Sry for the wierd title. I made a simple program to dump data from a serial COM port. My question is how to wire the device to the serial female port so that the computer can recive the data. I am using a parallax Ping))) sensor that is already programmed to a basic stamp microcontroller. If i run the signal wire to the serial port pin 2, will I need to attach serial port pin 5 (signal ground) to the ground on the microcontroller in orderto recive a signal in the com port? The ping has an onboard A/D converter so the data is digital. P.S. If analog "data" is sent into the serial port raw, will it be converted by to computer or will bad things happen (i.e. nothing).

Im trying to implement a car horn sound clip into my robot. When I press the right bumper of my xbox 360 controller, a car horn should sound and if I hold it down, it should continue the sound untill i let go, like a real car horn. If i loop the sound it will just beep very fast...any ideas as how to accomplish a relaistic car horn sound?

Any sugestions on a very extensive book on everything C#? The C# bible is good, but outdated...last printing was in 2002. Im looking fore something like that.

Yes www.IGVC.org, we have 72 days till competition! Wish us luck! :-D

The interpolation method would be fine if there were no obstacles that can take up 80% of the track width, I would need to allow the robot to deviate from the imaginary interpolated line almost to the point of crossing the real lines, as well as not being able to see the white lines up close where an obstacle is two feet away from a white line and that is the only method of progressing the course. I have seen a few robots fail last year in this point. The cameras interpolated the lines but when the robot got to a close pinch between obstacle and line, they merely ran through the white line and got back on course but rules state u can not pass lines...ever...

The only issue would be how to handle avoiding an obstacle and keep between the lines. The trapazoid will not give accurate readings as to how small the space in which the robot can turn (at its blind spot) without going over a white line or hitting an obstacle. My plan was to apply the distances to each white point on the camera's view onto the field of view of the lidar (which otherwise can NOT detect painted white lines) and use that to calculate the possible approach. I just think distancing and angling every white point on the image would be very time consuming processing wise.

The cameras are set at the edges of the front of the chassis of the robot at a 45 on the x, and a 45 degree on the -z. The matrix calculates the distancing regardless of known angle by comparing the four known points to the field of view of the camera. My issue is not in distancing, but rather in accurately knowing the distance and angle of the closest point of each line.

Hello Everyone, So, I am working on a robot for the Inteligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC 2010) which will be held in june at Lawrence University. We have a robot that uses a SICK LMS 220 laser range finder as the object sensor, two webcams to track obstacle course boundry lines, and a GPS system. My job is to get the webcams to detect the white lines and track the distance of the line to the robot in order to keep the robot withing the lines (which are 10 feet apart and spray painted on grass). I got everything working in terms of "detecting" the white lines by using color filtering to select the color RGB value of the white lines via a reference image captured from the course. So it displays the white lines as white pixels on a black background. This works very well. An edge detection algorithm was also placed which does the job. Now I implemented a Projected Plane Transformation Matrix to calculate distances of points on the webcam's video feed via a calibration method using four points of known distances to the robot. This works suprisingly well also. No I arrived at a bit of a dillema; what part of the line shall i use to determine the distance of the line to the robot? Should I get the distances of every white pixel on the plane? Should I pick a few points that trigger an event when scanning horizontal lines on the image? Closest pixel to the robot? What about differing noise (rare) from white line edge pixels? Any feedback would help, this seems like a very fun topic which I know will tickle a few peoples' fancy. :) Enjoy! Quick Notes: -I am using the AForge.NET library for image processing -I am using the C# Matrix Library (CSML.dll) taken from an article on this site for the plane transformation -There are two cameras on the robot, one on each side -The cameras I am using is the Microsoft LifeCam Cinema (2.0mp Widescreen HD) -The image plane is 320x240 and in 1bpp grayscale P.S. Once I finish, I will write an article about the robot for the website for everyone to enjoy!

I am working on a project that takes 30 images from file, stuffs them in an array and displays them sequentially in a random order. There is a 30 second delay between each image, like a slide show, and no image can be displayed more than once. I got everthing down except for the dont display the same image twice and the end the sequence once every image was displayed. Here is my code.

