Thursday, 20th of November 2008
Thursday, 20th of November 2008
ARRRGGHH
by Scurvy Rat
Welcome! This is my place to write down a few notes and discoveries. I'm currently trying to learn about microcontrollers and the gumstix, embedded Linux computer. I have zip, nada, zero training in this so some of you may find my entries a bit newbie, novice or pathetic. Tough :-), I'm going to take things step by step and see what I can figure out. If you see I have incorrect information or am stumbling down the wrong path, login and let me know!

The longterm (and it will take me a long time, I'm sure) goal, is to make an autonomous, underwater vehicle. Haven't settled on a form-factor or even a capabilities set. One idea is a long-range, solar powered, ocean-going vehicle. Just dump it in the ocean with a set of coordinates and see how far it gets. Another is a full, autonomous explorer to investigate lakes and whatenot. But before I can get that far, I've got lots to learn.

You are welcome to read, join, post or whatever. The more the merrier. Welcome aboard!

Sony ACX705AKM hook-up
by Scurvy Rat — Monday, September 17th, 2007
I bought two of these LCDs and the associated connectors from Electronics Goldmine. You can get one here.
For twenty bucks, I couldn't pass it up. Would have preferred to get something with a touchscreen interface, but this is a good size. The datasheet is here.

I followed much of the info on the wiki. Here is the pinouts and connection for my connex 400 (R687):

03 VCC
04 VCC
05 GND
06 GND
07 R0 (Red data input LSB)_________________ _ L_DD13 Pin 08/GPIO(71)
08 R1


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ARRRGG - Bricked my gumstix
by Scurvy Rat — Saturday, September 1st, 2007
Today was not a good day...

I wanted to reflash with a new kernel enabled for the DS1307 real time clock. I compiled the new kernel and tried to transfer it via serial. For some reason, the transfer would not go through. It would just timeout. I tried several different things and the did something stupid -- I did the uboot commands to erase the flash. Since I couldn't transfer, I now had no bootloader, no FS and no kernel. Bricked. Yell

My gumstix is back to the company to get reflashed.

Lesson
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i2c 3.3v <-> 5v with the Maxim 3378EEUD
by Scurvy Rat — Friday, August 24th, 2007
I want to connect the gumstix to the gpsstix and the robostix....hmmm....we'll if I connect the gpsstix to the gumstix in the stack, then I can talk to the robostix via I2C using David Hyland's great i2c programs. There are a set of i2c pins exposed on the gpsstix, so I soldered 0.05" headers to those pins and will use the robostix's i2c 0.1" pins (the SDA and SCL are on the UARTS connector).

The robostix's i2c lines run at 5v and the gumstix run at 3.3v, so I need to
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Flashing new u-boot and filesystem
by Scurvy Rat — Monday, August 20th, 2007
Well, today decided I should upgrade u-boot and the filesystem -- wanted to make sure I could do it before I got too far with this project. Also wanted to make I had all the latest and greatest changes.

I tried to follow the instructions here, specifically the ones titles "Flashing over SSH/Ethernet." Turns out they kinda of worked. Everything went through without an error. The only problem was on the reboot, I got the following error:

U-Boot 1.2.0 (Aug 17 2007 - 14:29:48) - 400 MHZ
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ISP Robostix from the Gumstix
by Scurvy Rat — Monday, July 23rd, 2007
put on code from:
http://docswiki.gumstix.com/Robostix_gumstix_ISP

You can use the gumstix to download files into the robostix flash. Create a jumper which connects Atmel 0 Tx to PXA ST Rx and Atmel 0 Rx to PXA ST Tx on the Robostix. It is the jumpers in the section labeled UARTS near the 60-pin hirose connector. I used an old IDE cable and wired in some jumpers; ugly but works.

# insmod robostix_drv.ko (to remove use rmmod robostix_drv.ko)
# ./uisp
Atmel AVR ATmega128 is found.

Yoohoo!

Now added the

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GPS!
by Scurvy Rat — Tuesday, June 12th, 2007
I have one of the newer gpsstix, so it is pre-wired for an active antennae (yes!).

I connected my new active antennae from SparkFun (GPS-00464) to the gpsstix.
The gpsstix has the LEA-4h chip from u-blox.

at first i didn't get any data from
# cat /dev/ttyS2

but when I moved the antennae so it hung outside, i got a lock on satelites.

I copied the script gpsparser.pl from here and started getting good data streams:

Wed Jun 12 18:11:55 2007:37.786106:-122.484671:24.3M:0.112:148.54
Wed Jun 12
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Serial Connection via OS X
by Scurvy Rat — Tuesday, June 12th, 2007
so i hosed the wifi with i stupid typo in /etc/network/interfaces....

i connected my Mac to the gumsix using a KeySpan USB->Serial connector.

used screen as the terminal program:
screen /dev/tty.KeySerial1 115200 cs8 ixoff

I have the console-st board, so it is setup to use the serial port closest to the power connector. The process is:
/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 115200 vt100

Then boot-up the gumstix and got the boot messages and a login prompt. yeah.
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Squids everywhere!
by Scurvy Rat — Wednesday, April 25th, 2007
Ever since they shot footage of the giant squid, it seems you can't avoid squid news. Now the caught the colossal squid. Humboldt squid seem to be moving in the warmer waters up the coast of California. They are ravenous creatures. One report has them attacking a shark that was caught on hook and line. When divers went in, one of them was attacked as well. They grow to 7ft! -- a little scary considering how agile they are in the water.
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Not solar, but cool nonetheless
by Scurvy Rat — Tuesday, February 20th, 2007
In Australia, they have developed a cool AUV to monitor coral reefs for problems. It uses vision as its main navigation tool. Here is a shot of the front cameras:
Starbug Vision
Image credit – CSIRO
here is another shot of the whole AUV


Image credit – CSIRO

supposedly it runs on linux. they are working on it so it can see the coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish. They are working on mass production and they will cost about $24,000 each.

They talk about an innovative propulsion

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Thought the giant squid was large?
by Scurvy Rat — Tuesday, February 13th, 2007
Now word comes that there is something bigger....the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni). One was found floating whole off of Antartica. Its mantle is larger than the giant squid.  It was first identified in 1925.

Check out this story for more information.

Here is a photo of its beak  in a man's hand.

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SAUV
by Scurvy Rat — Saturday, February 10th, 2007
Here is a cool thing: solar powered autonomous underwater vehicles. It would cool to build a few and send them out from the coast and see where they can get to...maybe even have them go out and come back...

If you attached a mini-computer with flash ram so when it loses energy it will pick-up where it left off. it would need a small OS and a GPS to find and record its location.

propulsion and submersion

more info here:
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Giant Squid
by Scurvy Rat — Thursday, February 8th, 2007
YES!

Finally someone has caught an adult giant squid on video...alive no less.
The same Japanese researcher who shot still photos the year before had the below amazing success this year. Now only if we didn't have to hook them to get the video...


Copyright: Associated Press/Tsunemi Kubodera
Filmed on December 4, 2006 by researchers from the National Science Museum of Japan led by Tsunemi Kubodera.
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