Hi All,

I’m posting a quick update to acknowledge the recent posts regarding the autonomous “landing” of my project’s prototype in a Studio City pine.

First off, I want to sincerely thank the efforts and actions of the Los Angeles Fire Department station #78. Using high pressure water jets and a very long and impressive ladder, they were able to dislodge the plane from the tree in which it had so elegantly landed on an autonomous approach. I’d  also love to thank the gentlemen whom owned the house whose back yard contained the tree. He was extremely polite, helpful, and all around awesome during the process of retrieving the prototype. If you are reading this, please email me (my email is the name of this site @ gmail.com) with your contact info. I have lost your card (d’oh).

Now, on to the project. Here are the two great news articles detailing what occurred:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/04/studio_city_science_project_stuck_palm_tree_state_fair.php

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/04/firefighters-save-teens-winning-science-project-from-palm-tree-.html

Thanks to the writers of those two sources. As for you, sir (edit: ma’am), from LA-Weekly, your story quite frankly made me laugh. Great stuff. A couple of things though: the previous post I mentioned was about a previous project, a quadricopter. Unfortunately due to being busy with school and this project, I haven’t really posted much here about it. I will begin to post much more now, and I apologize for laxing to any of my former readers. My comment system is broken by the way – I have about 3,000 spam comments piled up and the Wordpress spam system is broken for me.

Here is the document detailing my project as it was for the Los Angeles, State, and Google Science Fairs: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2Qb4E4LDg_9ekFTVGFRRzNRY0dGeG1qTG8zZHFkQQ/edit#

Since then I have obviously continued my work (seeing as I ran a obstacle avoidance test on Friday, not bargaining for trees after configuring a shallower landing curve) and have many updates.

I’ve posted (or will post shortly) the project details under my projects section.

Thanks to all of you reading this. If you have any questions please email me as my comments are still broken (thanks spammers >:( ) – I mentioned it earlier in this message.

~Christian Stewart

Here’s an example of a spam comment (for fun). Can someone tell me what this means? Adobe Systems triumph showed a some paws, then a uropygium of a bird, then a couple ears and some whiskers 

Hi All,

As some of you may know, I competed in the Los Angeles County Science fair Spring 2012. My project was on Low-Cost Civilian Autonomous UAVs.

I’m proud to report that I won first place in Engineering Applications as well as a honor from the Navy and an award from the National Society of Professional Engineers!

I will be posting more info on the project and videos of the flights soon.

~Christian

Hey Guys,

So I know I haven’t posted anything in a while. I have decided to ditch this pattern and begin more frequent posts. I’m not even sure if anyone reads these, and I have no way of enabling comments (at the moment 2000 spam comments are in the queue). If you have any questions feel free to email me.

I’ve wanted to do a couple of projects programming things for iOS devices but I don’t have the money to spare re-enabling my iOS Developer at the moment, so I decided to whip out the old iPod Touch 2G and jailbreak it out for my own testing desires.

I thought it would be easy. I thought wrong. It turns out that the iPod Touch 2G has VERY little ways to jailbreak it as its old as **** and nobody really cares about it anymore….

Here’s how I did it after a few hours of searching:

Please note that this is all for educational purposes, and at this time of posting, the act of modifying a owned device’s software is legal. All activities performed by readers past this act are not my responsibility and by following this guide you release me of all liability in the event that your device is damaged.

Jailbreak iPod Touch 2G (And other versions!)

1. Install the latest iOS on your device. For me it was 4.2.1
2. Download the version of GreenPois0n (so l33t): http://greenpois0n.com/?page_id=18 – For me this was GreenPois0n RC6.1
3. Pop open the program and follow its simple DFU mode guide (remember to shut down and connect the device first).
4. Click jailbreak and watch the magic.

This may seem really simple, as it is, but it took me a while to figure out what program to use and hopefully this will be a help for you.

Regards,

~Christian

Hi Everyone,

I’ve posted my Visual Studio solution for PTAM after several requests for them under the software section!

Enjoy,

Christian

Hi,

Recently I have started work with a indie game creation company named Moya Games – we’ve been working on a few exciting games, but my focus has been on Omuni Online.

Omuni Online is a new MMORPG, which mixes RPG and FPS elements, and is featured in a SINGLE WORLD server. This means that there are no separate realms or servers, you just log in, choose your character, and are in the world of Omuni, hassle free.

This also means you can meet up with your friends in the world by, well, meeting up with them at any place you like. No more worry about finding the correct realm, etc.

I’m the Networking Programmer for the team, and am also a general programmer as well. I built the server for the game, which I call One World. This software is a advanced cloud computing MMORPG system, which allows for easily scalable hosting for these types of games.

I recommend you check out our YouTube channel and follow us for updates

http://youtube.com/omunionline

~Christian

Hey!

