front of my Sharp Array. (I know it's ugly but I never got around to
> > making that laser ranger) Perhaps I'll have to make the fan deploy on
> > a servo driven arm to bring it up at candle height. Whatever is
> > easiest as i'm running short on time...
> >
> > Let me know if you find any good mirror alternatives,
> > --- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "donald_dansereau"
> > <donald_dansereau@> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > It's pretty funny that I didn't recognize that christmas tree
> > > ornament, since I've got the same thing (not chopped in half)
mounted
> > > atop my own camera setup!  Yours looks like it started life as a
> > > larger ornament than mine - do you figure that lends to less
> > > distortion or more?
> > >
> > > I've been considering rolling cones out of silvered plastic for the
> > > mirror.  Depending on the angle of the cone, it results in a blind
> > > spot around your robot, but it's infinitely cheaper than the
comercial
> > > options, and harder to break than half a xmas-tree ornament.
> > >
> > > BTW, how many ornaments did you go through before you cut one in
half
> > > without shattering it?  I'm guessing it's glass, and you used a
> dremel?
> > >
> > > The vision stuff I'm working on is very low-level.  Similar
complexity
> > > as the AVRCam, and omnidirectional.  I basically want to make the
> > > simplest useful vision sensor that can be applied to fire
fighting and
> > > sumo robots.  All my processing is on an Atmel Mega8 right now.
> > > Needless to say, there's no face recognition or anything... ;)
> > >
> > > So about this CO2 thing: can't you find a fan that would be the same
> > > size as (or smaller than) the canister and servo combined?  I've
> > > always thought a fan was the way to go.  Although one year I saw
a guy
> > > with a (large) compressed-air duster canister and a lego-driven
> > > trigger, and that was pretty cool!
> > >
> > > Happy building!
> > > Don
> > >
> >
>

I couldn't find a plastic ornament, so I'm using the standard glass
ornament - like on the family christmas tree.  I thought it was
plastic when I bought it, actually, until I tried to melt it.  Nope.
Glass - very thin.  It looks pretty funny having a whole ornament
perched atop the robot.  At $2, it still beats that $500 japanese
model!  (found two companies over there... they wouldn't even give me
a quote... buggers)

What was the gameboy camera interface?  I'm looking for a good source
of cheap cam modules right now... they seem to be phasing out the
C3088 and M3088 modules used by CMUcam and AVRcam, and I'm not quite
at the point of mounting up my own camerachip board.

Regards,
Don


--- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "stephane641" <stephane641@...>
wrote:
>
> Actually, it's a cheaper plastic one. I bought a set of 3-sizes and
> the one on that picture is the biggest one. It's too big though and
> requires me to increase the distance to the camera in order to see the
> whole thing.
> Which is a big problem with Trinity's height limitation of 30cm!
>
> The sphere mirror is no good for most task except for bearing only
> applications like trinity. A conic one apparently has the same issue
> but I'd love to have one anyways. Hyperbolic and parabolic are the
> right thing.
> I'd love to see what you have as I spent all year looking for a cheap
> omni-mirror alternative and I'm still looking...
> I found a japanese source but they are 500+ USD$ ouch!
>
> Actually, my SRX1 robot for trinity 2002 was using a Gameboy camera
> interfaced to a mega8 and was doing a very simple on-the-fly blob
> tracking algorithm. But it was easily fooled by another light source.
> The one I have now can return an array of blob with full
> colour/geometric statistics so it's much more robust.
>
> yeah, I guess the problem is that I'm cramped for space right now so
> even a big fan would be hard to install as I can't have anything in
> front of my Sharp Array. (I know it's ugly but I never got around to
> making that laser ranger) Perhaps I'll have to make the fan deploy on
> a servo driven arm to bring it up at candle height. Whatever is
> easiest as i'm running short on time...
>
> Let me know if you find any good mirror alternatives,
> --- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "donald_dansereau"
> <donald_dansereau@> wrote:
> >
> >
> > It's pretty funny that I didn't recognize that christmas tree
> > ornament, since I've got the same thing (not chopped in half) mounted
> > atop my own camera setup!  Yours looks like it started life as a
> > larger ornament than mine - do you figure that lends to less
> > distortion or more?
> >
> > I've been considering rolling cones out of silvered plastic for the
> > mirror.  Depending on the angle of the cone, it results in a blind
> > spot around your robot, but it's infinitely cheaper than the comercial
> > options, and harder to break than half a xmas-tree ornament.
> >
> > BTW, how many ornaments did you go through before you cut one in half
> > without shattering it?  I'm guessing it's glass, and you used a
dremel?
> >
> > The vision stuff I'm working on is very low-level.  Similar complexity
> > as the AVRCam, and omnidirectional.  I basically want to make the
> > simplest useful vision sensor that can be applied to fire fighting and
> > sumo robots.  All my processing is on an Atmel Mega8 right now.
> > Needless to say, there's no face recognition or anything... ;)
> >
> > So about this CO2 thing: can't you find a fan that would be the same
> > size as (or smaller than) the canister and servo combined?  I've
> > always thought a fan was the way to go.  Although one year I saw a guy
> > with a (large) compressed-air duster canister and a lego-driven
> > trigger, and that was pretty cool!
> >
> > Happy building!
> > Don
> >
>

