Weekly Update 24/11/2013: Artillery!, Operational Amplifier, Arduino Radio Receiver

I have decided to start doing weekly updates of all my current projects, instead of waiting until I have finished or made a major breakthrough to make a post.

This week I spent some time debugging Artillery! and I created an inventory system for it and created some new art assets and new projectile types, as well as adding support for up to four teams. I also did some work on the Gui’s for the game.

I have come up with a lot of new ideas for inventions and, I spent some time working on those too. I already posted on the holographic display, and I also have an idea for a wireless power system that I am playing around with. It is a very simple concept prototype so far. It uses the concept of resonant inductive coupling to transmit power over distance. I have always been interested in nanorobots, and one of the main problems with them is power. Miniturising batteries and power systems is far too complex for a machine that small, so a wireless power source would be essential. I will be making a dedicated post on this in the near future.

I finished the operational amplifier, and obtained a trace from the antenna, which I am now in the process of analysing. The size of the data set is making it difficult to visualise and process the data, but I am somewhat confident that I at least achieved proof of concept.

I am also working on a simple arduino-powered FM radio receiver, in an attempt to practice receving and digitising radio signals. I have a working prototype of the radio, I now need to capture the signal using the arduino and process it. This should be a similiar problem to the one I am having with the VLF antenna trace. I will be posting on this in more detail soon as well. The ultimate goal with my radio projects is to build some kind of simple but functional radio telescope, which could be used to pick up stellar phenomena. Whether this is possible or not remains to be seen.