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Robotics and Image processing!

 Back in 2012, we participated in an image processing robotics event at BITS pilani, Goa. The objective was simple: build a robot which would use video cameras mounted above the area to figure out height of 3 cylinders placed randomly and visit them one by one in descending order. We had our go at it with some basic matlab programming we learned over the course of 2-3 weeks. Please find the actual problem description, our approach and matlab scripts below. Problem description : click here Our solution :  click here for description click here for matlab code Lessons learned: - Matlab is too slow for real time navigation; we would have had better chances if we were able to modify our robot's firmware to accept a preset route and follow it. Open CV would have worked out much better here. - We would have discovered the frame-rate issue had we had developed a basic model and tried a test run. Keyword being 'test' here. More you test your system, more robust it becomes! Two aweso...
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A blog on RS232 and UART

A blog on RS232  and UART I found my presentation on RS232 from my college days, so I thought it would be a great idea to share it here. You can download this as a presentation HERE . But I have added a little bit more content to it and typed it in below. I hope this helps you. RS232 (Recommended Standard 232) and UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver and Transmitter) are serial communication standards. A simple explanation of RS232 and UART without diving into anything too technical would be like this: They are serial communication standards which clearly define how each byte of data should be transferred over a communication channel. They serialize each byte of data and send them one byte after the other. Each byte is sent serially, as one bit after the other. [read IInd paragraph of the topic  RS232 Standard, to understand difference between UART and RS232] The text below concentrates on RS232 than on UART and if you came here hoping to understand everything from ...
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Arrays & Pointers

Most people find the concept of arrays & pointers hard to comprehend. My personal theory of why people find it hard to comprehend the idea of pointers is that their knowledge is limited to just the coding part of it.  I hope my illustrated tutorial will help you to understand it easily. If you don't know what happens inside the RAM when you declare a variable, don't skip to the pointers part. Read through the basics where I have explained what happens inside RAM when you declare a variable. You can download the power point presentation from,  this link . PS: This guide assumes that you have already dabbled with pointers and is here for a better understanding. For all the code explained below, we shall be discussing it with the understanding that the compiler does no optimisations. Behind the scenes Lets start by looking at a piece of code, void main() {    int a;    a = 5;      printf("Variable a has integer %d stored in ...
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The first post & why Joy of Engineering?

Its my theory that all the knowledge we acquire becomes our toolbox & even the modest of things have an engineering aspect to it. I am a student of engineering and by extension a student of physics, chemistry and maths. I have often realised that even the silly stuff can be made better with engineering.  May it be a simple life hack to a very complex system that simplifies our day to day life, engineering is all around us. Have you ever enjoyed the joy of engineering something useful or something wonderful, or both? I hope that my later posts will be helpful and that it will help you find that joy of engineering.
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