Project Aurora

Hi! Once again some time has passed since my last post. I'd like to post more often but I've been having some busy days. This time I'm writing about a project I developed mostly with my friends and colleagues Gonçalo Pereira and Fábio Martins. The project was slowly developed from December of 2010 to May of 2011 for the event XXVI Semana Académica (26th Academical Week) of the University of the Algarve. The event consists in a full week of partying, with concerts from known portguguese and few international bands. Each course of the university gets a 3x3m tent to sell drinks and raise some money for trips or other purposes. For the Electrical and Electronics Engineering course that we were representing, we decided to make something that had never been done before in that event, something that people are not even used to see in typical bars and discos. Below you can see a video that we made about it, spoken in portuguese but with subtitles in english :).

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Low Cost (1,85€) USB to RS232 LVTTL Serial Cable

Hi there! Have you ever needed a USB to RS232 converter to connect to your microcontroller for serial communications? If you have, you probably bought a USB to RS232 converter and then used an external MAX232/DS232 to convert the RS232 voltage levels to TTL levels. That requires a little money, and a little work too. However, there is a simple cable that converts USB to RS232 with LVTTL levels (fully compatible with TTL). Basically you just need to change the connector. The last one I made cost me only 1,85€ with shipping included! :D If you only buy an FTDI chip it will cost you almost the double! (yes, I know that FTDI chips are probably the best USB to RS232 converters but most users don't take require the full features and specifications of an FTDI chip).

(Click the photo for better resolution in Picasa Photostream)

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Another Interview at RUA FM

Hi! In November, 9th, I posted about an interview (Interview at RUA FM) that I gave to RUA FM radio station about my team's participation in the European BEST Engineering Competition, in Istanbul. Once again, I was invited for another short talk, this time about Cognitive Robotics, which will be on air during this week. You can listen to the interview below or download it here. Again, the interview is in portuguese, so you must know portuguese (or learn it :P) to understand it. I hope you enjoy it. You can also check some other interviews and interesting talks from the professors and students of the elctronics engineering department of the University of the Algarve here (all in portuguese).

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How to use OpenMP with CMake

Hi! Some days have passed since I wrote something on the blog but I've been a little busy. Anyway, here I am again, this time to write about CMake and OpenMP. If you don't know CMake, and don't know how to use it, you may check my previous  tutorial on How to use CMake with OpenCV where I describe the basic steps to get started with CMake.

OpenMP is an API that supports multi-platform shared-memory parallel programming in C/C++ and Fortran. The OpenMP API defines a portable, scalable model with a simple and flexible interface for developing parallel appications on platforms from the desktop to the supercomputer.

After following the steps I described in the post that I previously referred, you'll have to add the following lines to tour CMakeLists.txt file:

if(OPENMP_FOUND)
set(CMAKE_C_FLAGS "${CMAKE_C_FLAGS} ${OpenMP_C_FLAGS}")
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} ${OpenMP_CXX_FLAGS}")
set(CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS "${CMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS} ${OpenMP_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS}")
endif()

After inserting these lines you'll be ready to use the OpenMP libraries in your project. That's just it.

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Interview at RUA FM

Hi there! Some time ago I went to RUA FM with my friend Gonçalo Pereira to give an interview about our participation in the European BEST Engineering Competition, in Istanbul, as the portuguese representatives in the Team Design Category. Our team was composed by four electronics engineering students: me, Gonçalo Pereira, Ana Margarida and João Lezinho. After winning the local BEST engineering contest in Faro, and the portuguese BEST engineering contest, in Oporto, we qualified for the european contest. After we arrived home, we were invited to share our experience in Istanbul in the university's radio. The interview is in portuguese, so you must know portuguese to understand it. If you know portuguese, you can hear the interview below or download it here. If you don't know, you can learn portuguese and then come back here to hear it :P. You can also check some other interviews and interesting talks from the professors and students of the electronics engineering department of the University of the Algarve here (all in portuguese).

And at last but not least, thanks to Câmara Municipal de Faro, Câmara Municipal de Olhão, Liga dos Combatentes de Loulé and Instituto Superior de Engenharia of the University do Algarve for supporting us in our journey.

Update (23/11/11): I gave Another Interview to RUA FM about Cognitive Robotics, in portuguese. Check it out if you want. :)

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Did you find this post helpful? Do you wish to contribute to other projects regarding computer science, electronics, robotics or mechatronics that will be posted in this blog? If you wish to do so, you can donate via paypal using the button below. Thanks! :)