I've talked briefly about a course I'm taking (in entrepreneurship) so Jack and I can have a successful start-up electronics business but I didn't want to talk about the actual business before now. It works! It works! I'm SO excited!
Jack and I went to a conference in July for super-geeks. I was in my element - and Jack had never seen me like this before. We bought some kits for pretty cool toys and saw a lot of neat stuff. We decided to build a quadrocopter, a two foot square flying device, powered by four electric motors. The "brains" of the quadrocopter is an "Arduino", an open-source microprocessor connected to sensors that keep the device balanced and flying straight. There is an active internet community of builders of such flying machines, so there are plenty of people who can help with problems.
Initially, Jack wanted to write all or almost all of his own software, which kind-of defeated the purpose of having an open-source platform. He came around to using existing libraries of Arduino programs and quickly developed his own program to emulate portions of the hardware on his computer. We traded off building bits, but after multiple updates, my circuit boards were all in use, but the programming was entirely Jack's edited creation. The only problem was, after replacing certain parts that were defective or had been damaged in earlier versions, the device would continuously and uncontrollably roll over (and rapidly crash, if it were actually flying instead of the emulator displaying the flight characteristics).
Today, Jack and I sat down together at his father's house and talked through the problem. We concluded that the sensors were working properly. There were a couple of less-than-ideal solder joints on the main circuit board, which I fixed. It still rolled. I pulled out the schematics that I used to build the main circuit board and started going over the wiring. There was a significant difference between the drawing and the device in the sensor connections - they were connected in a different order than the drawing specified. We talked over the reason for the difference; it dated to when Jack was writing all of his own programs - when it didn't matter if the sensors were wired in a unique manner. Since he was now using a library of software, the sensors had to match the software originator's plans (and they didn't). So, I unsoldered one end on each of five wires on the circuit board and reconnected them so they matched the schematic. We hooked the board up to the computer and it stopped rolling!
I could finally put the whole quadrocopter together. The circuit boards are mounted in a plastic box,which is mounted on the frame. We had previously mounted the motors, motor controllers, and battery to the frame. Everything is all hooked up. Jack still has to calibrate the sensors but we hope to be flying tomorrow (if the weather isn't horrendous, as forecast). Maybe we'll go somewhere where there is a building with high ceilings and fly indoors. Hmmmmm.
I'm so excited and happy, though! We've been working on this since mid-September, and have spent three months debugging the thing. Debugging is both fun and maddening. Right now, the quadrocopter isn't anything unique. It's just a very expensive, albeit fun, toy. But stay tuned. Our business isn't just making quadrocopters; lots of people are building them. I can't talk about the rest, yet. Nyah, nyah! Seriously, there are a LOT of people building these things for profit, so we need to keep certain ideas a secret until we're ready to market the thing.
But it works! Neither of us could debug the machine's problems alone; we've got a pretty good division of labor. I like working with Jack. Building stuff with your kid is a lot of fun.
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