----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 7:41
AM
Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Sonar
Transparent
I'm looking for some sort of sonar/radio
transparent material I can use for my transducer housing. At the moment I'm
fooling around with some cheap hobby-store rsonar appMods for educational
robotics, and pretty much every single thing I try completley negates the
sonar.
I've even tried mounting it on a piece of
teflon sheeting and it still seemed to "muffle" it.
The option of canabalizing a fish finder as a
sonar system like was done for Archimedes is unfortunatley not an option.
This system is far too small to support the weight.
As for an update, now that I've gotten back
into things since my work schedule cooled down some.
1. BugEye is at the bottom of the pond, I got
the tether tangled in something and was stupid enought to pull until I got
only the tether back. Much Colorful language ensued.
2. Archimedes is slowly shaping up... but
everything is so expensive for that scale that I do one thing at a
time.
3. BugEye II is in the works, I'm hoping to
make it smaller and add two new sensors 1. A sonar system (Not severely
powerful, but good enough for 2 meter view ahead in zero visibility
conditions) 2. an extendable probe w/ one of those "screw picker upper"
gripping hands at the tip. BugEye II is designed to be smaller than the
original BugEye, I thought of outfitting BugEye II with some sort of radio
control... like maybe WiFi control (I saw a neat little appmod that can be
used for this) or some other type of radio control, but I'm uncertain about
the reliabilty of transmitting through water at anything beyond the most
minor of depths.
Design Flaws Found With BugEye (For anyone else
that wants to learn from its demise)
1. Teflon is a wonderful building material, but
it's not good for mounting things onto, you need to find things to anchor
to. It's kind of like putting a screw in drywall without hitting a
stud.
2. I didn't take into account the length of my
tether, if you're tether is over 100` you need to design for the reduced
power you'll get through the lines.. ESPECIALLY when your working with such
low power equipment that goes into robotics to begin with.
3. I just screwed my teather into the coax plug
and the power cord was snapped in, next time I'll put an eye hook on or
something so I can hook it up to that before I plug it in.
And that is my question and progress update for
the day.
George H. Slaterpryce
III