TURRET PROJECT DEC.2 - So I'm at the point of building the fundamental code on my Arduino Uno board, and realized I should specify what my goals are here. This project will comprise two design milestones, as shown below.
Turret Mk I

• Two degrees of freedom
• Manually operated by pushbuttons or joystick
• Airsoft gun and laser site mounted on end effector

The second milestone will include everything from Mk I and the following:
Turret Mk II

• Camera attached to the end effector, and linked to a computer for target recognition
• Computer/software (most likely a custom program that uses the OpenCV computer vision library) to automatically manipulate the turret and "trigger" the airsoft gun, with no operator interaction

There is still quite a lot of work to be done, but Mk I is feasible in a very short time frame depending on how quickly the mechanical assembly of the turret can be completed. I'm probably going to buy an off-the-shelf pan/tilt servo assembly to expedite this, since it'll be simple and cost effective.

TURRET PROJECT DEC.1 - Allright - so its obviously been months since I've touched this blog. When I "started" this project, I was working 11 hour days and flying home every weekend, essentially making me work a 65 hour week. The last thing I wanted to do when I got home to my beach house (yes, I happened to be consulting on the Atlantic at the time) was nerd out with a soldering iron.

Now that I'm back home and have more free time, I purchased an Arduino Uno and plan to use that as my main microcontroller board for the turret. I have never used one, but I have experience with Parallax's BS2, and plenty of programming experience... so I don't expect much trouble coercing the Arduino to do what I want it to.

I'll be updating more frequently, starting with a breakdown of my plan, from here on out.