Dad and I headed up the Reagan Library tonight for the 4th try at the launch of a Satellite atop a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, about 100 miles to our east. Fortunately the weather cooperated this time, and despite being a bit cold, the launch went off without a hitch.

I took my inverted pendulum balancing robot, added a camera and wireless transmitter, and let everyone around the office take a spin. The event was not without mishap, but it’s a lot of fun to watch people interact with the robot, and not so much fun when they try to block it’s view, or just don’t get out of it’s way. Or they kick volleyballs at it. That’s just mean.

I added feedback from the motor encoders this week, which allows the robot to know that it is moving. Previously it only knew it was tilted, so it wanted to run away if it was only tilted slightly. I also wired up the batteries, which were salvaged from a less-than-optimal dell laptop battery. I’ve still got some work to do, but the velocity feedback is now countering it’s tendency to run away. The center of gravity is still really low (I’m waiting for mounts to get made to move the batteries up to the top), so it can still outrun itself really easily. Next on the list is to add control from the PC via the bluetooth module that is currently attached.

I’ve been trying to install Windows Vista since RC1. I have burned 4 coaster DVD’s that would get some percent of the way through the install and then fail with corrupt file errors. I don’t really need Vista, but I wanted to play with it nevertheless. I also picked up an ATI HDTV Wonder PCI with some Christmas money, and without Windows XP Media Center Edition, I’m stuck using ATI’s crummy media center software for watching and recording TV. It doesn’t even have a decent built in program guide.

So, I spent some of Friday night and Saturday giving Vista one more try at installing. I have 3 hard drives in my PC, so i cleared one of the partitions and went to work. I burned a DVD and tried to install from within Windows XP, which is entirely possible. However, I got the dreaded “corrupt file” error twice in a row. After consulting Google, I found out that mounting the Vista ISO using a virtual drive tool like Daemon tools will work for the install, since apparently the Vista installer copies all the relevant data to the hard drive, modifies the boot sector to boot, then does all the nitty gritty install stuff, but at that point you don’t need the install disc anymore.

After updating my Motherboard’s bios and giving Vista its time to install, I had a new machine up and going. Everything on the Microsoft site claims the HDTV Wonder is compatible with Vista, but the first message I got about hardware was that it wasn’t. Later I found out that Vista had installed the drivers for the Digital side of the tuner but not the analog side. I installed the Krams Driver and followed the instructions, but Media Center still refused to cooperate. Browsing the Vista Device Manager, I saw that there was a hardware component that hadn’t installed correctly. I clicked on it and did an auto update of the driver, and viola, the Analog and Digital components of the HTDV Wonder installed. Rebooting and running Media Center one more time gave me live TV, but with much studdering and skipping.

Eventually I found out that when I updated the Bios, I hadn’t reset my CPU clock, so my processor was running at about half horsepower. Fixing this made most of the studdering go away, but not all. It seems that my Athlon XP 3000+ at 2GHz just isn’t enough for Vista and Media Center, even with nothing else running. The same setup nets about 35% CPU usage on XP using the ATI media center. Arrrrg.

So, at least until I get a chance to upgrade my hardware, I’m going to have to stick with XP. My general impression of Vista is that it doesn’t have enough new stuff to warrant a change just for the heck of it, but it is fun to play with and pretty to look at. I’ve had some further problems with the ATI Catalyst Control Center not allowing me to change to the right screen resolutions, but other than that most things have been smooth.

One point to make, but that most who read this far will already know: Vista doesn’t have any major advantages over XP that I’ve found yet. If your computer is working for you fine as it is, you probably don’t have any real reason to upgrade. But, you probably didn’t have to read all of my rambling to figure that one out.

On the advice of a coworker, I’ve been looking for a Air Hogs Aero Ace Biplane for about the past two months. I finally picked up one at Target last week and I’ll have to say it’s the best toy ever. Of the about 10 people who have also flown mine, at least 5 have already bought one for themselves. The plane is less than $30, and can be picked up at Target and Toys-R-Us, among other places. The bi-plane is supposedly the only Air-Hogs plane that flys decent, although this is just hearsay and I can neither confirm nor deny these rumors. There are a number of different mod forums out there where people are doing everything from chopping wings off to modifying the transmitter/receivers to adding cool lights so its easier to fly at night.

Here are some pictures of Jayson’s un-modifed bipe, and mine, which I hacked tonight to tape the bottom wing to the top wing tips to increase glide performance. It turns out the problem with this hack is that it increases the performance too much: it will climb at 20% power, which is the lowest throttle setting, but you have to have throttle on to turn, since it uses differential thrust. So it ends up that you have to glide throttle off whichever way it goes then crank pulses of throttle to turn. Good for outdoors maybe but not for close flying or indoors, which is what really makes the things fun. Back to the biplane for me.

This is the beginnings of a robot I’ve been working on. Katie named it Gizmo. Eventually, it will be a two-wheeled balancer and stand up like this on its own. The picture is a little deceiving, the wheelbase is about 14" and it stands 24" high. The electronics for this are almost complete, it will be gyroscope stabilized like a Segway and eventually roam around on its own avoiding obstacles. This hardware is a quick hack so I can get started on the software, at some point the hose-clamp motor mounts will be replaced by something more permanent.

North Korea Tests Nuclear Weapon: CNN
UPDATE: Washington Times: May Not Have Been Nuclear

Here’s the GPS-track from last weekend’s Death Valley Trip, with altitude shown by color. I actually made it about 200 feet higher than shown in this track; I didn’t have the GPS with me whenI summited Bennett Peak Monday morning.