Author Archive for Michael Aivaliotis

Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy Team 1717

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on November 24, 2008
in FIRST FRC
. 0 Comments

This video is the first in a series of videos I will be releasing over the next couple of months related to my trip to Atlanta for the 2008 FIRST Robotic Championship. I took a lot of video there and I don’t want it to sit on my hard drive. Instead, I want to make sure the enthusiasm, excitement and craziness of the competition is shown so that new mentors can be motivated to help the next generation of engineers and scientists waiting in the wings.

From Noozhawk:

The Dos Pueblos High School Engineering Academy‘s Robotics Team came in second in its division, losing only to the team that went on to capture the overall title. There were 86 teams in the division from all over the world, including Israel and Canada. There were 340 teams in the competition.

All told, researching, developing and building the robot cost around $13,000, which was covered by and large by the team’s nine local sponsors: Afar Communications, ATK, Flir Systems, Impulse Internet Services, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), National Security Technologies, Raytheon, Renco and Valley Precision Products.

This year’s Team 1717 members are Alex Adams, Meha Agrawal, Daniel Barrett, Erika Bildsten, Will Campbell, Kevin Cheng, Scott Cook, Kieran Dunne, Sahar El Abbadi, Erika Eskenazi, Omar Gonzalez, Val Harbunou, Ricky Hayes, Jasper Jacobs, Wei Jiang, Trevor Johnson, Robert Kim, Matt Logan, Stephen MacFarlane, Scott Martinis, Joseph McDaniel, Zak McFarland, James McKinny, Michael Reveles, Sam Ridgeway, J.R. Riggs, Nico Ruvalcaba, Natalie Schauser, Melody Tan, Daniel Turvey, Wei Wu and Xuyang Zhang.

Powercast Wireless Power System

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on November 15, 2008
in Robo Business 2008 and wireless
. 2 Comments

In this video from RoboBusiness 2008, we interview Steven from Powercast who shows off some cool wireless power technology.

From the Powercast website:

Founded in 2003, Powercast developed a receiver module with breakthrough efficiency levels. Coupled with a transmitter that sends RF energy using algorithms developed by Powercast, the Powercast Wireless Power Platform™ was born. While the concept of sending power “through the air” has been discussed for more than 100 years, Powercast is the first company to make it commercially viable. Powercast is now leading the cross-industry initiative to bring wireless power to a hundreds of low power devices.

Here’s a promo video from Powercast:

Powercast timeline from Iniko on Vimeo.

Resources:

LabVIEW based electric guitar effects pedals

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on November 7, 2008
in LabVIEW and NIWeek 2008
. 2 Comments

A video from NIWeek 2008. Benjamin Cook really had fun building this electric guitar effects system based around NI hardware and LabVIEW.

This is a wireless audio processing project. A 550 MHz transmitter transmits FM modulated data to a 5600 down converter. It down converts the data to 25MHz. That gets sent to a 5640R IF-RIO card. The IF-RIO card has an FPGA. That’s where all the demodulation and audio processing happens which then gets sent out the sound card. You get very low latency audio response.

Discuss on LAVA Forums

Find this video on: YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion and Blip.tv

Robotgrrl is back, and she’s got lot’s of pictures

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on July 29, 2008
in Robotics and Websites
. 1 Comment

One of my favourite features of Stanford is the beautiful architecture. You really have to see it in real, but I hope my pictures will better illustrate it! The detail and texture is amazing.
The total GB count of all the photos I took is 9.46! But, I only chose the best and uploaded them, so with all the small versions and thumbnails, it totaled to 2.3GB. :) Source Link

New ExpressionFlow Studio video series

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on July 7, 2008
in LabVIEW
. 1 Comment


ExpressionFlow Studio - Objects and Classes from Tomi Maila on Vimeo.

As you know, here at VI Shots we love video. So I’m excited that one of our favorite blogs has started producing a new series of videos focusing on LabVIEW Object-Oriented programming. I’ve embedded the first video above.

