Actually, I've gotten PCB's (about 6in by 6in, double-sided w/ silkscreening) made for about 33 bucks under academic manufactuing pricing, which I think a lot of american pcb companies do. If you're really interested in doing this project, I'd google for pcb vendors and ask them about their pricing. If it still seems too costly, you might want to think about replicating the mp3 player PCB design on one large board. Then you can break the board up and try to sell some additional mp3 players to your friends or have an altoid-player building party!
The American teams that brought their stuff were South Dakota School of Mines & Tech (SDSMT), Southern Poly State University(SPSU), Arizona State, and LeTourneau.
The problem is that SPSU, SDSMT and LeTourneau (who all used helicopters) all spent ~1500 bucks on a navigation system (made by rotomotion), instead of being creative and making their own. To make matters worse, the rotomotion system is horribly designed and their navigation system is still very unstable. SDSMT crashed their heli hard the day before the competition, and still had problems. SPSU had stability problems because of the rotomotion. LeTourneau didn't compete because their basic RC communication wasn't working right.
Arizona State isn't much better though. Their planes use a CloudCap navigation system. They were able to fly to different waypoints last year, so all they had to do this year is find the iarc symbol on a building. They spent 30-40 minutes on each attempt (which is LONG!), crashed two planes, and had no success. Their method of finding the symbol was to buy an expensive image processing system (read their paper about it) instead of taking the time to study image processing.
Aside from all this, I was really impressed by the canadian teams, which built their own navigation systems. Simon Fraser had a flight control system for their heli that used neural net controlled PID controller. They did two small demo flights and they were damn smooth. Their only problem was having a stable altitude.
Waterloo won first qualifier using a plane, and was the first team to do it with their own navigation system. Hats off.
ETS (another canadian team) is using a heli with their own nav system, but didn't have their system ready. Hope they'll be good comptetion next year.
First before you plow 1200 bucks on a laptop, check to see how the computer labs at your university are. I would highly suggest getting a usb drive since they can easily hold your online classnotes, along with a copy of gaim and winamp. If you feel this isn't enough after a few weeks in school, then get a laptop.
Personally, I don't have a laptop, mainly so that I don't waste away my entire life sitting at a school building doing off-task things. Instead, I just keep a usb drive with everything I need and use it at the lab computers. I believe you'll stay on task with doing schoolwork, and you won't have to go through the pain of finding special software. On the other hand, I would suggest getting a laptop if you like getting work done outside of school, like at a coffee shop or something. Labs can sometimes become a horrible home you just want to escape.
Now, as far as studying in the dorm, especially with all the fun stuff going on, doesn't work. Just have as much fun as you can in the dorms, and study elsewhere.
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Actually, I've gotten PCB's (about 6in by 6in, double-sided w/ silkscreening) made for about 33 bucks under academic manufactuing pricing, which I think a lot of american pcb companies do. If you're really interested in doing this project, I'd google for pcb vendors and ask them about their pricing. If it still seems too costly, you might want to think about replicating the mp3 player PCB design on one large board. Then you can break the board up and try to sell some additional mp3 players to your friends or have an altoid-player building party!
what about fresco?
ok, ok, i know it's nowhere near done, i just wanted to open some discussion on it
The American teams were fairly disappointing.
The American teams that brought their stuff were South Dakota School of Mines & Tech (SDSMT), Southern Poly State University(SPSU), Arizona State, and LeTourneau.
The problem is that SPSU, SDSMT and LeTourneau (who all used helicopters) all spent ~1500 bucks on a navigation system (made by rotomotion), instead of being creative and making their own. To make matters worse, the rotomotion system is horribly designed and their navigation system is still very unstable. SDSMT crashed their heli hard the day before the competition, and still had problems. SPSU had stability problems because of the rotomotion. LeTourneau didn't compete because their basic RC communication wasn't working right.
Arizona State isn't much better though. Their planes use a CloudCap navigation system. They were able to fly to different waypoints last year, so all they had to do this year is find the iarc symbol on a building. They spent 30-40 minutes on each attempt (which is LONG!), crashed two planes, and had no success. Their method of finding the symbol was to buy an expensive image processing system (read their paper about it) instead of taking the time to study image processing.
Aside from all this, I was really impressed by the canadian teams, which built their own navigation systems. Simon Fraser had a flight control system for their heli that used neural net controlled PID controller. They did two small demo flights and they were damn smooth. Their only problem was having a stable altitude.
Waterloo won first qualifier using a plane, and was the first team to do it with their own navigation system. Hats off.
ETS (another canadian team) is using a heli with their own nav system, but didn't have their system ready. Hope they'll be good comptetion next year.
First before you plow 1200 bucks on a laptop, check to see how the computer labs at your university are. I would highly suggest getting a usb drive since they can easily hold your online classnotes, along with a copy of gaim and winamp. If you feel this isn't enough after a few weeks in school, then get a laptop.
Personally, I don't have a laptop, mainly so that I don't waste away my entire life sitting at a school building doing off-task things. Instead, I just keep a usb drive with everything I need and use it at the lab computers. I believe you'll stay on task with doing schoolwork, and you won't have to go through the pain of finding special software. On the other hand, I would suggest getting a laptop if you like getting work done outside of school, like at a coffee shop or something. Labs can sometimes become a horrible home you just want to escape.
Now, as far as studying in the dorm, especially with all the fun stuff going on, doesn't work. Just have as much fun as you can in the dorms, and study elsewhere.
hrm, hope this didn't seem too offtopic.