Autonomous Car for Sparkfun AVC

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Will post more later once finals are over but I wanted to start the repo. Most information will go in the wiki, since there is a lot of specialized terms and knowledge to the RC world. People who want to help should have a centeralized place to go to learn what they need so that this project is less intimidating to people with no prior knowledge of RC or robotics.
Read about last years contest
Some pictures and info from last year on HackaDay
Video recap of last year on youtube
Youtube preview of last years course, for an idea of whats involved

What we can learn from this project:

• Microcontroller programming (aruindo, etc)
• Embedded Computers (single board computers like the pi)
• Signals and Controls
• Sensor Fusion
• Hardware design and prototyping
• Assembly Language - I don't know it but if you do then its a great opportunity to flex your knowledge!
• AI - probably very crude but we can see
• Computer Vision - maybe out of reach for this first year but would be awesome!
• Working as a team and using real life engineering best practices (!)
• An awesome trip to the competition for those who can make it!

Needed Knowledge (future wiki topics):

• Electrical Subsystems of a RC vehicle
  • Lipo Battery
  • Electronic Speed Controller
  • Servo
  • Receiver (or in our case a computer/microcontroller)
  • Electric Motor
    • Brushed electric motors
    • Brushless Electric Motors
  • Signals and Controls
    • Analog vs Digital
    • Pulse Width Modulations
    • I2C serial
    • SPI serial
    • Closed Loop Feedback

Obviously what you learn is really up to what you are interested in. If you could care less about hardware but want to jsut play with computer vision or someother navigation method then thats ok! If we want we could even make more than one car, and there is also a battle bot competition if some people are more interested in that.

Find IP of beaglebone on Windows at Saddleback

• Open CMD
• Type "nslookup beaglebone". The output will look something like:

Server:  dns1.saddleback.edu
Address:  10.151.253.251

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:  beaglebone.saddleback.edu
Address:  10.151.12.96

• Use the address associated with beaglebone.saddleback.edu with ssh on Linux/OSX or in PUTTY(installed on school computers already)