lol  I thought there was a link associated with this discussion about camera
views. If not, sorry. Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:robomontreal@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of stephane641
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 4:43 PM
To: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [robomontreal] Re: Introductions


Which link are you referring to?

--- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "HeadShot" <HEADSHOT@...> wrote:
>
> I always appreciate a repeat of the web link since I frequently jump
into
> the middle of threads. Thanks Dan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:robomontreal@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of stephane641
> Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 10:19 AM
> To: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [robomontreal] Re: Introductions
>
>
> yeah, Trinity in Hartford.
> I could do the Toronto one but it doesn't have an expert level.
> Then again, I don't have the space to build a maze so I could use the
> practice.
>
> Yes, the community hacked the hell of NSLU2. Not much it won't do now.
> You should check the "applications" section of the wiki: aside from my
> use as a robotic controller there's some weird ones like a frog-sound
> monitoring station! It's a very flexible little bugger.
>
> Yep. You'd be surprise how much processingn you can cram in 266Mhz and
> 32Megs of RAM when running Linux. Most windows people would say only a
> decent powered portable would do but if you remove the GUI overhead of
> windows you have lots of spare cycles to work with. Of course, I won't
> be doing "optic flow" analysis quite soon on it but that's ok.
>
> Yeah, I've got a nice little mountain bike CO2 emergency tire inflator
> device that might do the trick. The problem is finding the place to
> fit a servo to trigger it as it need quite a punch to trigger.
>
> The mirror is just from a cheap dollar-store Christmas ornament. (cut
> in half). It distorts the image way too much but it's fine for
> locating the flame. A flashlight reflector works much better as it's
> more parabolic.
>
> Let me know when you start working on vision stuff and perhaps we can
> help each other.
>
> Salut,
>
> --- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "donald_dansereau"
> <donald_dansereau@> wrote:
> >
> > Stephane,
> >
> > You say you're running late with your fire-fighter - for which
> > competition?  Trinity college?  You could always enter the Candian
> > events, eh?  ;)
> >
> > You're using the nslu2 to do your processing?  Looks like a pretty
> > nifty device to work with.  I remember when they first came out, folks
> > were guessing "how long 'till someone hacks this?", but it didn't
> > occur to me to do vision with them.... ;)
> >
> > To answer your question, the CO2 extinguisher on DRED was very simple
> > - where simple rhymes with "hack".  I'm guessing it's not what you're
> > looking for, since it required a fan to blow the CO2 at the candle.  A
> > small basket of dry ice pellets was suspended over a slightly larger
> > container half-filled with water. The basket hung from a member that
> > got knocked off by the fan when it was activated.  So when it was time
> > to blow out the candle, the fan activated very briefly, the dry ice
> > pellets fell into the water, the water container quickly filled with
> > CO2 from the melting dry ice, then the fan reactivated a fixed time
> > later to blow the CO2 at the candle.  Looked neat.  Didn't work very
> > well - the fan did all the real work.
> >
> > So I took a quick look at your webpage - nice work!  SRX2 is one sexy
> > looking machine.  Where'd you get the mirror?  It looks like you've
> > repurposed something, but I can't quite tell what...
> >
> > Regards,
> > Don
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>







Yahoo! Groups Links

Which link are you referring to?

--- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "HeadShot" <HEADSHOT@...> wrote:
>
> I always appreciate a repeat of the web link since I frequently jump
into
> the middle of threads. Thanks Dan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:robomontreal@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of stephane641
> Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 10:19 AM
> To: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [robomontreal] Re: Introductions
>
>
> yeah, Trinity in Hartford.
> I could do the Toronto one but it doesn't have an expert level.
> Then again, I don't have the space to build a maze so I could use the
> practice.
>
> Yes, the community hacked the hell of NSLU2. Not much it won't do now.
> You should check the "applications" section of the wiki: aside from my
> use as a robotic controller there's some weird ones like a frog-sound
> monitoring station! It's a very flexible little bugger.
>
> Yep. You'd be surprise how much processingn you can cram in 266Mhz and
> 32Megs of RAM when running Linux. Most windows people would say only a
> decent powered portable would do but if you remove the GUI overhead of
> windows you have lots of spare cycles to work with. Of course, I won't
> be doing "optic flow" analysis quite soon on it but that's ok.
>
> Yeah, I've got a nice little mountain bike CO2 emergency tire inflator
> device that might do the trick. The problem is finding the place to
> fit a servo to trigger it as it need quite a punch to trigger.
>
> The mirror is just from a cheap dollar-store Christmas ornament. (cut
> in half). It distorts the image way too much but it's fine for
> locating the flame. A flashlight reflector works much better as it's
> more parabolic.
>
> Let me know when you start working on vision stuff and perhaps we can
> help each other.
>
> Salut,
>
> --- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "donald_dansereau"
> <donald_dansereau@> wrote:
> >
> > Stephane,
> >
> > You say you're running late with your fire-fighter - for which
> > competition?  Trinity college?  You could always enter the Candian
> > events, eh?  ;)
> >
> > You're using the nslu2 to do your processing?  Looks like a pretty
> > nifty device to work with.  I remember when they first came out, folks
> > were guessing "how long 'till someone hacks this?", but it didn't
> > occur to me to do vision with them.... ;)
> >
> > To answer your question, the CO2 extinguisher on DRED was very simple
> > - where simple rhymes with "hack".  I'm guessing it's not what you're
> > looking for, since it required a fan to blow the CO2 at the candle.  A
> > small basket of dry ice pellets was suspended over a slightly larger
> > container half-filled with water. The basket hung from a member that
> > got knocked off by the fan when it was activated.  So when it was time
> > to blow out the candle, the fan activated very briefly, the dry ice
> > pellets fell into the water, the water container quickly filled with
> > CO2 from the melting dry ice, then the fan reactivated a fixed time
> > later to blow the CO2 at the candle.  Looked neat.  Didn't work very
> > well - the fan did all the real work.
> >
> > So I took a quick look at your webpage - nice work!  SRX2 is one sexy
> > looking machine.  Where'd you get the mirror?  It looks like you've
> > repurposed something, but I can't quite tell what...
> >
> > Regards,
> > Don
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>

Actually, it's a cheaper plastic one. I bought a set of 3-sizes and
the one on that picture is the biggest one. It's too big though and
requires me to increase the distance to the camera in order to see the
whole thing.
Which is a big problem with Trinity's height limitation of 30cm!

The sphere mirror is no good for most task except for bearing only
applications like trinity. A conic one apparently has the same issue
but I'd love to have one anyways. Hyperbolic and parabolic are the
right thing.
I'd love to see what you have as I spent all year looking for a cheap
omni-mirror alternative and I'm still looking...
I found a japanese source but they are 500+ USD$ ouch!

Actually, my SRX1 robot for trinity 2002 was using a Gameboy camera
interfaced to a mega8 and was doing a very simple on-the-fly blob
tracking algorithm. But it was easily fooled by another light source.
The one I have now can return an array of blob with full
colour/geometric statistics so it's much more robust.

yeah, I guess the problem is that I'm cramped for space right now so
even a big fan would be hard to install as I can't have anything in
front of my Sharp Array. (I know it's ugly but I never got around to
making that laser ranger) Perhaps I'll have to make the fan deploy on
a servo driven arm to bring it up at candle height. Whatever is
easiest as i'm running short on time...

Let me know if you find any good mirror alternatives,
--- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "donald_dansereau"
<donald_dansereau@...> wrote:
>
>
> It's pretty funny that I didn't recognize that christmas tree
> ornament, since I've got the same thing (not chopped in half) mounted
> atop my own camera setup!  Yours looks like it started life as a
> larger ornament than mine - do you figure that lends to less
> distortion or more?
>
> I've been considering rolling cones out of silvered plastic for the
> mirror.  Depending on the angle of the cone, it results in a blind
> spot around your robot, but it's infinitely cheaper than the comercial
> options, and harder to break than half a xmas-tree ornament.
>
> BTW, how many ornaments did you go through before you cut one in half
> without shattering it?  I'm guessing it's glass, and you used a dremel?
>
> The vision stuff I'm working on is very low-level.  Similar complexity
> as the AVRCam, and omnidirectional.  I basically want to make the
> simplest useful vision sensor that can be applied to fire fighting and
> sumo robots.  All my processing is on an Atmel Mega8 right now.
> Needless to say, there's no face recognition or anything... ;)
>
> So about this CO2 thing: can't you find a fan that would be the same
> size as (or smaller than) the canister and servo combined?  I've
> always thought a fan was the way to go.  Although one year I saw a guy
> with a (large) compressed-air duster canister and a lego-driven
> trigger, and that was pretty cool!
>
> Happy building!
> Don
>

