Off-the-Shelf Digital Still Camera with Wireless/Remote Capture/Download Capability

1. Digital Still Cameras (DSC) have good lenses and large image sensors. They take good pictures in varied lighting conditions
2. There are many DSCs that are super cheap say like Rs 5000 to Rs 10000. 
3. DSCs that provide WIFI and Remote Control option are also available, but they are expensive and of the range of Rs 20000 or more and also limited in exposing their APIs/control, etc. This was in 2019. Things might be different now.
4. So modding/hacking a DSC to take pictures into its SD CARD and then download it remotely would be beneficial.
5. This is simply done by using a servo as a picture taking plunger that is operated by an SBC say like an RPI and either by WIFI or via the internet, access a web server control mechanism that allows a remote user to click pictures or take videos.
6. And then use a relay to switch the camera to download the pictures on the SD card and via the same web server mechanism enable pictures to be downloaded.
7. Below is such an implementation. A Web Browser is used to click the picture and then after the picture is clicked another URL is invoked to put the camera into download mode and the picture downloaded.
8. This was just a PoC and could be improved immensely.
   
   

How to Teledrive a Modded RC Car (Drive from anywhere around the world)

1. How to remotely drive a vehicle from anywhere in the world?
2. Teledrive ie remote drive is a useful idea.
3. One application: UAVs are flown around the world for surveillance while sitting in the comfort of a terrestrial ground station.
4. Another example is to drive a Truck over the network like here: Einride Remote Drive Prototype 
5. Customising a commercial EV even though a very exciting exercise has its own challenges and timelines.
1. Need to understand the mechanical angle and also the hardware angle, say identify relevant motors, torques and install and check they perform optimally. Will have to be iterated multiple times.
6. A better option would be to try all the experiments on a small scale, say on a toy. Something similar to the Flight of Phoenix (2004) movie.
7. There have been many mods of expensive RC car like the Traxxas car. Traxxas RC cars
1. But these are expensive and hence a low cost solution is needed
8.  There are many Off the Shelf RC cars. But they are usually very small and cannot be driven on the roads.
9. Was lucky to find a large RC car about 2 feet in length.
1. It came with all the fitments: battery compartment, shocks, Ackerman steering mechanism ,etc The unmodded vehicle is as shown below
10. The new RC vehicle is low cost so car lifetime might vary.
1. The Remote control would get stuck and this would have its own challenges.
11. This vehicle is pretty fast as it has 2 motors, 1 each for back and front and an additional one for the steering. The Steering motor does not have fine control. It also has a set of lights but they were not very useful in the dark.
12. The vehicle was modded and stripped down to the chassis. 
1. Motor drives for the 3 motors were added.
2. A RPI for drive control and also for streaming camera feed. Standard RPI camera.
3. An Airtel 4G SIM with a Quectel modem module.
4. A drone LiPo battery with voltage regulators.
5. An IP 65 box was used to house all the hardware   
13. And the result:

• Now need night driving support too 
• Added a bicycle light on the chassis as follows
  
  
  
  
  
  

Driving

• The video and control path from the Modded Car is accessible at an AWS location.
• One can connect from anywhere in the world and drive the car. Attached below is the video of it being driven remotely. The  FPV and the rearview

Low Cost ROS Bot

 

1. There was need to build a low cost ROS bot.
2. ROS is the Robot Operating System, provides a platform to easily build bots.
3. A Commonly available chassis was used and the relevant motor drivers, driver control hardware was integrated. Uses a Raspberry Pi inside.
4. A custom ROS service was written for the motor control. 
5. An unmaintained ROS app called ROSCONTROL was used to provide accelerometer values to wirelessly drive the BOT. It also provides a virtual joystick mode that can be used for BOT control.
6. The Pi is the ROS master and the other slaves connect  over WIFI and enable control of the BOT.
7. ROS is version 1.
8. As the video shows, one can comfortably navigate the bot using the phone as input.

Arduino running on a common motor used as Generator

1. Intent is to run an electronic device using Wind Energy.
2. Use a common device as electricity generator.
3. A motor can also function as a Generator. Brushed motor?
4. Turning the motor spindle will generate some voltage at the  motor leads.
5. So using a wind blower one can generate enough voltage to turn on an Arduino.
6. The Generator inputs are given to the Vin pin and GND of a UNO board.
7. Did not actually measure the voltages but the voltage regulator took care of powering the UNO, turning it on. If the voltages exceeded the rated limits maybe it would fry the board too.
8. The UNO can be seen running the LED blinky program
   
   
   
   
   

An Alternate way of testing Ground Speed Sensor for a Locomotive

1. The diesel locomotives WDP*  and WDG* series are GM EMD Locomotives 
2. These locomotives use a Doppler effect (Radar) based ground speed sensor.
3. This Radar is used for wheel slip measurement, which means that the locomotive has lost traction and its wheels are hopelessly turning and hence not moving.
4. The quick way of testing this radar is to hold a tuning fork of a certain frequency and depending on its resonant frequency the Radar senses the speed
5. So ideally anything that resonates at a certain frequency can be used.
6. A speaker also resonates at certain frequency.
7. So if a sinusoidal wave is fed to the speaker diaphragm it would also resonate at its base frequency.
8. Luckily got a speaker set and used an Android Tone generator app and below are the results.
9. Basically a proof of concept of speed sensing based on frequency of tone.
10. 2 videos below demonstrate the speed sensor sensing different frequencies based on tone.
11. The pista green device with the white lens is the radar that is being tested

Game for the blind

1. Have been thinking about writing a game for the blind since a long time
2. Got an opportunity when a couple of High School Kids came up with the requirement
3. Many options were experimented on: Scratch, Unity, etc
4. It was decided to Keep it Simple and modding an existing game
5. What other better than to implement in python and use python games
6. Used an example from here PyGame Pythonprogramming.net example 
7. This is a car game where one has to avoid blocks in its path or falling on it
8. To make it suitable for blind playing, visual representation of a block falling on the car or not and the speed of it falling were alerted to the user by means of different sounds; one tone for block not being in line with the car, one tone for slow rate of drop on the car and one tone for rapid rate of drop on the car. So hearing these sound clues, one can use the cursor keys to escape the falling blocks. This can be seen in the video.
9. One can also play comfortably with their eyes closed.
10. It can be improved further: sounds, interaction, etc. Later ?

Post 0 (Bonney Post)

 Technology Thoughts

1. Just a first post to make sure it works
2. Questions to be asked
3. Answers to be given