National Robotics Week 2012

April 7-15, 2012

This year, National Robotics Week is April 7-15, 2012 and I'm going to participate by releasing my robot minions to take over Denver! Ok, not quite.

But I am hosting another Data Bus Demo Robot Party on April 14. The bright yellow robot will once again have a chance to show off or fail miserably in front of a crowd. I've invited a few other AVC competitors to join in, too. Should be a fun time!

Already a bunch of people have RSVPed in the affirmative so I better get my crap together and get this bot working!


If I can break away from work, I may also participate in Automate Denver! an event that will bring robotics companies and hobbyists together at to display their creations and raise awareness here in the state capitol.

Magnetometer Calibration Machine

It's simple, it's cheap, and easy to make. What else would you expect on this blog?

What is it? A calibration machine for gyro and magnetometer sensors.

To help with my struggles in magnetometer calibration I've built a large, non-magnetic turntable device with encoders for precise and accurate angular measurement. The device is big enough to fit Data Bus or any other 1/10 RC chassis. Here's how I made it...

Magnetometer Calibration Error

In building my Sparkfun AVC robot, I wanted to investigate the effects of magnetometer calibration on heading error.

I've been working on calibrating my compass and have run into some snags along the way. I'm working on a calibration machine to measure real world error but I thought it'd be interesting to model calibration error first. Here's how. Time for Octave and and simple trig....