I’m working on a robot project and one of the intended uses is to teach line following to college students. For this, I’m making an array of 9 RPR-220 reflectance sensors. This post will describe the part I’ve designed and the reasoning behind it. It’s a bit rambly so consider yourself forewarned.
Author: mwwalk
Photo Friday – Fombrauge Vineyard
This was one of my favorite photos taken on a recent trip to France. This was the Chateau Fombrauge vineyard outside of Bordeaux that we saw on a tour with BodoVino.
Photo Friday – Chateau d’If
One of my favorite books is The Count of Monte Cristo. I might go so far as to say that it’s my favorite book not written by Isaac Asimov. If you’ve read this book you know that the first quarter or so takes place as the main character is in prison at the Chateau d’If in the Marseille harbor. One of my favorite moments of this trip was getting to go see the Chateau d’If and even read the book on my kindle while in the prison. This photo was taken as the boat left the island to return to the harbor.
How I Migrated from Aperture to Lightroom
I got started in photography in 2005 on my first trip out of the country and used iPhoto to organize photos until about 2011 when I upgraded to Aperture. About a year ago, Apple decided to stop updating Aperture. On one hand, this is pretty frustrating because I loved Aperture and now it will quickly grow old. But on the other hand, it had been getting a little long in the tooth and this is a good excuse to move over to Lightroom. Starting in 2014 I started using Lightroom for all new projects but I’ve only recently begun migrating past projects over to Lightroom. Here’s how I did it.
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Photo Friday – St. Emilion
This photo was taken when visiting the small town of St. Emilion on a tour a several vineyards in the Bordeaux region (btw, I would highly recommend BordoVino Tours). This is a stitched pano made from 5 separate photos taken at 27mm equivalent focal length. In hindsight, I wish I had made it a double row pano at a larger focal length. But, it still turned out pretty well considering I didn’t have a tripod.
Photo Edits – Before & After 5
In this episode of Photo Edits – Before and After, I’ll walk you through the large and small edits necessary to turn this photo from meh to WOW. This is one of those cases that occurs from time to time where the photo you take just doesn’t even come close to what you saw with you eyes and you have to alter it considerably in post.
TB6612 Update – Does It Need Diodes?
Several months ago I wrote a post about a breakout board for the TB6612 motor driver. You can find that here. The reason I made my own breakout board for this was that the ones available from Sparkfun, Adafruit, and Digikey didn’t have diodes on the board. The TB6612 says it has internal diodes but those are small and I saw somebody online suggest always using external diodes. Today I realized I wasn’t sure if I actually needed them or not so I decided to do my own test to find out.
IHG Priceless Surprises Monte Carlo Simulation
Over at One Mile At A Time, they did an analysis of the recent IHG Priceless Surprises Promotion where you could mail in 94 entrees and get back 94 plays in an online game. Most entrees only won 500 points but some won 1000, 2000, 5000, and a few won free nights or gift cards. I liked his analysis and it got me thinking about possible wins and the distribution. Instead of doing a bunch of math, it was easier to create a Monte Carlo Simulation and the results were a little surprising.
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TripIt vs. Kayak My Trips
Almost a year ago I wrote the post The Best Travel Itinerary Manager and it quickly became my most popular post. In that post I gave my preference for Kayak over the established TripIt for managing itineraries. Since then I’ve used them much more and they’ve both had updates so I thought it might be a good idea to review them again in a little more depth. I’m covering TripIt since it is the entrenched favorite and Kayak My Trips because it is second place in google searches and is my favorite. Continue reading “TripIt vs. Kayak My Trips”
Simple LiPo Battery Charger with the MCP73831
The little board was built to charge a single lipo battery using the MCP73831 from Microchip. I plan to use it along with several other boards featured on this blog in a larger project, but I like to break things up and make sure they’re working individually before making them work together. Continue reading “Simple LiPo Battery Charger with the MCP73831”
The Wandering Engineer 