It's not laser mapping at all. I have some contacts on the dev team, and had a hands-on demo of the unit.
The Lighthouses are actually more of a "ping source", where they broadcast a bright IR sync flash, followed by a rastering modulated laser beam. So it's like a movie clapper board saying "Ok, I'm starting a raster sweep NOW (clap)", and the headset waits for the laser sweep to hit each of the sensor receivers. It detects the different lighthouses by the modulated signal in the laser sweep. Knowing the sweep rate of the lighthouses, and timing the difference between the receptors, it calculates the X/Y/Z/ of each sensor. Wicked cool.
I was surprised by the effort they had to go through to get very smooth running motors (thanks HD motor manufacturer technology!) to reduce the jitter.
I concur. Just back from a 2 week trip to San Francisco from Canada, and my Canadian Bell (unlocked; rooted) Galaxy S connected on EDGE speeds for pretty much the whole time (darn mountain ranges...).It was supposed to be only 2Gig of data, but I got an SMS mid way through the trip that informed me that my plan was updated to unlimited data. It was the "Prepaid Unlimited Talk, Text, 2GB data plan" for $70. We got 2 SIMS with this plan (a T-Mobile G1 on HSPA fast speed, and my Canadian Bell Galaxy S maxing out on EDGE), and one with just talk/text (for daughter) for $30.
Although the G1 is a slow phone, I found the GPS unit superior, and it made an excellent Google GPS navigator. Also worked well as portable wifi hotspot with the rooted "Open Garden" application. And don't forget to load up GasBuddy too.
Just make sure to add the $10 "International SMS" option if you plan to message out of the USA. Frustrating to get SMS from home, but not to be able to reply!
FYI, both my G1 and my Canadian Galaxy S both get HSPA speeds in Hong Kong!
That's all they do - email hosting. Rock-solid support at stupid hours of the day (3am questions often replied to immediately), they give us notice for *potential* downtime (that rarely impacts performance), and pretty reasonable pricing.
It's not as big as other providers(1G), but it's upgradable.
Been using them over a year now, and it's nice to farm email support to somebody else. They do a good job.
I've got a 80G image library that I manage for my company. Thumbsplus has proven to be a pretty good solution, although I admit to not using the query function very much.
As TP asks how you want your database created (proprietory or MSAccess compatible), you can run your own querys outside of TP if you wish. Lots of metadata tagging features too.
It's not that expensive ($49 for Std 1 user license; $89 for Pro, which has more database functionality), and higher licenses allow for multiple concurrent users.
Very good. VERY VERY good! Being a long-time user of Eudora (since 4.2, I think), I've been impressed especially with Eudora's search functions. Sorry, never using Outlook, I can't comment on that. BUT since shifting my own email client to Thunderbird due to IMAP flaws in Eudora, I've sorely missed Eudora's searching. It's the one major flaw in Thunderbird, IMHO.
Now that they're shifting gears to F/OSS, I'm *thrilled*. Time to go throw more money at both projects, as it's a most excellent day that my two fave email clients are merging! Woohoo!
Some nice popups of the new trio of bots coming out this year. Tilden isn't at the CES show, and says that these models are early prototypes, but promises that the New York Toy Fair show will show off much better developed versions.
I was in a quandry when my well-meaning webmaster renamed a whole crapload of images on my website to make his databasing easier. Unfortunately, it kinda hosed all my offline cataloging efforts.
While trying to find a way to find the hi-resolution match for *his* image name to my image name, I tripped across something called "CBIR" (Content Based Image Recognition). Sounds kinda similar to what these fellows are doing with their cats-recognition algorithms.
Want a demo? Works pretty good. Select a picture, and tell the system what qualities about the image you want to find in other pictures.
Micro-R/C gonna be big next Xmas...
on
Smallest RC Cars?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I just came back from the New York Toy Fair in February, where I made note of 4 different distributors of these devices.
The original was by Tomy, being imported as "R/C MicroSizers". The others were Chinese knock-offs (very common in the toy industry...) called "Z-Cars R/C". I think the other was called "Canned Heat, where the cars were packaged in transparent cans. Can't recall the name of the last one.
