ArkSaw

So I have been happily using my media PC for almost a year now, serving up internets and playing movies. There is one big problem with it though: it only has vga and s-video output. My TV only has DVI input and s-video, which means that I have been suffering though the horrible quality that is s-video spread out on a 55" TV. I was looking into buying a DVI graphics card, but have discovered a better solution.

As seen in our "to-do list" from Wednesday we made some more progress on Phoenix. The most important update yesterday was moving the winch. We took it off of the top of the robot, which was dangerously close to the electronics board (and very prone to getting stuck) and mounted it in the back, under the battery. We also installed two pieces of metal to act as a guide for the winch so that the cable wouldn't get stuck when reeling in and out.

   This is a day late but I decided that I might as well post an update. Yesterday, Jan 12th, we brought the robot to the high school where the FIRST team works. We made a platform for all of the pneumatics... we still need to wire them up and add in some code support for them.. as well as find a use for them.

So one of our good friends referred us to a friend of his that was trying to get rid of "some robot parts". We drove to his house to meet him and were amazed at what we saw. He basically had an entire robot in his garage, along with plenty of scrap metal and electrical parts. Without any hesitation we crammed it all into our van (making the ride home pretty painful) and left.

So after upgrading the CPU, I ran into some heating issues... again. I tried a few difference cases to increase airflow, but nothing seemed to be enough to cool the CPU well enough. I ended up settling on a new CPU cooler (and am still with the original Thermaltake case). I purchased a small Zalman cooler that really did the trick. It has a reall cool speed controllers that I ran out of the a hole in the back of the case so I can adjust it when I start playing games or other heavy CPU tasks.