Windows 8
I installed the Windows 8 Developer Preview on my robot today. Already tested the usb phidget boards, they all work. You can download the Microsoft Windows 8 developer preview for free from the
Power test
I did a small power test with the robot today. It was very successful. Next time I’ll have to measure the weight of the robot, object pushed and friction accurately. Wheel spin was a bit of a problem. I’ll have to remove the electrical tape from the wheels and also control the velocity better via code to detect wheel spin.
Robot setup:
1x 6.7v battery at 6600 mAh
6x drive motor at 75:1 gear ratio
5% acceleration
100% velocity
Results:
max current: 2.746 amps
weight pushed : I guess around 4 to 5kg
Sonar
Mounted the 3 sonar sensors. They are amazingly accurate. One is pointed forward and the other two left and right. This gives me a very good picture of obstacles and which way to turn when navigating without video or user interaction. Kind-of like park assist for robots 
Sonar
Webcam
I can see! Got a webcam for the robot. Using the DirectShow.Net library I created a simple windows service which streams video from the robot to a client app via wifi, so now I can see where the robot goes.
Webcam
HDD replacement
A few weeks back the robot died, it was booting up into windows and then just freezing. It turns out that the original Seagate Hard Disk Drive (HDD) I got with the fit-pc2i was faulty and could not be repaired using the seagate drive utilities. I’m not 100% sure why the HDD drive broke, but at the moment I believe it to be one of three reasons; either was from a bump while driving the robot, or it was from the build-up of static electricity on the robot or, most likely it was caused by running the robot on low voltage. Originally I ran the fit-pc2i on 8.4 volts as this is within the recommended range of 8 to 15 volts. So now the robot is upgraded to run on 12 volts and a Solid State Drive (SSD).
Sql remembers the value of declared variable inside while loop iterations
It’s sometimes the simplest things that go forgotten and then dreadfully wrong. Have a look at the sql script below, if you do not specify a value for a variable declared inside a while loop it will remember its value into the next iteration of the loop, resulting in the output A=2 and B=1.
declare @loopCount int select @loopCount = 0 while @loopCount < 2 begin declare @a int declare @b int = 0 if @a IS NULL begin select @a = 0 end select @a = @a + 1 select @b = @b + 1 select @loopCount = @loopCount + 1 end select @a as a, @b as b
CSS3 !
Replaced all the mozilla and webkit border radius css elements in my blog’s style sheet with the CSS 3 equivalent. Now I have nice rounded corners in IE9.
/* CSS 3 */ border-radius: 5px; border-top-left-radius: 5px; border-top-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; border-bottom-left-radius: 5px; /* Mozilla */ -moz-border-radius: 5px; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 5px; -moz-border-radius-topright: 5px; -moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 5px; -moz-border-radius-bottomright: 5px; /* Webkit */ -webkit-border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-top-left-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-top-right-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius: 5px;