Tomi’s done a great job on the graphics, and he cuts from wide to close up shots nicely. It takes a lot of work to produce decent video and Tomi’s efforts show in the resulting output. The audio needs some improvement. I think this can easily be solved by bringing the mic in closer or switching to a lavalier. I’m looking forward to more episodes.

Goldfish following camera powered by LabVIEW

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on June 19, 2008
in LabVIEW
. 3 Comments

Well, this video could use some editing but here it is. A totally useless application demonstrating the vision capabilities of LabVIEW. Watch a camera mounted on an X-Y motion platform tracking the movements of a goldfish in a fish tank.

Free Spore creature creator

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on June 18, 2008
in Games
. 2 Comments

I just downloaded the free Spore creature creator. I created my first creature, took some photos of it and even uploaded a video to Youtube directly from the software. All of the above in just half an hour of playing with it. It’s pretty slick.

I gotta hand it to the creators for coming up with imaginative names for all the varied body parts available in the game. Names such as: Pincernaut, Crockisser, Terrorpin, Gobsterclaw and Nubknuckle. Just to name a few. The physics of the creations is pretty realistic. If you have kids, put them in front of this and watch them learn.


Download it Here

Mars rover demo exhibit powered by LabVIEW

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on June 18, 2008
in LabVIEW
. 0 Comments

LabVIEW for MINDSTORMS book in the works

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on June 16, 2008
in Books, LabVIEW and mindstorms nxt
. 0 Comments

There is a new Mindstorms NXT book currently in production by Michael Gasperi that focuses on using LabVIEW to program your robot. I’m excited about this for obvious reasons. I’m a strong advocate of using LabVIEW in just about everything and of course the popular Lego robot is no exception. NXT-G has LabVIEW at the core, but it has a very limited subset of the entire language.

LabVIEW for MINDSTORMS was written by an expert in LEGO MINDSTORMS with the cooperation of National Instruments to create the definitive guide to programming the NXT using LabVIEW. See Author Bio

Using the robotic construction projects included with the retail Lego Mindstorms NXT product the author shows how advanced tools from the LabVIEW Toolkit can be used to build more versatile and complicated designs. Several new projects of a more laboratory or industrial nature are also included to show computer control with the NXT as a data acquisition and control device. Advanced NXT topics like Data Files, Bluetooth, and I2C communications are also treated as well as how to connect the NXT to the internet with a web server.

The book is further set apart by its packaging. Enclosed with each new book is a CD containing the LabVIEW 8.5 demo version, the LabVIEW Toolkit, and all the programming examples from the book. Everything you need to enhance and extend your robotic design.

Michael Gasperi is an authority and a well known author of several LEGO MINDSTORMS books. His popular website, LEGO Mindstorms NXT/RCX Sensor Input Page, homebrew sensor chapters in the Extreme MINDSTORMS, and his Extreme NXT book have guided hundreds people through the process of building hardware extensions and programming in alternative languages.

Resources:

See Also:

Styrobots help Robotgrrl fund her school tuition

Published
by
Michael Aivaliotis
on June 4, 2008
in Robotics
. 2 Comments



I always do what Google tells me to do. A few weeks ago my Google reader suggested that I should follow the robotgrrl blog RSS feed. So I did. This blog is about robotics from a Montreal, Canada High School girls point of view. Erin loves robots. So much so that she applied to the Stanford University EPGY summer program - Artificial Intelligence. After she got accepted, she announced that funding for her tuition would come from the sale of styrobots. These are little hand made robots that combine vibrobot “technology”, painted Styrofoam cups and a cute name. Erin is selling these on Etsy. Erin is heading for the final stretch deadline to collect $1200 before June 13th. You can help. Go to her site and donate to a good cause. Not sure if Erin will make any more Styrobots for her Etsy shop but keep checking there. After the recent exposure she got on dvice, I don’t think she will be able to keep up with demand. Watch the video to see what a Styrobot looks like.

Update: 6 New Styrobots have been built.