fuzzychaossweets

[fuzzychaossweets]

Update Log 8/4/21

This week I worked on fixing small issues in Unreal such as the delay and smoothing out the rotation of the camera. I was able to completely resolve the delay issue, after looking over the delays in the blueprint and in the arduino code I realized that I had done some very basic math wrong which has now been fixed. The camera does now rotate on both axes and the rotation is mostly correct but I have noticed some slight errors with it. I have a plan on how to fix this and will be implementing it later today. Lastly I began and finished the Unity demo for the Kino Wheels. I wrote a script that will connect to the arduino and the camera rotates very smoothly. One little hangup that I have just thought about while writing this post if that the way the serial port is opened in the script may need to be reworked slightly, as after watching several tutorials I noticed that arduinos can connect to different COM ports. Currently I am connecting to COM4 which is hard coded in the script, I will be adjusting that so that it can be changed easily by anyone using the script in the future.

Over the next week I plan to finish cleaning up any little bugs that I notice and testing the Kino Wheels as much as possible. Looking at the current state of things I would say that I would say that everything should be done by next week at the latest

[fuzzychaossweets]

[fuzzychaossweets]

Update Log 7/28/21

This week has been a pretty hectic week, and I am sad to say that due to weather and house renovations I didn't have much time or the ability to work on the code as I would have liked to. I lost power this week for 4 days and my internet was on and off prior to the power outage. I was in the midst of posting the update log for last week when it all went out on me. I apologize for not notifying sooner about this situation. I didn't sit idle by during this down time as I was able to put the case together. There are some small adjustments that I think I should make to the interior such as adding some foam for the hand wheels to sit in during transit, as well as making the holes for the shafts a little bigger to prevent them from rubbing up against the case while in use.

Next week I will have the kino wheels working with Unity, as the unreal blueprint is almost completely finished it should be easy to translate it into a script. The unreal blueprint is currently scaling a cube based on the wheels turning instead of rotating the camera, but I do have nodes for that setup in another project I just need to drag them over and fine tune some values to try to smooth out the feel.

[fuzzychaossweets]

Update Log 7/14/21

This week I ran into some sest backs in finishing the blueprint connecting the rotary encoder values to game components. I had forgotten that the encoders don’t send a value that is clamped to the range of 360 degrees so this plan didn’t work out. I then realized that I didn’t need an actual rotational value to determine a change in pitch and yaw I just need to determine if the current value being sent from the encoders are larger or smaller from the last value sent. I quickly threw together some blueprint nodes and it works as expected. I haven’t hooked up these nodes to perform rotational changes to the camera yet but I have been testing by changing the scale of a cube. I reran the Kino Wheels Simulator and to see if there were any limits for the rotations, and so the final blueprint will have the y-axis clamped to -90 and 90 degrees from the origin. I didn’t look into the web control for Unreal 4.27 yet.

Next week I plan to finish the blueprint to the best of my abilities. I have a some small changes that I need to make to both the blueprint and the arduino sketch. The timing on the Serial writes is odd and doesn’t update the rotational changes to the game components. I also need to fine tune the change of value for game components. I also will be mounting the elctrical components to the a board and starting to put the case together. In the event that I am able to complete all of the goals ahead of time I will begin building a demo for the game that Professor Jacobs told me about during during the interview for the internship. I also will be looking into web control more indepth and hope to have a demo setup for it as well.

[fuzzychaossweets]

[fuzzychaossweets]

Update Log 7/7/21

This week I worked on tidying up the wiring on the breadboard and arduino. I also redid the weights on the handwheels as they weren’t really balanced when I originally put the weights on. I got the arduino to connect to Unreal Engine and am working on splitting the rotational data from the arduino loop into the seperate X and Y axises. This took a bit longer than I had thought it would, but after reading through the code from Kino Wheels and several forums I have been able to print the data to the screen. I began looking into the web control briefly but not to much ass of this point.

Next week I plan to have the X and Y axises properly split up and working in the test environment that I have setup for the Kino Wheels. I also will be looking into web control more indepth and will have a demo setup for it as well. 

[fuzzychaossweets]

[fuzzychaossweets]

Update Log 6/30/21

This week...

I received all of the parts towards the end of the week. I put the Kino Wheels together and when I tried to run them through the simulator ran into a problem, they wouldn’t connect. I solved this issue fairly quickly and that there were several small reasons for the Kino Wheels not connecting. First the baud rate in the simulator was too high, and second was the wiring on the breadboard. I lowered the baud rate in the settings and re-did the breadboard, for the breadboard several of the resistors were in the wrong channels by accident. After those problems were resolved I ran the simulator again and it worked perfectly.

Next week...

My hopes for next week are to connect the Kino Wheels to Unreal and see what else I can do with them there. I also will be looking into Unreal’s Remote Web Control and how that compares with the OSC plugin and the Kino Wheels in regards to controlling Unreal objects.

[fuzzychaossweets]

Update Log 6/23/21

This week...

 I looked into Live Link, I found several different results for it, an event calander site, a web-based collaboration and management system, and a facial capture plugin for Unreal. I also looked into connectig arduino to Unreal and found a pretty barebones blueprint that can be expanded on to get the functionality that is desired from the Kino Wheels. Finally I looked into Lumberyard and downloaded it to look into see what it is like.

Next week...

My hopes for next week are to have recieved the parts so that I can build the Kino Wheels and if I have time to start looking into game engine integration for them.

[fuzzychaossweets]

Update Log 6/14/21

This week...

Worked more on controlling Unreal actors utilizing OSCTouch on mobile via wifi connection. I currently have a blueprint setup that allows me to control the camera's rotation on the Y and Z axes independently. I am currently working on looping for over 360 and under -360 degrees for both axes as well as rotating the camera around a different point as determined from an OSCTouch input.

Last week I had an issue with OSCTouch on my phone not connecting with my computer while it was tethered to the router, my workaround was to untether my computer from the router. At the time this issue didn’t make any sense to me so i spent a couple days looking into it. Having looked into it I found that I was connecting to the wrong IP for my computer and was on a different connection on my router, so OSCTouch couldn’t find the OSCServer that I was running in Unreal. Its still very confusing to me and I’m sure the above explanation is worded odd but I can say for certain that it all runs and is connected.

Next week...

My hopes for next week are to have recieved the parts so that I can build the Kino Wheels and if I have time to start looking into game engine integration for them. In the meantime while I wait for the parts to come in I will work on OSC integration with Unity and possibly Godot, time permitting.