Stage (19) Week Commencing (12/05/14)
Week 31
Description
This session was an interesting one, firstly: I did not spend anytime out of Uni on the project this week as I have been so busy trying to get the special study module and the rest of my unifished modules sorted for thursdays hand-in.
On Monday I sent in my posters for the final show to be evaluated and I got advised on which was the most appropriate one. I also got an email from my lecturer saying that the problems with the tracking may be due to using the kinect skeleton library - we found in testing that sometimes the skeleton did not fully map onto a person if their legs where behind a desk or their arms in a funny position. So he sent me a code that basically gives you a set of values for the nearest pixel to the kinect sensor. This would mean that, it would be irrelevant if the kinect could not see certain body parts as it would just give a set of values for the nearest pixel to the sensor (which would be anyone standing closest to it) .
I also purchased a kinect stand but it was not up to scratch so I had to make my own using the bits that where worth having. I took the connectors off the top of the stand and used milliput to mould into the shape of a universal mounting plate. One it had dried I took my camera stand and mounted the kinect unit to the top of it so now I have a portable kinect unit that i can change the hight and position of easily which will hopefully come in handy when trying to get the best positional angle at the final degree show. 1.2
On Friday I got to spend some time with my tutor trying to iron out the tracking issues, and we got it nailed down to a tee !! then the laptop crashed and we lost all the code we had been working on and it was horrendous..not only did we lose the code we had been working on for 2 hours, but also blew up the neck servo for the y axis and when i got around to replacing and testing it out today I also discovered the right lip servo had also blown up at some point in the past week because it was working fine during the lip mechanism testing. However by working quickly we managed to get the x axis and mouth working together without any issues. We could not test the Y axis (neck u/d motor) because it had blown up. I have spent today getting things back on track I have the robot working on it's Y axis again and I pretty much have it all working spot on again. (1.1)
Feelings
This week has been a total rollercoaster !! it was so gutting to have had everything working so perfectly and the loose it all in a blink of an eye was very frustrating. On top of that I left trying to solve the same issues over again: loosing two servos and having to replace them.. (one was milliputted into the side of the top jaw servo so that had to be cut out with wire cutters and replaced) Was very frustrating. This was down to maintenance issues, milliputting and permanently fixing servos means they cannot be tested effectively using a servo tester, it also makes cleaning the servos impossible) . However.. Considering all of these issue I have seen how well the project works as a complete set up, which was a great feeling.
Evaluation
This session was both soul destroying and successful... this is such a strange time and position to be in at the moment. The project is due in on Thursday and It's pretty much down to how much time I can get on the project and if I can see my lecturer one last time to iron out some of the script issues I've bee having. This is officially make or break time and I don't want to fail.. I want to get this project finished and working like it should. Careful maintenance is becoming such an important part of this project, I have been cleaning the base mechanism with a cue tip to keep all the dirt and oil build up that keeps accumulating and slowing down the movement and speed of the servo and oiling the eye and jaw mechanisms to keep the pressure off the servos.
Analysis
The current state of the project is not far off been fully finished, all this time and effort is about to have to stand on show and work repeatedly and efficiently for long periods of time. I cannot put into words how I feel sat at my laptop at this moment in time...
Conclusion
In conclusion the next few days are going to be spent doing work and trying to nail this thing down. I am exhausted and my brain feels like a sponge, in my head i have all three projects whizzing around and my mind keeps flicking on and off like static radio.. but I am so close to getting this project completed and working like I imagined it at very start of the year, so I'm going to give it my all. However, I am aware of all the problems iv'e had with this project and I'm worried that something may happen during the final show, the worst case scenario would be a servo blowing that wasn't easy to change out or friction on the eye mechanism causing the ball and socket joints pop out of their fittings potentially ruining the mechanism. So after hand-in week I will be testing every part of the robot for weaknesses and also running the systems for a couple of hours at a time to see how it works over long periods of time.
Action Plan
Work day and night, play inspirational music, drink coffee and red bull. ..
1.1
1.2
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