All the cars at the toy show only had the FCC clearance for the 45 and 27Mhz frequencies, unlike the Tokyo/Tomy, which offered those plus the 57 and 35MHz. Hard to play 4-man R/C car soccer on only 2 frequencies...
The price will come down when they hit North American shores in volume, especially with the Chinese knock-offs costing almost 1/2 as much as the Tomy models, although the $40USD/ea I paid for my originals from Hong Kong were well worth it!
Re:BEAM is the Cold Fusion of Robotics
on
The Robot Diaries
·
· Score: 1
But current non-BEAM robots can do that. I am asking why are BEAM robots more
useful than "normal" robots? Are you now saying that BEAM is in an
entirely different class and cannot be compared with normal robots? If so...
WHY? WHAT IS SO DIFFERENT AND GREAT AND SPECIAL ABOUT BEAM? I am asking
someone, anyone to articulate their beliefs about BEAM.
As the owner of the little company that makes the robot kits that the original
diary writer used, I think I'm qualified to give an answer...
I've been involved with BEAM-style robotics almost from their inception. I've
built microprocessor-style as well (albeit not as complex as some projects I've
seen...), and I see many advantages to each style (how non-committal can I
get?). To say that BEAM is an entirely different class that can do things other
robots can't isn't correct in the least. IMHO, It offers a comparatively
simple and robust way to implement low-level behaviors that guarantee the
survival of a robot device.
Additionally, it's been shown that BEAM can offer a relatively
easy-to-implement walking capability to a robot, which frees up the processor
for much more important duties, like navigation, mapping and obstacle detection.
It's something we've been calling the "Horse and Rider" concept: tell
the dumb horse which direction you want to go, let it deal with the minor
inconsistencies of the terrain and trees shooting out of the ground, and let the
"Rider" talk to a GPS, other robots, or take sensor readings. Using a
micro to arrange the operational sequence of leg motions is (from my point of
view) a terrible waste of computational power, which is easily handled by a few
sets of discrete & analog circuits.
In short, BEAM makes short work of the lower-level capabilities needed in a
robot, much easily and inexpensively than a microprocessor, as well as being
able to withstand substantial variations in mechanics (I.e.: travel damage, wear
and tear...). Leave the microprocessors for what they're good at: doing math.
As the owner of the little company that makes the robot kits that the original diary writer used, I think I'm qualified to give an answer...
Slashdot Mirror
It's not laser mapping at all. I have some contacts on the dev team, and had a hands-on demo of the unit.
The Lighthouses are actually more of a "ping source", where they broadcast a bright IR sync flash, followed by a rastering modulated laser beam. So it's like a movie clapper board saying "Ok, I'm starting a raster sweep NOW (clap)", and the headset waits for the laser sweep to hit each of the sensor receivers. It detects the different lighthouses by the modulated signal in the laser sweep. Knowing the sweep rate of the lighthouses, and timing the difference between the receptors, it calculates the X/Y/Z/ of each sensor. Wicked cool.
I was surprised by the effort they had to go through to get very smooth running motors (thanks HD motor manufacturer technology!) to reduce the jitter.
I concur. Just back from a 2 week trip to San Francisco from Canada, and my Canadian Bell (unlocked; rooted) Galaxy S connected on EDGE speeds for pretty much the whole time (darn mountain ranges...).It was supposed to be only 2Gig of data, but I got an SMS mid way through the trip that informed me that my plan was updated to unlimited data. It was the "Prepaid Unlimited Talk, Text, 2GB data plan" for $70. We got 2 SIMS with this plan (a T-Mobile G1 on HSPA fast speed, and my Canadian Bell Galaxy S maxing out on EDGE), and one with just talk/text (for daughter) for $30.
Although the G1 is a slow phone, I found the GPS unit superior, and it made an excellent Google GPS navigator. Also worked well as portable wifi hotspot with the rooted "Open Garden" application. And don't forget to load up GasBuddy too.
Just make sure to add the $10 "International SMS" option if you plan to message out of the USA. Frustrating to get SMS from home, but not to be able to reply!
FYI, both my G1 and my Canadian Galaxy S both get HSPA speeds in Hong Kong!
That's all they do - email hosting. Rock-solid support at stupid hours of the day (3am questions often replied to immediately), they give us notice for *potential* downtime (that rarely impacts performance), and pretty reasonable pricing.
