Hi, I was searching this "introduce yourself post", I've been a active in the Thermal Imaging area since I came here.
I do really appreciate the amazing videos from Dave / EEVBlog, it is a good way to keep learning (when I've enough time to view them).I'm an Electronic Engineer, specialized in embedded real-time systems : I'm especially interested in the field of autonomous robots. I do both hardware design (and prototypes) and a bit less embedded software on many targets but not as deep in all of them (ARM Cortex M3 / EFM32, AVR, 8051, C167, PIC18/24/32) and embedded Linux (ARM / Beaglebone Black). I'm from west of France and doing a lot of picturing (
http://photos.valerea.fr).
I like soldering difficult things... maybe one day I'll try soldering BGA with only a hot air station and whatever simple tools I've / find.
I'm participating in the French Robotic Cup (power and a.i. autonomous robots) in team Šikula Robotik (10 peoples).
I'm president of the association Šikula Robotik
http://sikula-robotik.desbwa.org (
http://twitter.com/sikularobotik).
Besides designing robots for the French robotic cup we also aim to share knowledge about robotic, applied sciences, electronic, engineering, ... (to help younger people to be interested in those fields for example).
What's really important is the team working, robotic is about mixing knowledge from many fields (electronic, mechanic, IT, artificial intelligence, sensors, etc...). So we are a team learning from each other !
- I designed most of the electronic in our main robot
- I have coded most but not all of the low-level software including a high-precision engine and robot movement controller (I had some help on the maths by another team member, this is about exchanging and learning from each other in the technical fields).
- I work with other teams members on an ultra-low power (and low voltage) autonomous robot using a single super cap and a solar cell to recharge, we find that interesting and really challenging (nothing is easy when the voltage is between 2 and 2.7V and you want "power" like engines).
If you are curious about our robots just take a look at this video (French Robotic Cup 2016 / may, match 4, we were 20th at the end) :
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rqn28Yl5Y_s (our youtube channel isn't monetize, I'm not sure It would work, we do not have enough time for professional quality video, so it's only for the happiness of curious people right now).
Sorry Dave I would have been happy to send you our robot for a teardown but... it's 12 kg and we need it for next year contest ! And obviously it's far from perfect, ... yet