NSECT Arduino Anti Aircraft

Just some notes on a possible new project.
Just collecting links and notes and testing the concept at this point.

Status:

• Android based computer vision test works.
• NSECT not yet recabled to be controlled by an Arduino.
• NSECT foam dart gun not yet modified to add more degrees of movement.

Purpose:

Take my old N.S.E.C.T. toy and have an Arduino run it with 2 H-bridges.
Redesign the turret to turn in 2 dimensions.
Then add camera and distance meassuring and computer vision to target low flying quadcopters.

Step 1

Attach 2 H-bridges to an Arduino to control the 2 DC motors for movement.
Then also attach turrent, LED and gripper -controls.
Trying to copy the work of Jeremy Parton here.

Notes:

• Jeremy unsoldered the receiver chip and connected the Arduino to the (now free) pads.
• "Keep in mind I used resistors (I suspect it was 100 ohm) between the Arduino and the NSECT board.
• "I also strongly support converting to an H Bridge instead of the existing relays. As far as I could tell the biggest killer of NSECTs was the start-stop motion and the motors shredding the gears. A soft start would go a long was to extending the life of the gears in the legs."

Step 2

Redesign the foam-dart turrent with 3D printed parts to move in both dimensions.

Step 3

Add an old Android phone with a camera that can speak ADK with the Arduino.
Run OpenCV or similar to detect and track flying objects with the blank sky in the background.
Tell the Arduino the heading. Have the Arduino meassure distance via ultrasound, look up the balistic curve and fire away.

The "OpenCV Sample - color-blob-detection" works well and seems to do the trick!

Links

• my initial brainstorming on Google+
• Step 1: someone already did the NSECT 2 Arduiono part
• Step 2: my turn. ;)
• Step 3: Anthony Morris is doing the ADB part in his robot car already
• OpenCV:

1. official download and official documentation
2. Android OpenCV 
3. also OpenCV 
4. object tracking on Android 
5. Android ViewerCV

• Phones for ADB
• Design files on Thingiverse (coming soon)
• All Photos
• Photos of me dissecting my N.S.E.C.T. years ago
• Video (coming soon)
• All Videos (please subscribe)

2012-11-29 N.S.E.C.T.