I always appreciate a repeat of the web link since I frequently jump into
the middle of threads. Thanks Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:robomontreal@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of stephane641
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 10:19 AM
To: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [robomontreal] Re: Introductions


yeah, Trinity in Hartford.
I could do the Toronto one but it doesn't have an expert level.
Then again, I don't have the space to build a maze so I could use the
practice.

Yes, the community hacked the hell of NSLU2. Not much it won't do now.
You should check the "applications" section of the wiki: aside from my
use as a robotic controller there's some weird ones like a frog-sound
monitoring station! It's a very flexible little bugger.

Yep. You'd be surprise how much processingn you can cram in 266Mhz and
32Megs of RAM when running Linux. Most windows people would say only a
decent powered portable would do but if you remove the GUI overhead of
windows you have lots of spare cycles to work with. Of course, I won't
be doing "optic flow" analysis quite soon on it but that's ok.

Yeah, I've got a nice little mountain bike CO2 emergency tire inflator
device that might do the trick. The problem is finding the place to
fit a servo to trigger it as it need quite a punch to trigger.

The mirror is just from a cheap dollar-store Christmas ornament. (cut
in half). It distorts the image way too much but it's fine for
locating the flame. A flashlight reflector works much better as it's
more parabolic.

Let me know when you start working on vision stuff and perhaps we can
help each other.

Salut,

--- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "donald_dansereau"
<donald_dansereau@...> wrote:
>
> Stephane,
>
> You say you're running late with your fire-fighter - for which
> competition?  Trinity college?  You could always enter the Candian
> events, eh?  ;)
>
> You're using the nslu2 to do your processing?  Looks like a pretty
> nifty device to work with.  I remember when they first came out, folks
> were guessing "how long 'till someone hacks this?", but it didn't
> occur to me to do vision with them.... ;)
>
> To answer your question, the CO2 extinguisher on DRED was very simple
> - where simple rhymes with "hack".  I'm guessing it's not what you're
> looking for, since it required a fan to blow the CO2 at the candle.  A
> small basket of dry ice pellets was suspended over a slightly larger
> container half-filled with water. The basket hung from a member that
> got knocked off by the fan when it was activated.  So when it was time
> to blow out the candle, the fan activated very briefly, the dry ice
> pellets fell into the water, the water container quickly filled with
> CO2 from the melting dry ice, then the fan reactivated a fixed time
> later to blow the CO2 at the candle.  Looked neat.  Didn't work very
> well - the fan did all the real work.
>
> So I took a quick look at your webpage - nice work!  SRX2 is one sexy
> looking machine.  Where'd you get the mirror?  It looks like you've
> repurposed something, but I can't quite tell what...
>
> Regards,
> Don
>







Yahoo! Groups Links

It's pretty funny that I didn't recognize that christmas tree
ornament, since I've got the same thing (not chopped in half) mounted
atop my own camera setup!  Yours looks like it started life as a
larger ornament than mine - do you figure that lends to less
distortion or more?

I've been considering rolling cones out of silvered plastic for the
mirror.  Depending on the angle of the cone, it results in a blind
spot around your robot, but it's infinitely cheaper than the comercial
options, and harder to break than half a xmas-tree ornament.

BTW, how many ornaments did you go through before you cut one in half
without shattering it?  I'm guessing it's glass, and you used a dremel?

The vision stuff I'm working on is very low-level.  Similar complexity
as the AVRCam, and omnidirectional.  I basically want to make the
simplest useful vision sensor that can be applied to fire fighting and
sumo robots.  All my processing is on an Atmel Mega8 right now.
Needless to say, there's no face recognition or anything... ;)

So about this CO2 thing: can't you find a fan that would be the same
size as (or smaller than) the canister and servo combined?  I've
always thought a fan was the way to go.  Although one year I saw a guy
with a (large) compressed-air duster canister and a lego-driven
trigger, and that was pretty cool!

Happy building!
Don

yeah, Trinity in Hartford.
I could do the Toronto one but it doesn't have an expert level.
Then again, I don't have the space to build a maze so I could use the
practice.

