Category Archives: Uncategorized

Completed build of 3D tank

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Finished the build of the 3D tank.  It took longer than I thought but here it is.

The main differences between this tank and a previously PS3 controlled tank are:  Its body was fashioned from CAD designed 3D parts giving it a more completed look, the headlights do not require their own circuit board (the ground and positive of the LEDS are plugged into the signal pin and ground on the ServoHAT which has built in resistors for each of the 3V channels, and the video provided by the on board camera did away with the Linux Motion app in favor of “ffplay”.  ffplay provided for a simpler integration/configuration with less latency as seen in this video.  Also ffplay is started with this application.  There is a gotcha however.  If you want a larger “TankEye”  change the window size in the application code which triggers ffplay.  If you size on the go it locks up the video feed.

You can see more of the 3D build here if you wish.

Pi2–Tank/Crawler build

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Received my tank/crawler chassis from China yesterday.  Err, sort of:  IMG_0296

No instructions but should be straight forward.  The is no lynch-pin in either track so the track must be mounted before the last wheel is installed.  Hmm, but which wheel?  The motors are heavy, 12 volt DC with transmission attached.  Should be a high torque/low speed crawler. 

Server upgrade

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Upgraded the FC 17 server to Ubuntu.  FC 17 was “way out” of current Fedora release and Fedora changes too often.  Ubuntu is a more stable “release” platform and should continue on until 2017 with ongoing support.

Ubuntu’s implementation of some servers is quite a bit different from a configuration perspective when compared to Fedora.  This required some additional re-training during installation of these servers.  Two days after the bulk of the effort was complete I noted that I had loaded the “wrong” database for the website forcing me to locate and reload the latest one (this one).

You really “forget” how much is involved in moving servers.  You make every effort to save all configuration files but there are always “some” that fall through.  Also servers are implemented differently across some distributions.  Apache is one example in moving from Fedora to Ubuntu.

 

GPU (NVIDIA) installation on Fedora 17

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This took a while.  There were so many online guides and each had different results, not all positive.  I tried Fedora 17, Centos 6, and Ubuntu 12.04LTS.  Centos 6 was the easiest from a driver installation but the downside was that Centos does not supply BOINC in their distribution.  BOINC from the BOINC website would not install because it had been compiled against a different distro using different library structures.  You do have the option of downloading BOINC source code and installing on Centos and this would fix the problem.  But ….

Using a combination of procedural steps from both the Fedora and Centos  installation readmes I came across I was able to get the NVIDIA drivers installed on FC 17.  See the side bar:  “Seti@home, Fedora 17, BOINC…” for detailed installation instructions on Fedora 17.  This is my attempt to identify exactly was is needed for a successful installation and how to get there.

These procedures might also apply to other Linux distros, but the file naming convention and file locations are different on Fedora 17 so that will require adjustments.  But the basic step/procedures I think would apply.

None of what I provide is original but taken/borrowed from multiple websites.  I have posted most of these websites in a “USEFUL LINKS” section of the detailed install.   You will be visiting some of these sites to download various components and will encounter much of what you read here and  in the detailed procedure on those sites.

Hardware upgrade

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I moved to new server hardware which required an install of a 64 bit OS and a resinstall/configuration/compile of most of the software I run.  I am still finding “missed” requirements and address them as they occur.  You too might find issues like broken links.  Not all the webpages have been restored but I am working it.

I have also upgraded the blog software and added a new look (theme) as well as reworked the way pages display in this blog.  Before, all posts were logged to the default page (the page you are currently looking at).  Now only the last post with a “previous entry” link for others in this default category will be displayed.  All others posts now display only under their assigned categories listed in the right sidebar.