It's not as big as other providers(1G), but it's upgradable.
Been using them over a year now, and it's nice to farm email support to somebody else. They do a good job.
I've got a 80G image library that I manage for my company. Thumbsplus has proven to be a pretty good solution, although I admit to not using the query function very much.
As TP asks how you want your database created (proprietory or MSAccess compatible), you can run your own querys outside of TP if you wish. Lots of metadata tagging features too.
It's not that expensive ($49 for Std 1 user license; $89 for Pro, which has more database functionality), and higher licenses allow for multiple concurrent users.
http://www.cerious.com/ (no, I don't work for them. Just a happy user)
Very good. VERY VERY good! Being a long-time user of Eudora (since 4.2, I think), I've been impressed especially with Eudora's search functions. Sorry, never using Outlook, I can't comment on that. BUT since shifting my own email client to Thunderbird due to IMAP flaws in Eudora, I've sorely missed Eudora's searching. It's the one major flaw in Thunderbird, IMHO.
Now that they're shifting gears to F/OSS, I'm *thrilled*. Time to go throw more money at both projects, as it's a most excellent day that my two fave email clients are merging! Woohoo!
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1748603,00.as p
Some nice popups of the new trio of bots coming out this year. Tilden isn't at the CES show, and says that these models are early prototypes, but promises that the New York Toy Fair show will show off much better developed versions.
Here's a little utility that I think is under-rated, but immensely useful for turfing naughty startup utilities:
Startup Control Panel 2.7 by Mike Lin", available from http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml
It's always among the first freeware utilities I recommend to my windozing friends.
I was in a quandry when my well-meaning webmaster renamed a whole crapload of images on my website to make his databasing easier. Unfortunately, it kinda hosed all my offline cataloging efforts.
While trying to find a way to find the hi-resolution match for *his* image name to my image name, I tripped across something called "CBIR" (Content Based Image Recognition). Sounds kinda similar to what these fellows are doing with their cats-recognition algorithms.
Want a demo? Works pretty good. Select a picture, and tell the system what qualities about the image you want to find in other pictures.
I just came back from the New York Toy Fair in February, where I made note of 4 different distributors of these devices.
The original was by Tomy, being imported as "R/C MicroSizers". The others were Chinese knock-offs (very common in the toy industry...) called "Z-Cars R/C". I think the other was called "Canned Heat, where the cars were packaged in transparent cans. Can't recall the name of the last one.
All the cars at the toy show only had the FCC clearance for the 45 and 27Mhz frequencies, unlike the Tokyo/Tomy, which offered those plus the 57 and 35MHz. Hard to play 4-man R/C car soccer on only 2 frequencies...
The price will come down when they hit North American shores in volume, especially with the Chinese knock-offs costing almost 1/2 as much as the Tomy models, although the $40USD/ea I paid for my originals from Hong Kong were well worth it!
As the owner of the little company that makes the robot kits that the original diary writer used, I think I'm qualified to give an answer...
I've been involved with BEAM-style robotics almost from their inception. I've built microprocessor-style as well (albeit not as complex as some projects I've seen...), and I see many advantages to each style (how non-committal can I get?). To say that BEAM is an entirely different class that can do things other robots can't isn't correct in the least. IMHO, It offers a comparatively simple and robust way to implement low-level behaviors that guarantee the survival of a robot device.
Additionally, it's been shown that BEAM can offer a relatively easy-to-implement walking capability to a robot, which frees up the processor for much more important duties, like navigation, mapping and obstacle detection. It's something we've been calling the "Horse and Rider" concept: tell the dumb horse which direction you want to go, let it deal with the minor inconsistencies of the terrain and trees shooting out of the ground, and let the "Rider" talk to a GPS, other robots, or take sensor readings. Using a micro to arrange the operational sequence of leg motions is (from my point of view) a terrible waste of computational power, which is easily handled by a few sets of discrete & analog circuits.
In short, BEAM makes short work of the lower-level capabilities needed in a robot, much easily and inexpensively than a microprocessor, as well as being able to withstand substantial variations in mechanics (I.e.: travel damage, wear and tear...). Leave the microprocessors for what they're good at: doing math.
As the owner of the little company that makes the robot kits that the original diary writer used, I think I'm qualified to give an answer...