Yes, the community hacked the hell of NSLU2. Not much it won't do now.
You should check the "applications" section of the wiki: aside from my
use as a robotic controller there's some weird ones like a frog-sound
monitoring station! It's a very flexible little bugger.

Yep. You'd be surprise how much processingn you can cram in 266Mhz and
32Megs of RAM when running Linux. Most windows people would say only a
decent powered portable would do but if you remove the GUI overhead of
windows you have lots of spare cycles to work with. Of course, I won't
be doing "optic flow" analysis quite soon on it but that's ok.

Yeah, I've got a nice little mountain bike CO2 emergency tire inflator
device that might do the trick. The problem is finding the place to
fit a servo to trigger it as it need quite a punch to trigger.

The mirror is just from a cheap dollar-store Christmas ornament. (cut
in half). It distorts the image way too much but it's fine for
locating the flame. A flashlight reflector works much better as it's
more parabolic.

Let me know when you start working on vision stuff and perhaps we can
help each other.

Salut,

--- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "donald_dansereau"
<donald_dansereau@...> wrote:
>
> Stephane,
>
> You say you're running late with your fire-fighter - for which
> competition?  Trinity college?  You could always enter the Candian
> events, eh?  ;)
>
> You're using the nslu2 to do your processing?  Looks like a pretty
> nifty device to work with.  I remember when they first came out, folks
> were guessing "how long 'till someone hacks this?", but it didn't
> occur to me to do vision with them.... ;)
>
> To answer your question, the CO2 extinguisher on DRED was very simple
> - where simple rhymes with "hack".  I'm guessing it's not what you're
> looking for, since it required a fan to blow the CO2 at the candle.  A
> small basket of dry ice pellets was suspended over a slightly larger
> container half-filled with water. The basket hung from a member that
> got knocked off by the fan when it was activated.  So when it was time
> to blow out the candle, the fan activated very briefly, the dry ice
> pellets fell into the water, the water container quickly filled with
> CO2 from the melting dry ice, then the fan reactivated a fixed time
> later to blow the CO2 at the candle.  Looked neat.  Didn't work very
> well - the fan did all the real work.
>
> So I took a quick look at your webpage - nice work!  SRX2 is one sexy
> looking machine.  Where'd you get the mirror?  It looks like you've
> repurposed something, but I can't quite tell what...
>
> Regards,
> Don
>

Stephane,

You say you're running late with your fire-fighter - for which
competition?  Trinity college?  You could always enter the Candian
events, eh?  ;)

You're using the nslu2 to do your processing?  Looks like a pretty
nifty device to work with.  I remember when they first came out, folks
were guessing "how long 'till someone hacks this?", but it didn't
occur to me to do vision with them.... ;)

To answer your question, the CO2 extinguisher on DRED was very simple
- where simple rhymes with "hack".  I'm guessing it's not what you're
looking for, since it required a fan to blow the CO2 at the candle.  A
small basket of dry ice pellets was suspended over a slightly larger
container half-filled with water. The basket hung from a member that
got knocked off by the fan when it was activated.  So when it was time
to blow out the candle, the fan activated very briefly, the dry ice
pellets fell into the water, the water container quickly filled with
CO2 from the melting dry ice, then the fan reactivated a fixed time
later to blow the CO2 at the candle.  Looked neat.  Didn't work very
well - the fan did all the real work.

So I took a quick look at your webpage - nice work!  SRX2 is one sexy
looking machine.  Where'd you get the mirror?  It looks like you've
repurposed something, but I can't quite tell what...

Regards,
Don

I'm working on a fire-fighter for the expert division but I'm running
quite late so who knows if I'll make it on time or not.
The reason I'm so late is because I started experimenting with
computer vision last summer and got carried away for a few months and
now I'm paying the price.

So I'm definitely interested in vision too. I do it on a 266Mhz ARM
board (www.nslu2-linux.org) and although It can't do fancy
face-recognition it does do 32 colours blobs tracking at ~30fps. (as
fast as the USB camera can pump the data basically)

The university of Ottawa UAV guys adopted the same board after I
demoed them mine at the meeting and are now using 2 in parallel! One
for vision and one for AI/navigation. They have a built-in ethernet so
it's easy to connect them together and program using sockets.

ps: How did you do the CO2 extinguisher? I don't have much space for a
fan this year and CO2 is so much cooler.

