I went to Tacoma with all of the electronics including the new VIA motherboards. Our goal was to have the Expeditor driving by remote control that evening. Today was probably our most productive day so far. We built a servo mount on the engine, lengthened the chain, mounted the engine, mounted the feedback potentiometer, made a mount for the rear shock, and put all electronics required for remote driving onboard. Finally we were able to semi-successfully drive X (eXpeditor) by remote control. It seems that the centrifugal clutch we have slips way too much. This was surprising since X probably only weighs a total of a couple hundred pounds. Another problem was with steering. We were able to steer very well at first but by the end it was unable to turn the wheels at all. I think that this is because the battery is almost dead since in previous tests I was unable to even effect the steerage when I was trying to hold the front wheels in place. We also need a new battery pack for the radio transmitter.

I hooked up the receiver to the Roboteq controller and successfully controlled a 12V windshield wiper motor by remote control.

I finally got the remote control, receiver, and servos in the mail. I tested them and they work.

Yesterday I got Bob Thornburg's ("wolfbob") video of the GC04 route (Thanks!). I watched it this morning and got a couple ideas from it.

Chris made some progress on mounting the steering feedback potentiometer and I made a new enclosure out of a miniature cooler to house the microcontroller and other electronics (pictures below).

I went to Tacoma with the computer and electronics in the hopes of hooking up the steering and possibly the engine. We used the new drill press to drill mounting holes in some plate steel for the steering motor. Unfortunately the welder ran out of gas and the engine's chain wasn't long enough, and neither of the stores where we could fix these problems were open. We've set a goal of having EX driven by remote control by next weekend.

I made some modifications to the website in an attempt to make it look more neat and professional, and I also added the sponsor info on the homepage. I also found a company, Analog Devices, which gives free sample accelerometers, but when I tried to order one their status bar showed an error. Tomorrow I turn 15!

Work began on giving a neural network the capability to play any video game given to it. As this is so interesting I really want to describe exactly how this is being done, but since it has a lot to do with the software, pretty much the only proprietary part of the Expeditor, I will refrain from doing so. I will say that in order to do this I've been checking keyboard monitor and override commands for Visual Basic. I figured out how to monitor them and I can send a single keystroke with SendKeys, but I need to find a way to press and hold a key.

I received two Mini-ITX MII mainboards in the mail from one of our sponsors - VIA Technologies.

The LT230 parts I put on ebay sold for $56.50 so I bought a futaba remote control for $24 including shipping. We will use this not only as a means of manual control, but also to train EX. The idea is that we will drive it by remote control in desert terrain and after a while it will learn to drive itself.

I checked the IRRF website for any sign of updates and found that the race has been moved from October 2004 to April 2005. I have updated the countdown timer accordingly. I also made the countdown timer gramatically correct; instead of saying 1 seconds it now says 1 second and the same with minutes hours and days. Another change I made is it now says IRRF Race Day instead of Race Day.

Chris and I eliminating some website issues at 800 x 600 resolution. We were surprised to find that this is the second most popular screen resolution, with 1024 x 768 being the most popular.