The Canadian Royal Mint hosted a pavilion for Olympic visitors to Vancouver for the 2010 Games. The Mint you say? How could that be interesting? I had exactly the same question, initially. The pavilion is down the street from my office so I see what is going on outside every day. And every day the lines have been getting longer. By mid-day the wait to enter is six hours or more.

Turns out they are showing off the medals created for the Olympic event winners. If you wait in line, you can see and hold the medals. How could I resist? Eileen and I went early, lined up at 7am and waited two hours in order to enter. We had fun in line, talking with other people who were equally interested. The people at the front of the line arrived an hour before we did. The picture here is us with the gold and silver medals on display. We also saw the Paralympics medals.

Some interesting trivia about the medals we learned during our visit to the Canadian Royal Mint pavilion:

1. This is the first time the medals for the Olympics and Paralympics were cast in the same theme
2. These medals are the heaviest medals in the history of the Games (over 500 grams each)
3. These medals are not flat, which is a first for any medals
4. Each medal is unique, comprised of a section of a larger artwork (also a first for Olympic medals)

It was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and well worth the wait to get in to see these fabulous artworks.

Today is the opening ceremonies here in Vancouver and the Olympic torch has been touring around town. This morning it went by very close to my office so I just had to go see it. Very, very neat to see the flame as well as see how many people came out to see it too. Quite exciting here in Vancouver these days, the city is really jumping. Here is a link to the video I got with my phone, enjoy!

This weekend I managed to spend some time preparing the “backbone” of my outdoor Robo-Magellan robot. Basically I drilled and tapped some holes in extruded aluminum angle stock. I ended up creating a jig on my Sherline mill so it was just a matter of clamping down each piece and run the program to drill the right holes.

Here is another picture, from the top, that shows the two plates connected together before mounting the second set of wheels.

Next up is to machine motor mounts then construct an upper deck. Hopefully I’ll get some time soon to tackle those challenges.

Between work, the holidays, and moving to a new house I’ve had little opportunity to work on my Robo-Magellan outdoor robot. That changed yesterday where I spent about five hours machining up two base plates for it. My little Sherline mill doesn’t have the working envelope to do the whole thing in one piece, so I decided to create two plates connected together.

Here is a picture of what each plate looks like after a quick cleanup (with the original base plate from the RC truck included).

Yesterday’s work produced the two plates, including countersunk holes for some mounting points, just like the original. I’m really happy with the progress made so far, but there is much left to do even to get the mechanical stuff done. Next up will be to make the connecting rods that will form the spine, then to make the motor mounts. Lastly I need to create a new top deck that will hold the electronics and sensors.

As for the brain, I opted for a Gumstix Overo Air module with a Tobi carrier board. This seemed to be a good tradeoff for weight, power consumption, and capability. I also bought a motor controller and servo controller from Pololu.

I need to find a good polymer battery to provide power for everything, hook up some sensors, write some software, etc. but I’m really happy with the progress this weekend.

I’ve finally gotten some real traction on my Robo-Magellan robot. The picture here shows the chassis I purchased from eBay for a platform to get started.

Actually I bought two of them, as I really want to have independent steering in the front and back. My plan was to chop the chassis in half, simply “glueing” one front end to the other front end. Now that I’ve had a look at how its put together I’ve got a slightly different plan, to make better use of the way the motor is connected. I can combine the back transmission and motor mount with the front axle pretty easily, without loosing much flexibility. It looks like I’ll be able to get independent four-wheel steering out of it too. I need to machine a new base plate, but I was pretty much expecting to do that anyways.

The next thing to do is select a “brain”. I’ve got plenty of sensors and motor controllers, but nothing that will give me a “real” platform for software development. The AVR processors are simply too underpowered for this sort of job, and the Tin Can Tools Hammer board I’ve been playing with recently doesn’t have enough I/O. I really want something that can run Linux, preferably also run Python for the main program. I could write it all in C++ but the development time can be reduced by using Python.

Anyone else building a Robo-Magellan robot?