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace Random_Image_Generator
{
public partial class mainWindow : Form
{
int timeKeeper;
Bitmap[] images = new Bitmap[30];

    public mainWindow()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        timer1.Interval = 1000;
        images\[0\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("0.bmp"));
        images\[1\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("1.bmp"));
        images\[2\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("2.bmp"));
        images\[3\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("3.bmp"));
        images\[4\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("4.bmp"));
        images\[5\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("5.bmp"));
        images\[6\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("6.bmp"));
        images\[7\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("7.bmp"));
        images\[8\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("8.bmp"));
        images\[9\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("9.bmp"));
        images\[10\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("10.bmp"));
        images\[11\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("11.bmp"));
        images\[12\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("12.bmp"));
        images\[13\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("13.bmp"));
        images\[14\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("14.bmp"));
        images\[15\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("15.bmp"));
        images\[16\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("16.bmp"));
        images\[17\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("17.bmp"));
        images\[18\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("18.bmp"));
        images\[19\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("19.bmp"));
        images\[20\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("20.bmp"));
        images\[21\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("21.bmp"));
        images\[22\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("22.bmp"));
        images\[23\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("23.bmp"));
        images\[24\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("24.bmp"));
        images\[25\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("25.bmp"));
        images\[26\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("26.bmp"));
        images\[27\] = new Bitmap(Bitmap.FromFile("27.bmp"))

How do i declare an array that is one-dimensional and contains 30 bitmaps? The bitmaps are loaded from picture files on my hard disk.

Is the file physically saved anywhere in order for me to acess it later? if so, how do I bring up a dictionary object from a file?

thanks a heap!

Possibly dumb question but how do I use the key you stated? I know its an identifier for the value string but do i just use my code to search for it? Like if (s.IndexOf("fn:") != -1) ? or what?

Awesome advice! Thnks! Here is a website for anyone who is curious as to how to work with XML from the gorund up. Very comprehensive tutorials. http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/uploadfile/mahesh/readwritexmltutmellli2111282005041517am/readwritexmltutmellli21.aspx

Hi, Im trying to find out the simplest way to store variable values in a file (text or otherwise), as well as being able to read specific areas of the file in order to retrive the values and implement them into a windows form control like a textbox or something. The StreamReader and StreamWriter class works but I dont know how to read specific lines like line number 4 or so. Here is my code:

StreamReader sr = new StreamReader("configFile.txt", System.Text.Encoding.Default);
string s = null;

		while ((s = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
		{
			if (s.IndexOf("Name:") != -1)
			{
				 
				// textBox1.text = s;
				break;
			}
		}

		sr.Close();

The issue is that I cant select what to search for by line number. All i need is a simple way to add textbox values to a text file where each texbox has its own line in the text file, and I can call up the text file at a certain line of the file and read the contents/make it the textbox text. The data is numerical. I came across hash tables but I do not know how to implement them/save them to a file.

So, I want to make an address book like database for all the plants I encounter. I am going to sort them in a list by scientific name and when I click on one of the names it will show a picture I took of the given specimen in a large picturebox next to the list. Then when I double click on the name of the plant, a new window will open showing multiple pictures of the plant along with categorical data similar to a contact entry (name, address, city, gender, etc). I am not sure how to go about doing this in terms of storing and accessing the picture files. I am not too familiar with SQL but I have seen some examples of address books using SQL servers on this site. My question is how will i store, call, and manage all the pictures of the given plants in an SQL server? Can you call up pictures as you do text data? Any help would be greatly appreciated! :)

Thanks again you have all been great help...Once I'm done I will post my work on the site, if its good enough. I'm sure someone somewhere will be interested in underwater ultrasonic communications. : )

One night I came up with a random idea to make an ultrasonic underwater exploration robot. This robot will use ultrasonic transducers to communicate with a laptop on the surface of a body of water. I found some test transducers which are water proof and I got a small aquarium tank to test the devices in. Now, I never worked with communications nor have done much analog to digital interface work...long story short I'm a communications newbie who needs a little push in the right direction. What I am asking for is some information or link to a place where I can learn more about how to receive digital output data from my sensor circuit using C#. The output is TTL logic (5v+) and I am not sure how to go about obtaining the data that is being outputted. So I just connect the output to the data line of a USB and open up hyper terminal? Will i receive anything? I apologize for what might be stupid questions. :) Any help would be greatly appreciated.

How do I convert an image (bitmap) form color (ARGB) to binary (Black and White) quickly using pointers?

Thanks, I'll keep working on it. : )