Stephane,
http://robotics.no-ip.org

--- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "donald_dansereau"
<donald_dansereau@...> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm curious to know what kinds of robotics projects you all work on. I
> see from the poll that at least some of you are into fire fighting!
> For those unfamiliar with it, check out the originators at
> www.trincoll.edu/events/robot/ (or just google 'fire fighting robot').
>
> Why doesn't everyone post telling us what kinds of robots you work on?
>  What're your current projects?  Favourite past projects?  Don't be
> shy, we're all robot-geeks here.
>
> I'll get things started:
>
> My first competitive robot was a fire-fighter called DRED.  It used
> dry ice and water to produce a dramatic puff of CO2 that it blew at
> the candle.  The CO2 didn't really do much, but it sure did look cool!
>  I'll put a couple pics of DRED in the photos section.  Lego goodness!
>
> My other competitive robots have been autonomous sumos, called
> Hard-Lee (pronounced 'Hardly') and 42d (pronounced 'Fortitude') -
> clever, huh?  What made those two fun is that they were with two
> different teams, and they were entering the same competition (WCRG).
>
> I was doing the programming and electronics for both of them (both
> PICs).  Needless to say, there wasn't much sleep the night before the
> competition.  It didn't help that team 42d didn't have a finished
> chassis until the morning of, either!  Banging together old VCR parts
> at 3:00 in the morning - ah, the glory days.
>
> Right now I'm working on some new sumo ideas, but I'm mostly playing
> with vision systems to see where they might be applied to the
> lower-cost robotics competitions.  Vision has been mostly restricted
> to high-end stuff like soccer - I'm thinking of applying it to the
> grassroots stuff like sumo, fire fighting ... that sort of thing.
>
> Enough about me - let's hear from some other folks!
>
> Happy building!
> Don
>

definitely amazing!
the demo does a very good job of showcasing a wide range of potential
applications.
It reminded me of the Minority Report screen.
I want one of those!!


--- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "donald_dansereau"
<donald_dansereau@...> wrote:
>
> Alright, so this doesn't have much to do with robotics, unless you
> were interested in some sort of cool touchscreen-driven telepresence,
> but damned if it isn't the coolest vid I've seen in a long time!
>
> Touchscreen Research:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVI6xw9Zph8
>
> Happy building,
> Don
>

Alright, so this doesn't have much to do with robotics, unless you
were interested in some sort of cool touchscreen-driven telepresence,
but damned if it isn't the coolest vid I've seen in a long time!

Touchscreen Research:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVI6xw9Zph8

Happy building,
Don

Good find!

Protel has something like this built into it, and when I switched over to
Eagle I had forgotten how much this helps me picture everything in my
head.

I've tried it on a couple of the eagle projects I had previously made and
it looks great.

Nick

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006, donald_dansereau wrote:

> Another cool link... this might be useful to anyone designing their
> own PCB: it'll turn your eagle layout into a 3D POVRay rendering!
> Pretty nifty.  I haven't tried it myself, but the results look pretty
> impressive... if anyone tries it, let me know how it turns out for you!
>
> http://www.matwei.de/doku.php?id=en:eagle3d:eagle3d
>
> Happy Building!
> Don
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>

Another cool link... this might be useful to anyone designing their
own PCB: it'll turn your eagle layout into a 3D POVRay rendering!
Pretty nifty.  I haven't tried it myself, but the results look pretty
impressive... if anyone tries it, let me know how it turns out for you!

http://www.matwei.de/doku.php?id=en:eagle3d:eagle3d

Happy Building!
Don

Hi all,

I'm curious to know what kinds of robotics projects you all work on. I
see from the poll that at least some of you are into fire fighting!
For those unfamiliar with it, check out the originators at
www.trincoll.edu/events/robot/ (or just google 'fire fighting robot').

Why doesn't everyone post telling us what kinds of robots you work on?
  What're your current projects?  Favourite past projects?  Don't be
shy, we're all robot-geeks here.

I'll get things started:

My first competitive robot was a fire-fighter called DRED.  It used
dry ice and water to produce a dramatic puff of CO2 that it blew at
the candle.  The CO2 didn't really do much, but it sure did look cool!
  I'll put a couple pics of DRED in the photos section.  Lego goodness!

My other competitive robots have been autonomous sumos, called
Hard-Lee (pronounced 'Hardly') and 42d (pronounced 'Fortitude') -
clever, huh?  What made those two fun is that they were with two
different teams, and they were entering the same competition (WCRG).

I was doing the programming and electronics for both of them (both
PICs).  Needless to say, there wasn't much sleep the night before the
competition.  It didn't help that team 42d didn't have a finished
chassis until the morning of, either!  Banging together old VCR parts
at 3:00 in the morning - ah, the glory days.

