I presented this as a lightning talk, on April Fools Day 2016. The lightning talk was a disguise to surprise my wife, whose birthday is April 1st.
As a boy flying line-control RC planes in my front yard, I would spend hours spinning in a dizzying circle perfecting the art of line-control flight. Eventually, I graduated to gas and battery powered, wireless RC aircraft. Fast-forward to adulthood… and an interest in software and mutli-rotor quadcopters. I built many (dozens actually) RC controlled quadcopters… but autonomy kept calling. For a drone to fly autonomously… sensors, processing power, and communication chips must be on-board. While that may not seem like much, it actually requires a considerably powerful flight controller and associated sensors. In this presentation, the necessary steps required to build an autonomous drone using custom and open-source software will be discussed. All of the failures and the eventual success will be demonstrated.
On October 13th, 2015, Matt VanVleet and I will present at Pillar's Forge the Future event.
This presentation will dig into the ideas of why teams create different types of cards on the card wall and why they should not. We will explore the idea around making all cards on the wall, regardless of type, as equal citizens on the card wall and discussed accordingly. The ideas of making everything a user story and being happy about it will be explored. With a goal of convincing developers and business people alike... the concept of card equality... and the business benefits afforded by this technique.
BYOD : Build your own drone… multi-rotor quadcopter that is!
In this world of ever-increasing opportunities to purchase 'toys' classified as 'drones'… have you ever wanted to fly a drone? Have you ever asked yourself the question… should I buy a drone or build? This presentation will discuss why the term 'drone' should be most generally referred to as… 'multi-rotor copter' and not UAV (unmanned autonomous vehicle) or drone. This presentation will discuss the basics of how a multi-rotor works… the steps to build a multi-rotor… including details on flight controllers, frame selection, motors and props (including determining what type of multi-rotor will suit your purpose), speed controllers and batteries. There are a lot of variables… all of these details will be broken down, making the process of building your first copter a 'flight in the park'. At the end... a flying multi-rotor copter will be air-worthy and demonstrated.
The OpenPilot flight controller has many powerful features. Many of these are specific to the setup and configuration of the flight controller while others manage the controllers flight characteristics. This session will discuss many advanced features, including Acro flight (by bypassing the gyro for rotation during stronger stick deflections and applying manual output signals to the ESCs); thrust pid scaling, a mechanism to compensate for optimally-tuned vehicles for hover or slow flight envelope by adjusting the PID (Proportional, Integral, Derivative) value dynamically against a throttle position so that Fast Forward Flight (FFF) doesn't create oscillations, and failsafe for Revo and CC3D. These, plus other advanced topics will be presented during this class.
I was asked by a co-worker, to present on the topic of ‘emergent architecture’. I asked the usual questions… Where? When?… and then asked a question that immediately indicated my questioning of ‘What is emergent architecure?’. I was flattered to be asked to present on the topic, somewhat reluctant because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say, and if I even had enough understanding of how to describe it.
I started doing some research in order to determine what others were saying about the topic. Two things quickly occured… 1) there isn’t a lot of thought on the interwebs about emergent architecture and 2) the articles/papers out there… do not agree with me. So I thought, I will just document my thoughts and see where this ends up. The first draft of the presentation was created with my thoughts on paper (white index cards and a trello board).
After several permutations and many, many index cards slung all of the floor… I finished up the presentation with 129 slides and a complete frustration of the term ‘emergent architecture’. I determined there had to be a better way to describe ‘building an architecture’ and a better term would be a good place to start.
So… here is the final result of my research, frustrations with lack of other opinions, and the resultant presentation to an ‘unnamed’ client.
The following section is the abstract submitted to the client (as is).
/grō/ - developing an emergent architecture
Architectural design more often than not, struggles to find a place within an agile environment. Unfortunately, big up-front design is second-nature and the designing, building, and maintaining of an architecture does not come for free.
Within this talk we will…
- explore why technical practices are key to technical excellence
- discuss the concepts of intentional yet emergent
- discuss how to master incremental planning
- discuss how to embrace uncertainty
- and understand cost/benefit of constant rework
This presentation will be a journey to a common understanding of why emergent architectures can and will solve your business needs in a more efficient manner. Come and explore the world of emergent architecture. —
Let’s get started.
