Rampidbyter Rampid byter: A byte of my .Net developing life.

In other news my Microchip.com Explorer 16 board arrived this past Friday. I’ve been anxiously awaiting its arrival since early part of January. Dang delays, but it’s finally here. It’s pretty nice too, has some LED’s on it, and to my surprise a fairly large LCD display on it. I was even more excited when I saw that because a friend of mine has a similar more dated version and it does not have previously mentioned LCD display.

I’ve been reading the manuals that came with the board, shoot I’ve spent more time reading the manuals than I have doing anything with it. I figure at this point I’ve got the idea behind the timer controls, and could probably finagle a rudimentarily timing mechanism for say, a clock, a cooking timer, or bomb. You know, whatever I feel like cooking up. Bomb was a joke people… (Looks around for FBI) There is so much to learn, and I’ve been cracking open the books on machine learning. I’m not sure where my end goal is going to be but I’m trying to absorb as much knowledge on these subjects as possible with the intention of playing with some robot ideas we’ve been tinkering with. I wish I had more spare time to actually realize these ideas in a more solid foundation of learning than having to spend what moments I have available looking through books from 11pm till 1am each night. Makes getting up in the morning that much more difficult.

I saw a report on CNN the other day bout a sentry bot, well remote controlled bot that they’re sending into dark alleys. The bot itself contains a loud speaker, spot light, and water canon that it sprays individuals with. Other than being remote controlled the idea is pretty fascinating. I think it’d be neat to build a radio controlled car that can be remotely controlled from say, my room, through my computer, with camera mounted equipment. Perhaps build something like the UAV’s for the military but on a civilian scale, and build up from there.

May be a pipe dream but I’ve always been fascinated by the concept, well that and space, but the idea still remains that I should be able to build something reasonably cheat to fill my shoots and giggles.

I’ll keep everyone posted, maybe with pictures of things to come.