Right now I'm working on some new sumo ideas, but I'm mostly playing
with vision systems to see where they might be applied to the
lower-cost robotics competitions.  Vision has been mostly restricted
to high-end stuff like soccer - I'm thinking of applying it to the
grassroots stuff like sumo, fire fighting ... that sort of thing.

Enough about me - let's hear from some other folks!

Happy building!
Don

I hadn't seen it. Thanks for the link. Amazing little
thing.

    Guy


--- donald_dansereau <donald_dansereau@...>
wrote:

>
> I know a lot of you have probably seen this anyway,
> but I had to post
> it just to make sure:
>
>
http://www.robots-dreams.com/2006/02/a_car_and_a_rob.html
> (transforming robot/car)
>
> Don
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>     robomontreal-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
>
>


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

I know a lot of you have probably seen this anyway, but I had to post
it just to make sure:

http://www.robots-dreams.com/2006/02/a_car_and_a_rob.html
(transforming robot/car)

Don

Aaron,

Surface mount, eh?  It's been quite a while... like, 5 years.  Wow,
getin' old.  I'm sure it'd come back to me pretty quick, though.

Another option is to offer them up in kit form - "some assembly
required".  Do you have the components for them lying around, too?

Don


--- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, Aaron Ramsey <spamtest@...> wrote:
> one of the school boards in town and still have 8 of these unpopulated
> PCBs left over.
>
> So atmel or pic... got them both covered for small robot controller
boards.
>
> How are your surface mount soldering skills?
>
> Aaron
>

donald_dansereau wrote:

> Now about this Atmel thing... did I say Atmel?  I meant to say PIC!
> PIC BABY, YEAH!  =)  Seriously, though, I am throwing around the idea
> of having a logo design contest, and those boards would sure make
> nifty prizes!  Drop me an email if you're interested, and we can work
> out the details.

Well, I just remembered that I have a version of the miniore that I did
for the atmega32 processor also. I was building boards last summer for
one of the school boards in town and still have 8 of these unpopulated
PCBs left over.

So atmel or pic... got them both covered for small robot controller boards.

How are your surface mount soldering skills?

Aaron

Salut la gang!

I'm also a veteran of the ORE club and unlike my good buddy Aaron I'm
totally an AVR fan so perhaps i'll move to Montreal! ;-)

As Aaron suggested we can perhaps collaborate to make our events
bigger and get more exposure in the process.
i'm looking forward to a Ontario vs Quebec Nerf-bot rivalry! :)

take care,

--- In robomontreal@yahoogroups.com, "aaron_ramsey" <spamtest@...> wrote:
>
> Hi guys,
>
> This is Aaron from over at the Ottawa robot club. Just wanted to pop
> over and say howdy and give some words of encouragement. I was one of
> the founding members of that club so I know it can go a little slow at
> the start. In the first year we had a couple meetings where only 1 or
> 2 people would show up. The real trick was to just keep at it... after
> that first year things really started growing.
>
> We have some small events planned for later this year (fall time) so I
> hope we can coordinate something between the two clubs at some point.
>
> Its too bad that you guys are staunch supporters of Atmel or I may
> have been able to donate a couple of our latest controller boards, the
> MiniORE (http://www.ottawarobotics.org/igore.html). <grin>
>
> Aaron
>

Aaron,

It's good to hear from you folks - thanks for the words of
encouragement!  I kind of see the ORE as RoboMontreal's older sibling.
  You're older, bigger and stronger than us - although some day that
might change!

With Ottawa so close, it seems some mega-meets / road trips are
definitely in order, and could be an awful lot of fun.  We could even
have some informal inter-city competitions.  There's nothing like a
little bit of rivalry to rial folks up!  Of course, that's getting a
little ahead of ourselves, since we're still a ways off of  having our
first meet over here.  We'll keep growing, though, and keep in touch.

Now about this Atmel thing... did I say Atmel?  I meant to say PIC!
PIC BABY, YEAH!  =)  Seriously, though, I am throwing around the idea
of having a logo design contest, and those boards would sure make
nifty prizes!  Drop me an email if you're interested, and we can work
out the details.

Keep in touch, and happy building!
Donald Dansereau,
RoboMontreal

Hi guys,

This is Aaron from over at the Ottawa robot club. Just wanted to pop
over and say howdy and give some words of encouragement. I was one of
the founding members of that club so I know it can go a little slow at
the start. In the first year we had a couple meetings where only 1 or
2 people would show up. The real trick was to just keep at it... after
that first year things really started growing.

