Maria
We went to look for a new type of frosted glass, because until now we were having problems with all the materials we've been using (glass, paper, plastics, etc.). We need some transparency so that the image can be seen, but also some degree of opaqueness so that the infra-red and the lamp light are blocked. Also, the surface on the bottom can't be reflective or the readings on the camera are very bad.
After several hours and glass shops we managed to buy on for around € 20.00 that it seemed to respond to our needs.
 |  |
After some calibration and tests we got the feeling that this was the final one. This will be our surface of choice, but probably will even put a plastic on top to block more the infra-red light, because after some time this light produces some fatigue to the eyes. Further tests will determine this.
 |  |
During the calibration and balance tests we also noticed that with this glass the infrared light wasn't being dispersed with homogeneity on all the glass surface. We thought on different solutions, but applied a very simple one used on flash photography, we just cover the infra-red lamps with tracing paper. It worked!
We gave a huge step on putting the surface table working as pretended. Next days will be spent doing tests, calibration and fine tuning.
We also continue working on the prototype of Maria's software user interface. This is proving a huge task. We have a lot of components on screen and we want to use has much interaction has we can, so putting everything to work and having a futuristic, but reliable and easy to use interface takes some work.
Julio
One more day on autonomous flight tests. We have now put it to work on the 3 axis and having a smooth flight, but there we continue with some problems:
- We can only process a maximum of 2 video frames per second, which is too long in terms of flight navigation. The delay between navigation commands becomes very high for having a more smooth "follow the face";
- The battery doesn't last more than 1 hour of tests (12 min flying) and because it takes 1h30m to charge and we only have two, we have to stop a lot.
Nevertheless, this was a good day, Julio is now following the "locked" face. We still have to solve this issues, but we think it can be done.
Chasso
On this front we also had some news today. The wi-fi camera to mount on top of Chasso arrived.
We did some initial tests to check if you could use it's pan and tilt functions which were successful, therefore we can now included this functionality on the Chasso.
We also did some tests on the maneuvering because of the weight added and it became obvious that this additional burden was a problem. We can solve it by distributing more weight on the back (we will test this later on with the batteries for the camera).
 |  |
On general this was a very good day, we managed to move some "yellow stickers" from one phase to the another :)
 |  |
 |  |
