Life with Deep Racer - Part 2

-

 An Update on AWS Deep Racer

OK, so AWS Summit Sydney has been run and won.  Not by us however, but there are few interesting tidbits to report:

The console is now widely available

This is actually pretty big news, because:
  • The console ties together Robomaker, SageMaker and everything else you need in a convenient package
  • There are actual examples of functions included
  • It seems to stay running now

There is new firmware for the car

Also important; this includes a rolling update for the Ubuntu base as well as the Deep Racer specific bits.  WiFi connection seems more reliable now as well.

Our car has a new look

Since my employer (Versent) was generous enough to send me to Re:Invent last year (where I got the Deep Racer), I thought it appropriate to deck it out in the company colours, and it was well-received at Summit last week.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

OpenVMS on KVM

-
Image
    I am publishing this as a service to the community, because there wasn't a clear section in the OpenVMS (X86) documentation that walks a new admin through the bring-up process for OpenVMS on KVM. I haven't attempted to duplicate the OpenVMS documentation because that would be rather silly.  Instead I have focused on the nuances of getting it running under KVM.   You can download the document here If this is of use to you, please leave me a comment.
Read more

The QYT KT-7900D

-
Image
But is it any good? As you might have noticed, I am now a freshly licensed radio amateur .  As such I do need a transceiver or two in order to get on the air.  This is the story of one of my new radios. I have a limited discretionary budget to use for my new hobby, and I have to say from the outset that my lovely wife has been very supportive.  As such, I want to try and get the best value for our money.  One evening I stumbled upon this little item on Banggood for a little over $A150 including shipping.  Covering both 2m and 70cm bands with a claimed 20W output it seemed almost too good to be true.  I bought one. About ten days later a tiny package arrived for me.  At just 98mm x 43mm x 126mm the photos don't convey quite how small it actually is.  The entire case serves as a heatsink so it is heavier than it looks, but certainly not bulky. The standard power cable comes with a cigarette lighter plug.  As I intended to run it from home usin...
Read more

Exploring Solar Power - Let there be smoke!

-
Image
Last time I introduced my new solar power project.  By the end of that post we were monitoring the power flow from the solar panel to the battery in a simple test environment.  This time we're going to dive in and start trying to control the charge power. What's MPPT? Maximum Power Point Tracking (or Transfer , depending on whom you ask) is a condition where we can transfer the highest power from the solar panel into the battery.  The key here is power, rather than voltage or current on their own.  Remember that power is the product of voltage and current, so it is possible that you will find that perhaps higher current and lower voltage (or vice versa) is the most efficient. What makes this a little problematic is that the peak power point varies constantly depending on the battery state of charge and temperature, so it is not a set and forget operation. This is why the first thing we did was to build a power monitor.  Now we can determine at any point of time...
Read more