We have some small events planned for later this year (fall time) so I
hope we can coordinate something between the two clubs at some point.

Its too bad that you guys are staunch supporters of Atmel or I may
have been able to donate a couple of our latest controller boards, the
MiniORE (http://www.ottawarobotics.org/igore.html). <grin>

Aaron

RoboMontreal's brand spanking new web site is up:

www.robomontreal.com

There's not much to it yet, but it'll do two things for us:
1) Increase our visibility, especially once the search engines get a
hold of it, and
2) Provide a nicer and more permanent repository for tutorials, news,
event reports, and stuff that generally fits better on a web page than
in a forum.

Any suggestions, corrections, omissions, colour-coordination tips,
etc. are very welcome!  You can contact me right here on the forum, or
by emailing Don (at) robomontreal (dot) com.

Happy building,
Donald Dansereau
RoboMontreal

Mark Tilden, the guy who came up with BEAM robotics and the
RoboSapiens, gives a pretty funny interview:

http://www.you-review.net/features/interviews/mark-tilden/

Yeah, that'd be cool - thanks!

> I read about 14 lists. If you are interested I can pass interesting
links
> along until your list size increases to generate traffic.
>
> Dan
> Indianapolis Indiana USA
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
> [mailto:robomontreal@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of donald_dansereau
> Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 1:07 PM
> To: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [robomontreal] Growing...
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> Three days old, and already we've got 8 people's attention.  Alright,
> so I'm counting myself, but it's still not too bad!  Get your friends
> on board, and before long RoboMontreal will be a valuable resource for
> everyone!
>
> Just to keep you posted on happenings, I'm in the process of creating
> a web page for RoboMontreal.  Something along the lines of
> www.ottawarobotics.com.  Having a web presence will make the group
> easier to find, and provide a much nicer interface to the links and
such.
>
> Don't forget to participate in the poll!
>
> Donald Dansereau
> RoboMontreal
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>

I read about 14 lists. If you are interested I can pass interesting links
along until your list size increases to generate traffic.

Dan
Indianapolis Indiana USA

-----Original Message-----
From: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:robomontreal@yahoogroups.com]On Behalf Of donald_dansereau
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 1:07 PM
To: robomontreal@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [robomontreal] Growing...


Hi all,

Three days old, and already we've got 8 people's attention.  Alright,
so I'm counting myself, but it's still not too bad!  Get your friends
on board, and before long RoboMontreal will be a valuable resource for
everyone!

Just to keep you posted on happenings, I'm in the process of creating
a web page for RoboMontreal.  Something along the lines of
www.ottawarobotics.com.  Having a web presence will make the group
easier to find, and provide a much nicer interface to the links and such.

Don't forget to participate in the poll!

Donald Dansereau
RoboMontreal






Yahoo! Groups Links

Hi all,

Three days old, and already we've got 8 people's attention.  Alright,
so I'm counting myself, but it's still not too bad!  Get your friends
on board, and before long RoboMontreal will be a valuable resource for
everyone!

Just to keep you posted on happenings, I'm in the process of creating
a web page for RoboMontreal.  Something along the lines of
www.ottawarobotics.com.  Having a web presence will make the group
easier to find, and provide a much nicer interface to the links and such.

Don't forget to participate in the poll!

Donald Dansereau
RoboMontreal

Enter your vote today!  A new poll has been created for the
robomontreal group:

Which kinds of robotics competitions would you like to see hosted in Montreal?

   o Sumo
   o Underwater
   o Soccer
   o Micromouse
   o Combat (robot wars style)
   o Walker
   o Line follower
   o Fire fighting


To vote, please visit the following web page:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/robomontreal/surveys?id=12246107

Note: Please do not reply to this message. Poll votes are
not collected via email. To vote, you must go to the Yahoo! Groups
web site listed above.

Thanks!

Welcome to the first forum dedicated to robotics enthusiasts in the
Montreal area! Roboticists of all skill levels, shapes and sizes are
welcome. The forum will focus on resources, groups, and events of
specific interest to robotics enthusiasts in the Montreal area.

While you're here, why not participate in our first poll: What kinds
of robotics competitions would you like to see hosted in the Montreal
area? Also, please feel free to get things started by contributing
links to your own websites and any other sites you think might be of
interest to other members.

Welcome, and enjoy!
Donald Dansereau
RoboMontreal

Testing the emergency RoboMontreal broadcast system.  Had this been a
real emergency, platoons of six-foot robots with viciously diverse
arrays of dentist's tools would be knocking down your doors at this
very moment.  Have a nice day!