DIY Head Tracker For A Tenner

xxThe_Dice_manxx

xxThe_Dice_manxx
Greetings

So I read in another thread that the new EDtracker Completely eliminates the drift problem, Is this true?

If so how much is it to buy ready made?

I bought the old one but I couldn't be bothered with the drift .
 

Blairvoyach

Blairvoyach
QorbeQ said:
Dull question - the kit from hobby components doesn't include the pcb does it? Need to order that separately from edtracker website?

I ask because they have a kit without the prototyping board, but not for the 9150 version.
Click to expand...

Yes, you can get the board separately from edtracker.org.uk

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xxThe_Dice_manxx said:
Greetings

So I read in another thread that the new EDtracker Completely eliminates the drift problem, Is this true?

If so how much is it to buy ready made?

I bought the old one but I couldn't be bothered with the drift .
Click to expand...

Drift is gone with the 9150 version

£38 from the EDTracker website
 

Cunabula

Cunabula
Got the kit from Hobby Components as I wanted to try my hand at putting it al together. Works like a charm with USB left or right but USB rear seems to be a bit borked. When you turn your head it keeps trying to auto centre. I've sewn it on a beanie so it's no problem to turn it sideways. Just thought I'd mention it.

Has also made me enthusiastic to try other electronic projects so thanks so much for the inspiration.
 

brumster

brumster
Yep, Rob's acknowledged there's a bug in the orientation, he's going to be on the case this week. He's been over to mine this weekend and we've made great progress on EDTracker Pro... I now have a working wireless prototype, looking forward to a bit of play-testing tonight to see if it's good/responsive enough... :)
 

marktay

marktay
Got the kit from Hobby and PCB and box from EDtracker and assembled it (haven't soldered in years, but it was dead simple). Calibrated with the video on EDtracker and it works a treat!
I find I need to reset view and redo the auto gyro bias every few days but otherwise it's working great.
Thanks again.
 

Omegahunter

Omegahunter
Omegahunter said:
Question for Brumster and Pocketmoon.
I've got a 9150 based ED Tracker thats running the latest (well it was about a week ago) code "EDTrackerMag V4.0.1

While it works fine most of the time are you aware of the 48 hour bug that the code seem to have?
After about that length of time being powered up it gets sleep fatigue and will start to twitch about and pull back to center when you try to look at the side menus :(
Click to expand...

brumster said:
Errm... not seen that here!? Mine's been powered up for best part of a week on occassion :-S !! I'll mention it to Rob...
Click to expand...

Update to my issues with the 9150 twitching, think I might have an idea whats happening now.

Followed your youtube guide on how to set it up with the bit about moving the sensitivity till the value starts to change then back till it stops to find the best value.
With my unit I have to have it set all the way to the right (minimum sensitivity i'm guessing) but even at the end stop with the Tracker flat i'm still getting points count once it been running a while and is warmed up. I checked and its around 400/600 points counts in 10 seconds.
Im guessing it shouldn't read anything while static?
 
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brumster

brumster
Whoooaa, I've never seen one that sensitive, no. I guess what's happening is it's recording way too many points and maybe that is biasing it towards a certain direction. I can't think why it would be so sensitive though - you're not building from source right, you're just using the pre-built firmware through the GUI...? See if Rob has any thoughts when he gets here... he's probably having a night off though, we've had a busy weekend :)
 

Omegahunter

Omegahunter
Yes using the pre-built firmware "EDTrackerMag V4.0.1" Not doing anything that can't be done using the GUI.
Just did another points test just now and it was about 180 in 10 second this time so it is changing, my temperature is 40.07 the last one was about 38.
 

streki

streki
Last night was a full night of pure combat with ED Track for the first time.
Its so instinctive to use that it didn't occur to me that I was using it at all, if that makes sense.
After several hours I realised that I was now effortlessly tracking ships as they leave my normal field of view.
The difference it has made to dog fights is stunning.
Everyone involved with bringing this product to market deserves a special in-game medal :)
 

D.S

D
I received my pre-built EDTracker last week and would like to extend a huge thanks the to the EDTracker crew. Wow, talk about a huge game changer. Not only does it improve my situational awareness it's even got my partner interested in Elite! Instead of "Are you still playing that bloomin' game?" I'm getting requests to go sight seeing and blow stuff up just so we can fly through the wreckage. OK the last bit's a bit weird but win all round I say.

Now, despite this glowing praise it hasn't been plain sailing so I thought I'd share my experiences in case anyone else encounters the same issue.

Unusually for me I actually followed the instructions BEFORE plugging the device in. Upon trying to install the Arduino driver I received the following error:

A service installation section in this INF is invalid.
Click to expand...

I'm running 64bit Windows 8.1 so assumed it was something screwy with the new security model. Unfortunately the ever dependable Google drew a blank; there where many similar cases but none of the solutions worked in this case.

Event viewer was no help. I tried the driver from edtracker.org as well as the one from arduino.cc, I tried installing the full IDE, I tried installing from Device manager and from the .inf context menu. I even tried enabling unsigned driver support. Nothing worked.

After much digging around in Windows I found the file "C:\Windows\Inf\setupapi.dev.log" Toward then the end was a slightly more meaningful error:

Add Service: Binary 'C:\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\usbser.sys' for service 'usbser' is not present.
!!! dvi: Error while installing services.
!!! dvi: Error 0xe0000217: A service installation section in this INF is invalid.
!!! dvi: Cleaning up failed installation
!!! dvi: Error 0xe0000217: A service installation section in this INF is invalid.
Click to expand...

Sure enough, there was no sign of usbser.sys in system32/drivers but I did find a copy in C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_mdmcpq.inf_xxx. Where xxx is a lengthy hex sequence, I've omitted it from here in case it's unique to my system. I didn't know if editing the arduino.inf file would mess up the digital signing so I just copied the file to system32/drivers and the install completed successfully.

Hope this is of use to someone!
 

brumster

brumster
That could be invaluable, thankyou for sharing. I'll keep it on file and if I see repeated stories like it, I know what to do and can put it up on the website if it becomes a problem. Very interesting!

edit: P.S. The bit about the partner made me genuinely chuckle out loud :D. Maybe we should get a new tagline - "Improves marital relationships!"
 
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pocketmoon

P
Omegahunter said:
With my unit I have to have it set all the way to the right (minimum sensitivity i'm guessing) but even at the end stop with the Tracker flat i'm still getting points count once it been running a while and is warmed up. I checked and its around 400/600 points counts in 10 seconds.
Im guessing it shouldn't read anything while static?
Click to expand...

Even when static the 9150 magnetometer will output a heading which varies. The slider in the UI is a way of tuning out the noise so that you have a chance of getting a good spread of sample points during calibration. It sounds like yours is more noisy than most. What would be helpful is if you can do a fresh mag calibration and email/post a screenshot of the mag calibration tab (the once with the green and red blobs).

Cheers,

Rob (pocketmoon at gmail dot com)
 
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