It was too hot to think, let alone point a camera straight, but I did get a few pictures:

The playa crew

Geek Week camp Note 40-ft tower for the microwave link to Gerlach

Breakfast for everyone!

Hacking on the playa. Note specialized desert hacking gear: extra monitor, spent pyro, box of whippits (likely spent as well), sunglasses, insulated coffee mug.

Danger Ranger’s mobile wifi rig, plus orb.

Well, after a long weekend of late nights at the shop, Mike, Ray, Niladri and I made it to the playa on the Fourth with orb in tow. Big thanks to everyone who helped us get there, and to the folks at Geek Week who let us mooch off their wifi and shade structure. (As there were record high temperatures even for the desert, the latter was likely more than a metaphorical lifesaver.) In any case, we found and fixed several problems, got in some roll-testing and data-logging, and generally had a baking good time.
More pictures and pontifications to come, but here’s a video to start with. We were really happy how smooth things were rolling. Considering the challenging environment and the last-minute addition of the “bucket handle” radome, I don’t think this qualifies as anything less than a total success. So we raise a hot can of triple-digit Tecate to everyone! Woot!

Click To Play

The group on the playa sent back some GPS telemetry off of the prototype orb. Matt converted the data to KML format. Here are the first GPS tracks of our prototype orb on the playa!

The lines are 3 GPS tracks. The image is from an image Google Earth took during Burning Man last year. Groovey! (here’s the original .kml files)

The orb has arrived on the playa, and thanks to our kind friends at Geek Week, we can blog live during our testing.

Here, Beth and Tzara from the Geek Week camp examine the orb as it meets the playa surface for the first time!

UPDATE-

We tested, and it rolls wonderfully on the playa surface! We tested Zigbee out to 500 feet with signal to spare, and we’ve got copious GPS data to crunch later. A successful test run, and we’ve still got time to screw around and experiment…