Paul Bupe, Jr

Connecting a BeagleBone Black to the Internet over USB

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Connecting a BeagleBone Black (BBB) to the internet over USB is a simple process thanks to the internet sharing capabilities of Windows. This is extremely convenient when developing because it allows your BeagleBone Black to have an internet connection as long as your computer or laptop has one, no matter the network, and SSH access over a single USB cable.

Wood Clock Gears with Motor Drive – Part 3 of 3

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Picking up from Part 2, the third and final part of the wood click gears with motor drive build covers the stepper motor drive. The gears ended up driving this really beautiful clock. Note that I did not build the clock, just the gears driving the hands.

Wood Clock Gears with Motor Drive – Part 2 of 3

Reading Time: 2 minutesPicking up from Part 1 of the wood clock gears project where I designed the gears, Part 2 will cover the physical assembly of the gear build. This was the simplest part of the build since it only involved cutting the gears using a laser cutter and gluing everything together.

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Wood Clock Gears with Motor Drive – Part 1 of 3

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I was asked to design and build the gear and drive mechanism for a 6 foot clock. The clock had an hour and a minute hand and needed to move in both the clockwise and anti-clockwise direction. This was not a “realtime clock” and needed to move visibly fast.

I decided to use wood clock gears with a motor drive for the sake of simplicity. This build was definitely more out of my comfort zone than usual but proved to be a fun and educational experience. Part 1 goes over the design of the gears. Part 2 will cover the physical build and Part 3 the electrical design and final build.

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ModBot: A Modular Robotics Test Platform

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ModBot is a simple robotics platform created for testing sensors, algorithms, vision systems, and everything else in between. I designed this platform with modularity in mind (thus the name) which requires the compartmentalization of behaviors and functions into discrete and, ideally, interchangeable modules. Since this is an experimental platform I opted not tie it to ROS (even though it still uses a Linux environment so ROS can be used) and created a very simple ASCII protocol for communication between modules. Lastly, I added teleoperation capabilities using a PlayStation DualShock 4 controller.

DIY Housing for 100W Audio Amplifier Module

Reading Time: 3 minutesThis was a fun build around the Sure 2×100 Watt Amplifier Module. I spent most of the time on this project designing the chassis in SolidWorks and chasing around the cause of a fairly high noise floor. The final chassis which was very beautifully built by my friend Rodney.

Desktop Audio Amplifier Chassis

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Project Summary

This was a quick build of a 50W desktop audio amplifier based around the SainSmart 12V 50Wx2+100W TPA3116D2 board. The amplifier performed well into a 6 Ohm load and was able to hit “uncomfortable” levels (at a 4 foot listening distance) without distortion.

Parts List

SainSmart 12V 50W x 2+100W TPA3116D2 2.1 Amplifier Board
Self-Stick 1/2″ Noise-Dampening Bumpers
Kmise Z2807H3 14 x 17 mm Mini Aluminum Knob
Black and Red Plastic Shell Speaker Terminal Binding Posts
BOX3-1455N-BK Black Aluminum Box (6.30 x 4.06 x 2.10 in)
2.1mm Metal Panel Mount DC Power Jack
3.5mm Stereo Panel Mount Input Jack

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Ultra-fast, Autonomous, Reconfigurable UAV Disaster Communication System

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Abstract

The recent years have witnessed an increase in natural disasters in which the destruction of essential communication infrastructure has significantly affected the number of casualties. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina in the United States resulted in over 1,900 deaths, three million land-line phones disconnections, and more than 2000 cell sites going out of service. This incident highlighted an urgent need for a quick-deployment, efficient communication network for emergency relief purposes. In this research, a fully autonomous system to deploy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as the first phase disaster recovery communication network for wide-area relief is presented. As part of this system, an automation algorithm has been developed to control the deployment and positioning of the UAVs based on a traditional cell network structure utilizing 7-cell clusters in a hexagonal pattern. In addition to the software algorithm, a fully functional control interface was developed which allowed for full control of the system both locally and over an internet connection. This system represents a novel approach for handling a large-scale autonomous deployment of a UAV communications networks.

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