Spy Gear®

by **rorschachuk** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:08 am

cpt_hans wrote:I've finally finished the app for Hack#8. I never could completely surmount my issues with the filesystem (number of file-writes per session, bmp corruption, etc.), so I had to make some concessions.

Oh, I thought this would have fixed the problem with the BMP file being given the same handle as the log file!

RorschachUK

by **cpt_hans** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 8:09 am

***EDIT***
The filesystem problem appears to be resolved, see the post below. -CPT_Hans
***

I tried that, but still had the .bmp file corruption problem. I even attempted to use FlushFile and a JAPI_ implementation of it, but to no avail. (It took some time to figure out the syntax.)

I also tried using a separate variable for each inserted character of each file type...thinking perhaps there might be some handle issue with using a common variable to generate the inserted characters. Nope.

In fact, it got to the point where I had introduced a 'stutter' into the .wave files. Since it seemed like I was making it worse the deeper I got, I decided to back off, and settle for 9 captures rather than the 99 I was hoping for.

I'd spent way more time on this than I wanted, and was ready to move on to the next project. As I get smarter at coding, I hope to come back and revisit this and release an updated version.

-CPT_Hans

by **cpt_hans** » Sat Feb 04, 2012 8:52 pm

RorschachUK, I owe you an apology: I went back to the app to fix a couple of bugs that I noticed. I had saved many different versions of the app.c file, when I was trying to sort out the filesystem issue. I was trying so many different things, that I guess I got it all muddled in my head. It didn't appear I tried your handle variable after all.

I finally got it to work correctly with one of my intermediate attempts, where I open the filesystem only upon PIR activation, and close the file system after each set of .bmp and .wav files are written.

Now I can write 99 captures!

Thanks again for saving my bacon!

I updated the above posts and the .zip file.

-CPT_Hans

by **cpt_hans** » Wed Feb 08, 2012 9:38 pm

Here's my next project:

I'm going to graft an Owi Robot Arm onto a Trakr, and control it from the remote. It will be similar in scope to the missile launcher hack.

-CPT_Hans

by **natedog325** » Mon Feb 20, 2012 2:37 pm

I just had a real quick off-topic question. Why are there a bunch of grown ups online?

by **gelfling6** » Wed Feb 22, 2012 11:22 am

natedog325 wrote:I just had a real quick off-topic question. Why are there a bunch of grown ups online?

I think the British actor, Tom Baker put it the best...

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes"

The device, Okay, let's say Toy, is enjoyed by both adults and children, and programmable by both!

Think of this too.. the ideas shared by both, can be used by one or the other.. this was a fairly high-tech toy for its time..

by **lion xl** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 3:46 pm

Han's... check out this metal detector build:

http://hackaday.com/2012/02/23/autonomous-metal-detector-lets-you-sit-back-get-rich/

by **cpt_hans** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:29 pm

That's pretty cool. Very similar to my hack, but it sounds like they took a real metal detector and stripped it down.

I bet the Trakr was cheaper though!

-CPT_Hans

by **cpt_hans** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:50 pm

Hack #9 is still coming along. I'm having to work out some details on how the app will interface the remote to the robot arm. I wish the remote had a few more programmable buttons!

I've decided to not have the arm rotate on the Trakr; instead opting to steer the Trakr itself for left and right movement. It was just getting too user-unfriendly to try and manipulate that many different motions.

One concern I have is that unlike the missile launcher, there are no limit switches in the robot arm. While that makes for less wires, it increases the likelihood of accidentally stripping out the gears. I think I'm going to implement some sort of current limiting, where I use a transistor circuit to feed the ADC. When the current reaches a certain level (i.e. the motor has stalled against the mechanical stop), the app can read a signal off the ADC, and shut down the H-bridge chip.

I have to work that part out yet, but I'm confident of success.

-CPT_Hans