The Weller Portasol P2C. Soldering gone wireless. Butane instead of electricity. And it comes with a blow torch tip? I didn’t have anything that needed to be soldered, but that didn’t keep me from immediately trying it when it came in. I’ve wanted one of these ever since Andy brought one on our last trip.

For the record, Lauren must really trust me if she gets me a butane-powered blow torch in disguise for my birthday, and then let’s me play with it in our apartment. Thank you.

Ok, let’s take a closer look. Since the P2C is a butane-powered soldering iron, it needs butane fuel. Lauren thankfully ordered a 2.1oz can of it along with the P2C from ToolBarn.com.

The P2C comes with replaceable tips, a nozzle for refueling, a knob for butane gas flow adjustment, an on/off switch, and an ignition switch. It is made of a heat resistant plastic and is, therefore, light even when filled with butane.

Refueling the soldering iron with butane is easy. Hold the soldering iron upside down and mate the tip of the fuel can with the nozzle. Push down with the fuel can for three seconds at a time until it is full. The P2C also features a convenient window to see if you have any butane left.

The butane flow can be adjusted to provide the equivalent power of a 45W to 75W soldering iron.

The front assembly of the P2C can be removed, such that you can replace the tip with any of the Weller Portasol tips. The P2C kit included a 0.094″ double sided soldering tip, a hot air tip with deflector, a hot knife tip, and the blow torch tip shown in the photo.

I cannot wait to put the P2C to good use. Hopefully I will get a chance to do just that on our trip to Ft. Benning, GA to test the autonomous mode of our Flying Android UAV.

If you are curious, check out my Flickr set for more photos of the P2C.

I have finally completed the jump onto the Google bandwagon by getting organized with Google Calendar and shrugging off that Google now knows that I have CS4641 Machine Learning on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:05pm to 4:25pm in the Klaus Advanced Computing building. Sooner or later all of our personal data will be in the “Cloud,” because who really wants to manually sync their calendars, documents, contacts, etc. over three or four devices? I know I don’t.

There is a link in the right sidebar to my Google Calendar, so that you can check when I have something planned or not. You may use it to catch me during the week, or just out of plain curiosity.

For the fellow KDE users out there, you can sync your Google calendar and contacts with Kontact (or Korganizer) using Akonadi. The Akonadi Google Resource did not make it into KDE 4.3, but it can easily be grabbed and install from the KDE SVN repositories.

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/extragear/pim/googledata googledata
cd googledata/
mkdir build
cd build/
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix`
make && make install

Once the resources have been installed, pull up the configuration window for Akonadi (either through the System Settings or the Akonadi Tray Utility). Click “Add…” and you should see the Akonadi Google Calendar Resource at the top.

Click “Ok” and then enter your Google account information in the dialog box that is opened. Confirm and close the Akonadi configuration window.

Next, open Kontact (or Korganizer). Click the plus symbol at top right of the calendar list.

Select “Akonadi (Provides access…” from the top of the list and click “Ok.” In the “Resource Configuration” dialog that opens, change the default label in the “Name:” field to something more useful and then click “Ok.”

You’re all done! You should be able to see your Google calendar and add, edit, or delete events. The Akonadi resource automatically performs a two-way sync of all events in the calendar; however, it is currently limited to only the first of your Google calendars. Hopefully, complete support for data synchronization with Google will be part of KDE 4.4.

Interesting fact: The instructions for setting up Google Sync on the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch involves Microsoft Exchange. Quite amusing.

Lauren and I were ready for SparkFun‘s Free Day. The night before we had filled up our shopping carts with $100 worth of electronics (and some sweet t-shirts). I had filled my cart with two XBee Pro 900 RF modules with an antenna, which I have wanted ever since the FunJet UAV has been on the home page of DIY Drones. These modules have a range of up to six miles and would be great for telemetry from an UAV down to a ground station (read: laptop).

We woke up at around 10:15 AM and pointed our browsers to our shopping carts. Thankfully, SparkFun had a live countdown to follow. My dad joined a little later, and Andy and I were giving an almost play by play over Twitter. At exactly 11 AM, all of us and the rest of the Internet hit “Checkout!”

Loading… Timeout. Refresh. Loading… Timeout. Refresh. This went on for almost two hours. My dad couldn’t get registered. Lauren only ever saw her shopping cart. I timed out trying to pay for shipping. And Andy made it to the last page, but then after 1 hour, 44 minutes, and 47 seconds, Free Day ended and none of us got any electronics.

On a more positive note, SparkFun became the #1 Google search term, #sparkfun grew into a top Twitter trend, and their store got some much deserved publicity!

Hallo.

To kick off this blog, here is a photo of one of my current projects: a Multiplex EasyStar R/C aircraft + Google Android developer smart phone = Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). This photo was taken on a cold, rainy, and windy day in early December at Ft. Benning, GA.

The UAV is remotely operated by a safety pilot on the ground, while the smart phone records sensory information and takes photographs. Below are just a few of the photos captured during one of the test flights at altitudes between 300 and 500 feet above ground level (AGL). By the end of this two semester project, the team plans to demonstrate fully autonomous flight of the UAV.

I develop and implement the flight controls in the autopilot. In the first phase of this project, I ported the ArduPilot to work on the smart phone and its Android platform. The flight controls consist of simple proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers, which adjust the elevator, rudder, and throttle. The accelerometer, digital compass, and GPS receiver on the smart phone are used as feedback in the control loops. I plan to explore more complex control strategies in the second phase of this project.

We plan to extensively document our project on flyingandroid.com, including how to hack the serial interface on the G1 and some other creative ways to connect smart phones to servos.