Hide and Seek

Over the weekend I tried some range testing with the xbees with a pair of 2dBi duck antennas. I only got about a half mile away from my car, in the open, before they started having trouble communicating with each other. Unfortunately this range will not do. I'd like to be able to get at least a mile or two out of them. Now to figure out how to optimize this. There aren't any cement buildings at burning man, but lots of camps, RVs and wooden structures. If you have any ideas, let me know.

Last night while soldering the duck antenna connectors (RP-SMA) to the xbees I somehow bricked one. It can can communicate with my computer over USB but doesn't seem to transmit and/or receive over wireless anymore. I checked my soldering and I don't see anything where it shouldn't be. The entire xbee got quite hot while soldering, so I'm guessing that might have done it.

Since I only have two xbees it's hard to diagnose which one is broken and how bad it's borked. So I just ordered a couple more with the RP-SMA connectors already mounted.

When the new xbees come in I'll do some range testing to see if I'll need to mount repeater at Burning Man.

At this point I have both control panels prototyped on breadboards and talking to each other quite well. I haven't been able to test them pointing to each other yet, but that will come soon. 

The arrow is also done and working. For this I rolled my own servo from a motor and continuous potentiometer that slides around the shaft. This way the motor can go more than 360 degrees and still stop precisely where I want it to. The arrow is 3D printed and connected to the motor via a spring and a couple of beveled gears in an actobotics aluminum channel. The spring is to provide it some flexibility, in case the bike falls over, and the gears are to keep any of that torquing off the motor.