Personal Projects

Ellie

“Ellie”, is a project which uses a customized voice recognition system to provide assisting capabilities for the home. Ellie can take in spoken English commands, perform tasks and calculations, and respond via synthesized speech. What makes Ellie different from other voice command systems is that Ellie listens for input 24/7, this allows her to be a hands free way to easily get tasks done around the home. Ellie is based on 100% open source technology and will be released open source upon completion.

 

 

 

MyDataFurnace.com

MyDataFurnace.com is a online platform to aid in setting up consumer electronics to heat your home, small office, or any other small space. We use the power of the graphical processing unit to work with online distrbuted computing platforms in order to generate heat offset from the internal computer components. When these systems are setup properly and monitored with the MyDataFurnace.com platform, you can easily automated your heating system to maintain a constant comfortable indoor temperature.

 

 

 

 

FI-AUAV

The FI-AUAV was a project started in early 2010. The end goal of the project was to build a platform that would allow me to better learn low level programming. I choose to build a fully autonomous UAV system based on a Arduino platform. Once the platform was built, hundreds of hours of testing was concluded to optimize each system implemented. The FI-AUAV can run a complete mission, from take off to mission objective to landing. All way points are calculated pre-flight and then carried out by the system autonomously. At any time the ground pilot can take control of the flight via a remote cockpit on the ground.

 

 

 

FI-ApartmentBot

Wanting to learn more about autonomous movements in robotics, I spent a weekend building the FI-ApartmentBot. This Arduino based platform is a simple treaded robot that will autonomously rove around your home. The goal was to create a system that would learn where it had been to make better decisions about getting there in the future. The knowledge gained from this project was critical in the creation of the FI-AUAV.

 

 

 

 

FI-FoamBurner

In the very early stages of the FI-AUAV project, I was creating simple Depron based foam planes to test electronic systems needed for a final UAV. From compass modules and IMU’s to radio and video relay, everything was tested. During these stages crashes and destruction was inevitable. In the 6 months of early testing, 17 planes were made and lost from some many incidents. The FI-FoamBurner was created to alleviate some of the time needed to build each plane exactly the same as the previous one for proper testing. With the hot wire in the in the FoamBurner, I could now cut into any foam as if it was butter with extreme precision you would never have with a knife.

 

 

 

FI-ATCSRP

When creating final versions of electronic platforms I have designed, I love to make custom printed circuit boards or have them made for me. The hardest part of creating a circuit board in my opinion was layout out top mounted components by hand. The components don’t have wires running right threw the board for easy soldering. So, I created the FI-ATCSRP. This device is a simple skillet from a yard sale with a servo connected to the thermostat of the device. There is also a thermophile attached to the skillet to detect the current temperature. With this system I could now reflow any circuit board I wanted to either add or remove components any time.