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Author Topic: over engineered light fixture bot HELP!  (Read 2037 times)

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Offline acoorsTopic starter

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over engineered light fixture bot HELP!
« on: April 09, 2013, 03:45:52 AM »
I'd like to start a project on a very over engineered light fixture . Essentially I want a light to follow me around the room... I have plans for using a servo at the base to rotate a foot long neck 180° left and right. My other servo will be mounted vertically at the base if this neck and act as a joint for 180° forward and back giving it the ability to track 360° horizontal and the area if the room below it... What I want is for the servos to act together to follow my position around a room. Only thing I'm not sure if us the kind of sensors to use to track my position... I've thought about using an array of motion sensors but if two people are in the room I think it'll freak out... So I thought of wiring in an ir receiver and carrying a small transmitter around with me but I'm worried about 1 the xmitter having interference or 2 me losing it...the only other option I can think of is having a camera wired in and programming it to recognize me... But then I think I'd need on board computing our a connection to off board... These are just ideas I'm running through right now... I Could use any help that's offered... And if my explication confuses anybody I am sorry... I'd be happy to explaim further with more feedback... I was hoping to run it off a single microcontroller
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Offline newInRobotics

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Re: over engineered light fixture bot HELP!
« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2013, 05:08:04 AM »
You can run it using Raspberry PI (for video processing) and any microcontroller with UART feature (to run servos) :)
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Offline acoorsTopic starter

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Re: over engineered light fixture bot HELP!
« Reply #2 on: April 09, 2013, 06:18:37 AM »
Thanks a bunch.. I was thinking the same just wanted to hear someone lese say it... gives me an excuse to buy on now  ;D
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Offline newInRobotics

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Re: over engineered light fixture bot HELP!
« Reply #3 on: April 09, 2013, 06:30:01 AM »
If I were You, I'd try all that on regular PC first, starting only with video processing using web-cam and some quick prototyping language, if that works and You can get positional data, I'd add 8-bit microcontroller and small servos mounted by laser pointer (or something similar) to fine tune the algorithm, and only then I'd go for Raspberry PI, get it configured and algorithm rewritten to whatever language Raspberry PI uses to do image processing, and full strength servos man enough to handle spotlight.

There are probably other ways to achieve same thing. Give it some time and other forum members, most likely, will share their knowledge regarding the matter :)
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"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." - Kristian W

Offline acoorsTopic starter

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Re: over engineered light fixture bot HELP!
« Reply #4 on: April 09, 2013, 07:34:37 AM »
Thanks for your post... that soumds like a good idea. I like the pi option but I'm not experianced with it... but once I get it running with the pi ill be able to add other features like voice control. Ill start off with windows though toprotp and get an idea of everything I want to do with it :D
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Offline acoorsTopic starter

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Re: over engineered light fixture bot HELP!
« Reply #5 on: April 09, 2013, 07:40:35 AM »
That and I was wanting to use the raspberry pi to do my end of quater research report... it'd be cool to have an example of its capabilities
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Offline newInRobotics

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Re: over engineered light fixture bot HELP!
« Reply #6 on: April 09, 2013, 07:44:14 AM »
Its main capability is that it runs Linux (ready to download from Raspberry PI web-site), hence all resources are managed by OS so all You have to worry about is writing a script/app to do what You want to do. In essence Raspberry Pi is a mini PC.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2013, 07:45:40 AM by newInRobotics »
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"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." - Kristian W

Offline acoorsTopic starter

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Re: over engineered light fixture bot HELP!
« Reply #7 on: April 09, 2013, 11:51:11 AM »
Ya I've looked into them... there really cool... I tgink that its a great opportunitt to add a small on board computing system to alot of ribotics designs
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