Too much going on

As usual I have too many things going on at once.

I've been reading "Fundamentals of Kalman Filtering, A Practical Approach" by Zarchan in prep for coding sensor fusion on my AVC road bot. Also spent some time with gnuplot, plotting the GPS data from Sparkfun's GPS comparo tutorial. Hopefully that will lend some insight in coding up the nav system on the AVC bot.

I'm pursuing my crazy plan to try and use a Wiimote IR camera and IR laser for a DIY LIDAR.

I blew up the power supply on my desktop where I do all my robotics development... I was just trying to replace the dead power supply fan... I'm waiting for an oem replacement I ordered on ebay.

I downloaded and briefly played with Open QBO, Ubuntu distro on a USB stick -- with ROS, Festival, Julian and other robotics tools. Couldn't get much to work.

That prompted me to set up Ubuntu on an 8G USB Stick -- made it persistent and now I have my own little portable Linux dev environment.

So I decided to work more on WheelEncoderGenerator. JarDogBox has been helping me test and troubleshoot.

Repaired the power cable to my Sony TC230 reel to reel tape deck and reassembled. It makes sweet music now.

I have several things shipping my way... a long range IR sensor and some other goodies from Trossen Robotics, a mini 'gumstick' sized video camera for recording the AVC bot's travels, an IR laser for the DIY LIDAR project.

I just got an OV6630 color camera in hopes I can use it for *something* interesting on the AVC bot... I don't know what yet.

Whew. I'm tired.