Krill Labs - Kitt

About:
This is Kitt, the newest member to my roboic camera arsenal. Like my previous robotic camera turret, it's small, simplistic
in it's design function, moves along both the x and y axis, and of course feeds back a video stream. But due to my continuing
advancements, this project is far superior. It's more compact, uses a single cat-5 cable for video, power, and data, runs on
any voltage between 6 and 12 volts, uses ultra bright LEDs for it's forward lights, has the ability to generate a low ticking
sound for a voice giving it a little personality, and the best feature of all, it can zoom up to 25x!
And in case you hadn't figured it out yet, it was named Kitt because the red LEDs on the front move from side to side like the
front of the car in Knight Rider, which was named Kitt.

Circuit Construction:
I am very proud of the main board for this project, it is probably the most densely packed board I've ever assembled. Almost
every square centemeter is utilized. It's got the CPU, two voltage regulation circuits, all 4 current direction relays with
their transistor based drivers, connection terminals, and a speaker! That's everything all on 4 inches by 3 inches. Before
actually building it, though, I prototyped it on a bread board for functionality testing.

Assembly:
The most prominant piece of this device is probably it's awesome ability to zoom and focus. And believe it or not, I got the
lens for free! And they're actually quite easy to get a hold of these days. It came from one of those huge old on-the-sholder
VHS cammcorders, and because most of them don't really work any more, you can usually find them at fea markets, auctions,
or yard sales for next to nothing. So while their mechanical parts are usually what fail, the circuity and optics are almost
always fine. In this case, though, I fried the circuitry while fiddling with it, leaving me with just the optics. No problem
though, I was able to mount one of those super cheap cameras from HongKong to the rear of the zoom lens. This was no easy
task, however. You can't just aim it down the barrel of the lens, you first have to tear the cheap camera apart, get to
it's CCD, then align it to the zoom lens's focal point with out any instability because the slightest shift will cause the
picture to loose focus.
For the movements, the x-axis uses gears and the y-axis works like a pulley system. That giant yellow gear and smaller
blue one are actually from a K'Nex kit. Turns out custom gears are very expensive and extremely difficult to make yourself
so these were the next best alternative.

This is the base board with the x-asix servo mounted.

The upper assembly.

The main board, base board, and upper assembly put together.

The miniature camera circuity carefully mounted to the rear of the zoom lens.

Fully Assembled:
Here is the final product, ethernet cable attached, and powered up. It was actually so sturdy upon completion that for
it's first test, I mounted it to a long board, and suspended it out the window. It works like a dream!

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