Alberto Bietti's projects

Image recognition using kernel methods

2010-07-07T05:50:00.000-07:00

This past busy year of math spé (second year of 'classes préparatoires' - the thing I'm doing in France), I've spent a bit of time working on image recognition using kernel methods, for a school report (called TIPE). So here's the report (it's in French, sorry... I might eventually make an English version) -- For French readers: Voici mon dossier/rapport de TIPE pour l'ENS. Apprentissage par

Studying physics with XNA

2008-03-11T16:09:00.001-07:00

The past two weeks, I was in holiday, the usual 2-week holiday we have in France a few times a year. I had to study physics for school, and it was almost all about "balistique", which is basically finding the equation of an object's movement once you know its initial state and the forces acting on it, thanks to Newton's second law. Since studying that only on paper wouldn't be fun, I wanted

Arduino Theremin

2007-12-22T04:50:00.001-08:00

When I got my Arduino protoshield from sparkfun, I wanted to make something cool with it. And since I had seen a few Theremin projects before, and already thought about making some, I finally made one, using the Parallax PING sonar sensor. Here are some informations about how I made it. You can see all the pictures here. First, the schematics: Here's the commented code for the Arduino:

BRAT rebuilt with new servos

2007-12-02T10:27:00.001-08:00

This summer, I had bought 6 new Hitec HS-475HB servos from Lynxmotion, and I just removed the old servos and rebuilt the BRAT yesterday. Of course, it's a lot better than it was with the HS-422 servos... Here are some photos: And videos (in the second one, the BASIC Atom is

Lego NXT + wiimote with MSRS tutorial

2007-11-17T11:31:00.001-08:00

It's time to post the first tutorial on this blog: controlling a Lego Mindstorms NXT robot (but the code would also work for any other differential drive robot supported by MSRS, including the BASIC Stamp-based BOE-bot from Parallax, the iRobot Create, etc.) with a Nintendo wiimote (if you're not yet an expert: the WII controller) using Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS) 1.5. I wrote an

Wiimote IR by light bulb reflection

2007-11-04T10:33:00.001-08:00

I was at my father's, in my room where light is provided by a simple light bulb attached on the ceiling, and I was looking at the code of a WiimoteLib sample (a C#.NET windows form application). While I was running the sample, I figured out that when I pointed the wiimote somewhere on the screen of my laptop (a glossy and reflective screen), the "IR 1" checkbox was pressed, but then it was

In holiday with Arduino

2007-10-30T13:18:00.001-07:00

I have a 10-day holiday, and, as usual, I am in Rome during my holidays (to see my family, to take my piano lessons, etc.). Of course, I couldn't much stuff, so I just brought my Arduino and the components that came with the "Arduino workshop kit" I bought this summer on an Italian site (yep, the Arduino is make in Italy!!), i.e. LEDs, resistors, caps, pushbuttons, hook-up wires, etc. but I also

Wiimote controlled Lego Mindstorms NXT using MSRS

2007-10-09T11:55:00.001-07:00

This summer, when I was at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), for a pre-college program, I took a robotics class, in which we used these awesome $5000 robots made by NASA, called MAX, and we used Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS) to control them. Since they were PC-Based Robots, they had a lot of power by themselves, and MSRS enabled us to use many of the Windows APIs, like the Speech SDK, the MSN

Welcome

2007-10-09T11:07:00.001-07:00

Hi, I'm Alberto Bietti, and this is going to be my blog for tech stuff, DIY etc. like Robotics, Electronics, but also my computer stuff (programming, 3D, graphics etc.) I am going to try to keep my work here, at least in text, and, if I get a camera sooner or later, I hope I'll be able to put some pics and videos as much as possible. I hope you will enjoy the content of this blog, and happy