Conical mirrors

     I have been researching conical mirrors and what I have fond out so far is that it is best to have a slimmer conical mirror gives you a larger viewing radius than a wider version because, if you multiply the reciprocal of the slope of the mirror by arc-cos it will give you the angle of the viewing radius the larger the slope the lager the viewing radius, though you can have the same viewing radius with both by just changing the the focal length because the smaller the focal length, the larger the aperture or viewing radius will be, but if the focal length is the same than the mirror with the largest slope will give you the largest viewing radius. The only thing is that I have not fond out how to find the viewing radius of the 'teardrop' shaped conical mirror because of the concave shape at the top which makes it very hard for me to preform any math on it because of the concave top, to find the other ones you just have to use basic trigonometry but I don't know how to find the viewing radius of a concave mirror I do have the formula for finding the viewing radius but I do not know how to do it (I don't know if I'm just making this overly complex, but the formula is at the bottom ). I also fond an interesting article of people using conical mirrors with robotics (Here is it URL:http://robotti.wikidot.com/mobilerobotquestions).

Police ALERT - Proof of Concept and soldering

Over the last few days, when InvenTeam students are around, I have had them working on the Police ALERT Proof of Concept test bed.  The base, stand, "mirror", and camera mount is now done.  Albert has been working on redoing the code he had made this summer.  We should have a working model soon.

Seth has been learning how to solder.  He assembled a timing circuit yesterday.  Today, on of the mentors, who is an electronics technician, is going to come in and work with him after school today.

Although he doesn't look it, Seth is thrilled to be soldering a timing circuit together for practice.

Yesterday, I gave Chloe the email to a Sergeant that works for the Los Lunas Police Department. He indicated to send him information regarding the project. He will then have to forward to the Chief of Police. The Chief will have final say on who to operate on the vehicles themselves.

Great Work!

Everyone has been doing some great research for the project, which is very exciting! Getting through the little kinks and details these last couple of weeks has been tedious, but a lot of progress has been made. I'm also very glad we have such great mentors who took the time out yesterday to have a Google hangout with us and help us out. 

Proof of concept test bed

Today I got information from sparkfun about their return policies. We will be returning two CMUcam4 soon. I also worked on building the proof of concept test bed with Maria and Clara. We finished cutting most of the materials and will start assembling them later this week.

Proof of Concept Test Bed

Clara, Maria, and Victoria all working on our proof of concept test bed.

Meeting with Mentors

Everyone working on getting the Police ALERT up and going. Had a successful meeting with three of our mentors, Chana Greene, Wesley Myers, and Tim Hayward.

Chloe, Noah, Albert, Denton, and Zack making progress after getting input from mentors.

SolidWorks and Proof of Concept Test Bed

Today I worked on learning more on how to use Solid Works with Denton, we also went over the current Police ALERT model that Denton had created so that I was up to speed. I also worked on helping build the proof of concept test bed with Denton and Victoria. We cut of some of the materials and painted them black or white depending on the part.

Google Hangout meeting with Tim, Wes, and Chana

Today we had a Google hangout meeting with Tim, Wes, and Chana. Team members present were Chloe, Albert, Noah, Maria, Victoria, Clara, and myself. We worked on figuring out how to install OpenCV to the RaspberryPi, and decided that we are going to continue the project with the RaspberryPi instead of the Arduino Unos. We are now working on compiling our vision code on the RaspberryPi.

Google Hangout meeting with Tim, Wes, and Chana

Today we chatted with our mentors about some of the technical issues that we are having. We are trying to compile opencv onto our raspberry pi. We were informed that we have some corrupt files and are now on the right path. We were also informed that it is best to compile our code straight on the raspberry pi rather than attempting to cross compile it.

Experimenting with Raspberry Pi and Beagle Bone.

After realizing that arduino units are not going to have enough computational power to work effectively in the Police ALERT design, the team started looking into other options.

Chloe, Albert, and Zack tinkering with Pis and Bones.

Today, we worked on getting OpenCV installed on the raspberrypi. It proved to be a rather daunting task. Our plan is to get it running on the raspberrypi so we can see how well it performs.

Today, I worked on figuring out the best way to implement OpenCV code on a microprocessor. We decided that the raspberry pi may be the easiest processor to install OpenCV; therefore, we worked on installing OpenCV on the raspberry pi. I hate a ham sandwich. I enjoyed it.