A couple people have brought up Windows and Linux support for LegoNXTRemote. I’m considering converting the project to Java so that it would be platform-independant, however it would require a complete rewrite of the code. I’ve been exploring other control methods for the NXT, however, everything I have found requires a custom firmware to be installed on the drone.

I’ll keep my blog updated.

Until then,

Christian Stewart

NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT THE SAME DRONE AS MY CURRENT PROJECT – “LOW COST CIVILIAN AUTONOMOUS UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS”.

Please see my new posts – this is a quadricopter project I had a couple years ago.

I just received my drone back from the Parrot Warranty Repair center. They swapped out one of the motors which was broken/somewhat faulty, and now it works PERFECTLY. The flight is stable, and the drone is very responsive to control commands from the iPhone. The camera quality is great, and first person control is actually easier for me than flying while looking at it in third person.

I had a good flight in a astroturf field. I definately recommend using a ground with texture so the bottom camera can recognize objects and figure out its speed. A nice REAL grass field has worked better for me in the past.

One other tip – when flying outdoors at high speeds, especially over a untextured/self repeating ground, I wouldn’t recommend relying on the autopilot to slow down and stop the drone (once again while flying at high speeds). I would recommend simply tilting the phone back to manually correct it, then releasing the controls for the drone to do the more subtle braking. However, none of this applies if you are flying over a high contrast ground – the drone will immediately be able to get a lock on its linear speed and correct it. Same applies to wind – if the ground is not very contrastive, it will not be able to correct fast enough to avoid drifting into a tree.

Rough cement, NATURAL longer grass, or most artificial ground surfaces (cobblestone, gravel, etc) should be fine for the drone to track. I am simply sharing my experience with Astroturf, which I am not a big fan of anyway.

I will be uploading more videos on the drone now that it is fixed on my youtube, http://youtube.com/kidovate – be sure to check there!

Christian Stewart

Kidovate

Hi everyone,

I had this problem last night. I upgraded the firmware on my new ARDrone, eager to start flying it. Much to my alarm and dismay, though, when I launched the drone, it immediately started flying rapidly backwards!!! It crashed into a wall, a table, and I punched the emergency stop button, trembling. Luckily nothing on the drone was really hurt, but I was stricken, thinking that I had broken the drone at some point.

I checked the ARDrone forum, and one other person had got this error. Exactly the same thing. Two hours later, I checked again, to see at least 5 responses from people with the same problem. Someone at the end posted that it was the FIRMware’s fault. Made sense since this update had just come out and everyone was effected.

Hey everyone,

With creating software becoming more and more of a hobby of mine, I have redesigned the software page and included a Creative Commons license with all the software now!! I have several new programs coming out soon, and have released an iPhone app recently.

If you like my software, please donate using the button on the right.

Hey folks,

Sorry I haven’t posted much for quite a while. I’ve been busy with other things… Anyway here are 2 different freeware softwares to speed up your games and your PC in general. Both softwares will be coming from IOBit – an awesome freeware company. The first one I will be covering will generally defragment and speed up your computer. This one is called Advanced System Care Free. You can find it here. Installation and usage is simple – install the software and click the big Care button. This will run a quick operation that checks all aspects of your computer looking for problems, and then automaticaly repairs them.

Moving on to the game-specific software. The next one I will be sharing with you is called GameBooster. The idea is that it will automatically stop over 25 system CPU-heavy services on your computer which use up quite a bit of RAM and CPU/GPU power, which should be used for your games. When you exit “gaming mode”, it will restart these services. It will also implement a custom power plan which will make your computer much much faster and give it higher performance. It disables windows aero and some other useless-for-gaming software on your computer, as well as turning your computer’s power usage to the highest, giving your CPU, graphics card(s), and ram the power they need to give you a good gaming experience. It will also defrag and free up your ram, and install the latest graphics drivers, all with one click. You can get the version 2 beta (which includes all these features) here

Usage of this software is also simple. Slide to enter gaming mode, however I recommend you follow these steps first.

1. Go to “System Tweeks” (left tab) and choose High Performance. This will tweek your system preferences to turboboost your computer.

2. Use the game drivers tab to download any essential graphics drivers for your computer.

3. Slide to enter gaming mode. It might ask you some questions. It will be quick – just go through and choose all the highest settings.

4. You are now in gaming mode!!! Next, I recommend opening Advanced System Care back up and clicking Turbo Boost. This will turbo boost your computer by closing a few more services (print spooler, etc) that will make your computer even faster.

You should be good to go. Launch your game and have fun with fast graphics!!

One last suggestion. One your game has started, alt+tab to the desktop. Then open task manager with ctrl+alt+delete. Click on show processes from all users so that you get admin privilages. Right click on your game and set the priority to High. Then choose set affinity. Deselect one of the cpus (CPU 1 for example) and press OK. Then set affinity again and renable the CPU.

I hope these tips help you!!

Christian Stewart