• So called "Ashtray compute"

    Jacob David C Cunningham • 07/13/2024 at 07:13 • 0 comments

    There I was... it hit me... like a dream

    I bought some gold PLA... this probably will not look good but the idea is... you put the quadlidar setup in an ashtray deal solid plastic and then it's like a NUC box... future... if I get VIMU keeb fully working, it has a popout camera for keyboard... so then you have this box computer thing that doesn't use a mouse or a keyboard.

  • Quadlidar

    Jacob David C Cunningham • 07/11/2024 at 05:35 • 0 comments

    That's right... that means 4

    It's slow... probably the 4 x 20 ms minimum sampling rate and the pyautogui calls

    I probably won't put much more time into this project... it's not ergonomic... I may look into the software more since it's pretty janky, I only spent a day on this

  • Problems and progress

    Jacob David C Cunningham • 07/04/2024 at 01:35 • 0 comments

    I did get it to be where it's just code and math now

    See a vague demo of how it works

    and then the pain I went through to get there ha

  • Some design work (Trilidar mouse)

    Jacob David C Cunningham • 07/01/2024 at 19:41 • 0 comments

    Pronounced "try-lid-ar" heh

    I'm largely basing everything off the VL53L0X's beam pattern (25-30 deg) and that I'm using 3 of them.

    I ordered some more... although I may use the different brands to get a difference I2C address vs. using say SPI or a microcontroller between the sensors/pi.

    Will print tomorrow/do wiring and program testing.

    I'm hoping there are no obvious gotchas that make this not work.

    I initially thought 25-30 deg is massive but it's not... you still need a large diameter ring. The effective area I'm looking at with a 6" outer ring is a 2.5" inner ring (based on dead zones).

  • Why

    Jacob David C Cunningham • 06/29/2024 at 23:15 • 0 comments

    I'm giving away my daily driver laptop to a friend. It's nothing crazy a 2015 i7 Macbook Pro. Anyway I wanted to daily drive an RPi 4 as a basic browser/linux machine.

    I have had this 8GB model lying around so I decided now is the time to use it.

    The trilidar mouse thing is funny, I was like "oh I don't have a spare mouse"... I could make one.

    Mostly I don't like the idea of a loose mouse you gotta keep track of.

    What sucks with this project is there isn't a power bus bridge thing (y-splitter USB cable) but I'll look into that.

    The mouse is honestly the coolest part of the project since it has to work as a mouse somehow and I'll have to look into that.

    I'll work on this after tomorrow (Sunday) since I'll have some days off then.

    I bought this keyboard but I never really liked it. The sideways profile is like an n-shape which is weird, it should be a u IMO.

    But I like the keycap color and sound/thickness of the caps.

    These sensors the purple Pololu VL53L0X have a really wide cone... that's what I'm counting on here.

    It's possible the accuracy is just bad but I'm thinking the triangle part... the pulsing would be done in a sequence so the beams don't hit each other/trip the receiving end.