Admin day

Due to a lost hard drive yesterday, today was dedicated to establishing a Samba network group on the two Linux boxes in my office, in order to transfer data from the main design machine (a Windows box) onto several platforms.

In addition, further design work was done on the robot chassis. Glenn (workshop manager) was unfortunately sick today, so no material to start machining yet. Hopefully he well be back tomorrow, so machining will commence tomorrow morning. This will give me tonight to consolidate the machining models in proE, ensuring eberything is ready to go.

ProE Design

Design and assembly of the robot chassis is progressing relatively well. Material has been requested from Glenn Nuwins, and once it arrives manufacture on the CNC can begin. As this is expected to be a rather iterative process, the base will be manufactured while design on the reminder of the chassis continues. This method should (hopefully) reduce machining time. Have a look at my proposed schedule (to be posted soon) if you feel in need of some light entertainment.

Camera feed

Using xawtv, a viewing application for linux, it was possible to initialise and begin viewing the camera feed. however, the pwc module that is standard in the Redhat 9.0 kernel only supports 160x120 frame resolution, from a camera that can deliver 640x480.

Once pwcx (Phillips Web Cam, apparently the same chip-set that Logitech uses for the Quickam Pro 400) drivers are downloaded and installed, full feed should be available from the camera.

Software installation

1. Today was spent mainly configuring the PC104 stack to function with the various boards. There seems to be some trouble with interrupt configuration - only 4 dedicated interrupt lines are open on the PCM3370 motherboard, which is a problem as a Cardbus adaptor board, USB/IEEE1394 expansion board and both RTD boards are require dedicated interrupts. However, this evening a working configuration seems to have been discovered.

2. Also researched today was the implementation of a Logitech QuickCam Pro4000 webcam into the platform, which should be completed in the coming week.

3. Mechanical design of the chassis is progressing. Materials will be ordered tomorrow (Monday) and machining on the CNC will begin on Tuesday/Wednesday.