Pan/tilt mount evolution

The first pan/tilt mount for the camera was just servos blutacked or polymorphed together (version 1). Then it was a tilt mount out of bent metal (version 2). Now I have designed and printed a mount on the Hackerspace Brisbane reprap!

Version 2:

Design of Version 3:

Installed:

Then with the old tilt mount.

And here are some images of the new tilt mount being assembled.

Design in OpenSCAD

JeeNodes

I've ordered 2x JeeNodes (v5) and a USB JeeLink, which I will test out as a replacement for the offboard XBee I'm using now. Combining a RBBB Arduino-compatible board and a radio, they are cheaper and hopefully also have better signal, more than the 2mW XBees I have. They didn't actually give me an option in the shop for the frequency I wanted (they come in 433, 800 and ~900 MHz versions, depending on your country's laws), but I'm hoping for 433 or 868 MHz versions, as I have heard bad things about 900 MHz, mainly because they share a common mobile phone frequency. I hope at the very least that they are all on the same frequency!

My original concerns about these devices were that they wouldn't be fast or efficient enough, but there wasn't much info available at that time. Since then I have gleaned that the radio comms run at 57600 baud and use interrupts, over the SPI interface, so it should be fast enough. That leaves the inbuild hardware serial for other purposes - IR comms!

Suddenly, an update!

It's been a reeeeaallllyy long time since I updated, but lots has happened recently. Here is a demo of the new fullscreen UI!

You should really watch it in max HD so you can see the text change.