Assembly, Finland

paulfo — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:29:29 GMT

Well here I am, on a gorgeous day with clear blue skies and bright sunshine, in Finland attending the Assembly. A huge event attracting thousands of your technology enthusiasts. The Hartwell arena is filling up fast as attendees bring their beloved computer kit to participate in this four day technology fun-fest!

I have succeed navigating Heathrow Terminal 1 with a borrowed iRobot Create and a Lynx Motion 6 axis arm. Together with my flight case containing my 5.8Ghz wireless camera and blimp parts.

The blimp is now assembled and has been tested flying across the stadium. It is slightly heavy but this means it is tending downwards. Fixings are also much better than at Mashed so I hope not to go home with it stuck in the roof this time! The camera output is to be used several times during the event by the event organisers to give the birds eye perspective. Should be cool as they turn the lights out in the stadium at 18:00. I've attached a strobe light to the bottom of the blimp so it can be seen!

I have also been working hard on my presentation. I have 105 minutes to show off Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio to the 16 to 25yo (mainly) attendees. At 39 I'm feeling old - you should see some of these guys play Guitar Hero 3! 'Through the Fire and Flames' Expert level :-O. Apparently the Finnish Guitar Hero 3 final is to take place over the event - the winners go on to compete in Germany.

Anyways, apparently my presentation will be broadcast not only on the Alive web channel but it is also being picked up on some Finnish cable channels - so my audience could be as much as 300k! The blows out my FY09 audience figures :-) I'll have to busy myself with other stuff the rest of the year ;-)

I'm pleased to report that - with the help of my friends in the XNA UK user group - I now also have a working R2D2 as my simulated demo robot. R2 is equipped with Laser Range Finder and web cam but still uses the differential drive system - nope I haven't implemented his leg rockets (yet).

It sure is going to be fun!

Preparing for The Assembly

paulfo — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:01:19 GMT

I have been lucky enough to get a speaking slot at The Assembly in Finland at the end of the month. 7000 computer hobbyists in one place for four days. Naturally I am talking about robotics! My plan during the session is to show how to build simulated worlds and robots to play in them. This will allow delegates to explore the world of robotics without cost - remember Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is free for non-commercial use and requires only free runtime downloads from MS including Visual C# Express 2005/8.

However, I'm only speaking for a couple of hours and the event is four days long - although I can only attend for the first two days. So while manning the Microsoft booth I need a few more things to play with.

So, I have been plotting the rebuild of the Wotudo blimp! Today I got the final part - a new 5.8Ghz wireless camera. The camera from Flyonthewall is superb quality! I mashed up a battery connector for it (using a PP3 9V battery) and was able to walk around my garden getting excellent colour images and audio from the camera. My garden is pretty big at 1.1acres, I only got signal interference when line of sight was broken by bushes and trees at about 40metres out, but once line of sight was restored it continued to work very well.

The plan is to use two new blimp balloons and the original blimp gondola with the camera to fly within The Assembly venue. Rather than having the two blimp balloons stacked - as we did at Mashed - I'm hoping we can make more of a 'X-wing' horizontal arrangement with them side by side and the gondola and camera in the middle.

The camera receiver isn't USB so I intend to use my camcorder as the bridging device. This can take a video feed in from the receiver and convert it as required to a USB output which my laptop can use as a web cam. I can then process the feed as I wish - probably using the Volts-IQ visual SDK again to detect faces and other objects. Being 5.8Ghz of course I don't cause interference with Wifi :-)

I also have an iRobot Create to take, and will put the camera onto this also, providing me with a remote camera I can process the feed from, for vision guidance etc. I don't have time to mount a PC on the Create as I intended too, so having it under remote Bluetooth control from a PC and with a wireless vision system is pretty cool to demo and play with. I may take my Lynxmotion 6 Axis arm with me as I can also control this via a wireless mechanism if I plumb the servos into my Devantech servo controller board rather than the servo controller supplied with the arm. Both the controller board and the arm run from batteries, so no real effort required to put this all together. I do need a new micro servo for the gripper as the gears break very easily - something to get ordered I think!!

I think The Assembly is looking pretty cool. I am very excited to be going and to be taking my toys with me!! Although the Sauna in the speaker lounge could be one step to far - even my Stockholm past hasn't prepared me for this ;-). If you are also attending do drop by the MS booth and my seminar to say hi!

Wot u do with .net : The Assembly

Assembly, Finland

Preparing for The Assembly