Chris Harrod

Good morning,

I'm trying to troubleshoot a problem where my application fails to run from time to time. It doesn't appear to do it every time, which is pretty irritating.

public PhalanxSocket()
        {
            Debug.Print("Creating socket.");
            this.LineEnding = "";
            this._Sock = new Socket(AddressFamily.InterNetwork, SocketType.Dgram, ProtocolType.Udp);
            Debug.Print("Created socket");
        }

At least half of the time I deploy the application it hangs up creating the socket. Any ideas? I'm running .NET MF 4.1

The workaround is to launch the program with the ethernet cable unplugged and then plug it in after the application is running.

Overall Goal: To create a netduino controlled turret system to fire nerf darts or other items of my choosing at my wife if she comes into my office.

Background: I have absolutely zero development, electrical/mechanical engineering experience. I do have a lot of disposable time and income to toss around and want to test my ability to learn new things. Learning new things is the real goal of this experiment.

Plan: Using the Kinect's SDK and wireframe tracking ability, write a C# application to track the X/Y/Z positions of a person entering the device's field of view. Specifically the center of mass. Use this data to magically talk to the Netduino over ethernet. Ideally, I'd like to quickly send the X/Y/Z of the target to the Netduino and have it move stepper motors to reposition the turret. This is obviously a long ways away from what I can do now.

Progress: Dec 2011, I've acquired my Netduino / Kinect / some small servos. I've pieced together an application to echo out the X/Y/Z of the center of the target. I've also written a shabby little app to move a servo in a wiper fashion just to see if I could do it. My total coding experience is probably 2 weeks at this point.

Basically I'd like this thread to turn into a blog of my progress of both the project and my experience of learning how to develop without formal education.

Update: Sept, 2012

I took a few months off because I was slammed with personal stuff. Back to it!

I had a hard time with the communication part of this because I was flooding the Netduino with as many as 30 requests a second. With the assistance on Arron Chapman I was able to reduce the overhead on the communication by using sockets and just sending small bits of binary rather than a bunch of GET or POST requests.

I started working on the turret itself tonight while I wait for parts from sparkfun.

I still need some gears or timing pulleys for the steppers themselves.


Parts List (so far):

Netduino Plus: $60
Stepper Motors x 2: $48
Big Easy Driver x 2: $46
Terminals x Many: $15
Lazy Suzan: $5
Lots of wire: $25


(I'll solidify this later)
Multimeter
Voltage Regulators
Resistors
Capacitors
Soldering iron / solder / desoldering braid
DreamCheeky USB missile launcher I used for a prototype

Learning Resources: (complete this)

1) Electrical Engineering
- Ohms Law

2) Mechanical Engineering
- Gears, Pulleys

3) C# Programming
- LearnVisualStudio.NET

4) Projects I learned from
- Brady Gaster - Kinect Netduino

5) People that assisted!