Back to Work

I have been working this whole time (well, except last week), even though I've kept pretty quiet about it on the blogging front. I think it's about time for an update.

The DynamixelNetwork code is just about finished. That is, it feels very well-rounded, it's densely-commented, and it'll do everything we need it to do. (In fact I think there's now more comments in it than actual code... but I did it for Doxygen, so that you don't even have to open the source code now to find out everything you need to know about it.) There are still one or two problems with it--a couple obscure functions of the servos aren't yet supported, and the latency is pretty high--which I'm hoping to get the chance to iron out before I leave, but I still think it's a nice bit of code, and better than anything else available for Linux for these servos. I hope the university will choose a license for it soon, so I can post a link. It's my first real contribution to the "open-source community", and hopefully not the last. I hope it gets a good response.

On the robot front, I'm making good progress writing the pan-tilt unit module to integrate into the software framework. That's kind of minimal, though--just a bit of code to accept and send messages, which talks to the servos with my library. I've also been tasked with designing the hardware for the robot body... somehow. Heh. When I first got here I started in on the pan-tilt unit, and I had never designed hardware before. What I'm doing isn't really too complicated, it's just a bit of CAD... but I had never done it before, and I didn't have any idea where to start. I did it, though, and it was pretty fun. It turns out that by doing that, I became the most experienced person on the team when it came to hardware. So I was the natural choice to design everything else.

I'm not complaining, though. I'm learning some valuable new skills, and I do like to tinker with gadgets every now and then. It's staves off the drudgery of programming 24/7, and I'm getting better at it, too. So on Tuesday I'm going to take the robot apart again, pull off a few things, walk to the workshop with an armful of aluminum, and slap it all together. Fun times.

I'm leaving Germany on the 12th of August. That means I've got three weeks left to finish up. If I finish the hardware next week, I should be able to get the software wrapped up before I leave. It's really strange to be leaving so soon. Three months isn't really much time at all. It's okay, though--it wasn't long enough to get overly attached to the place, but it was long enough to get a whole lot of stuff done, and get some memorable moments in there, too. I'm not really excited about jumping right back into school again, though...