Most of you can just skip right over this post since you don’t pay rent or live at an apartment that allows paying with a credit card. But if you’re in the lucky situation that I am, paying your rent with a credit card can be an easy way to get credit card points.
Continue reading “Get Credit Card Points Paying Your Rent at IMT Apartments”
I’m working to bone up on my python skills so I decided to spend my Sunday doing problems 1-10 from Project Euler. I’ve done them before with C or Java but this was my first time with Python. Here are the problems and my commented code for each one in case it interests anybody.
Last week a podcast I listen to, the 404, discussed a math problem where you roll six 20-sided die and count how often you get a situation where at least one dice matches another dice. They discussed the math a little and came to the conclusion that it happens far more than you’d think. I thought it’d make a good monte carlo programming exercise so I’ve done just that. Below, you’ll find my C code (though it’s not great) and results for 2-20 dice.
Continue reading “Monte Carlo – Repeated Dice Problem from 404 podcast”
I recently outgrew my old watch case and decided to get a new one. I had trouble finding ones I liked and that would use the space I had efficiently, so I decided to make my own. Now, let me start by saying that this isn’t perfect. At all. Not even close. And I’ll admit that it’s kinda driving me crazy. But the goal here was to be quick and cheap since I’ll probably only be using this for a year before moving into a new home and making a new one. Details and pictures after the jump.
Here’s a short little post to show something I made a few years ago. It’s a simple, tiny board with a couple of resistors that is used to measure the input voltage. It uses a simple voltage divider to reduce the voltage from the raw input pin and allow the conveniently close analog pin to read it.
Continue reading “Arduino Battery Gauge – Input Voltage Measurement Board”
This is actually my 100th post so I wanted to find one of my favorite photos from our recent trip to Cambodia. This is a gate leading into one of the giant temple complexes. From the workers to the worshipers and now the tourists, it’s kinda crazy to think about all of the people who have passed through this gate since it was built in the 12th century. It certainly puts my trip – and my place in the world – into perspective. And isn’t that one of the best parts of traveling?
This is the final post about the rover, I promise. In addition to the changes made to the electronics box, we also needed to get data from the wheels. Each wheel is a self contained unit with a battery, motor, and speed controller, which is sent pwm signals from the mbed. We needed to get the power draw from each wheel and this is the board I designed to do it.
In another episode of clearing up old projects, here’s a controller I made for the rover that acts as an emergency override and also allows somebody nearby to drive it around. The rover is typically controlled over the internet but there are times you may want to be able to control it without the internet, including when the internet connection is down. Any signal from the controller also overrides the signal from the internet user so it can be used as an E-stop.
Last summer I started working with the rover team to modify the rover to be used for another research project. The original rover did extremely well at the competition but they were working under tight time restrictions and almost all of the work was done by undergrads. That meant there was a lot of work needed to fix and modify it.
My Master’s research involved sensing the environment using a UAV or “drone”. Do do this I needed some method of reading sensors, logging data, and transmitting it back to the ground station. This post shows the three different designs I used and talks about them a bit. I’m not expecting this to be a super popular post but just want to document it so I can get it out of my brain.
The Wandering Engineer 