kiteassist

New Logger Thermal Test

3/2/11

Jamie put the logger components in a new box (orange, on top) that is even smaller than the old box (silver, on bottom). Right now he is running a program on the Android phone to record the temperature to make sure that the electronics will not overheat in their new closer quarters.

The graph shows the temperature recorded by a Nexus S phone, using software that we wrote to log its battery temperature. (The PC either has no non-CPU temperature sensors or they are not visible to the OS.) The phone battery temperature is typically a few degrees higher than the ambient temperature. While the temperature did not fully stabilize during the 2.5 hour test, it appeared to be leveling […more]

Android + Bluetooth Servo Controller

2/11/11

We are exploring the use of our new Nexus S Android phone as a kite-based programmable wireless camera and pan/tilt controller. The first step in making this happen was to make a bluetooth connection to an RC servo controller and control it from the phone.
For extra fun, we mapped the phone’s orientation to its commands so that the pan/tilt unit tracks the phone’s rotations.

Next we will improve the app so that a user interface on a second phone or a remote computer can control the phone remotely over a socket connection. The final step will be to transmit both low-resolution, low-latency “preview” images and full-resolution images from the phone back to its client.

Kite Generation animation

8/20/08

Aug 21 2008

This was the first movie created to simulate kite-assisted power generation. The boat model was based off of 2D drawings from YCO and group. The model was made from a solid in SolidWorks and the animation was made in 3D Studio by Victor.