June 2012

Light Play

Delta Robot : WiiChuck Controlled Prototype

I’m getting there. This evening I permanently connected the ball joints to the rods and recreated the head of the delta out of some pretty black plastic! It’s come a long way from crappy cardboard and twisted legs to the sexy thing it is now: Haha…. The thing hooks my glasses half way through this video. Teehee… All and all I am pretty satisfied with my progress today. So far I have it running with a GUI in processing for full control, and a code I found for the wiiChuck. (however slow the movement may be). For the wiiChuck code I used, check out this site. They pretty much outline their whole project and offer helpful information: Delta Robot controlled with WiiChuck Also, there is some information on Don’t Buy, Make! Next I will get the LED working on top… that’s all icing.

Light Play

Delta Robot : Base and Arms 2

Ok, so I uploaded some test code to the robot yesterday after all was assembled to find out rather quickly that I had attached the motors wrong. The arms were sticking out at all the wrong angels causing the whole thing to look like it had fallen down stairs. I have no idea how I didn’t realize earlier that this design was going to fail, or why I even aligned them the way I did in the first place, but lesson learned. When attaching your servos to the base here is what to do and what not to do… if for some reason you think like me: I did remake a new base today out of a take-home container. We have millions of them around my house so I chose a shallow circular dish with a flat bottom I drew an equilateral triangle in the middle and then cut out…

Light Play

Delta Robot : The Base and Arms

Today I made the arms for my delta robot ! I originally was planning on using aluminum for these pieces but it was a pain grinding through the material with my mighty Dremel… It took me more than a few minutes to make each cut and the metal heated up quite a bit. I was getting discouraged about the prospect of drilling free handedly through this stuff, so I went on youtube to find out any tips on drilling through metal. It was around then that I saw a black plastic hanger laying on the ground near my bed and decided to use it to make my arms instead. The video above is me testing out the structure so far with a code which allows you to control the robot with a GUI in processing. For the code I used, check out this guy’s blog: Matt Greensmith’s Ramblings TOMORROW…… Delta will…

General Stuff

Has Discovered the Dremel

Today I bought a Dremel. HOW COME NO ONE HAS EVER TOLD ME ABOUT THESE THINGS?? I mean, it has never occurred to me in the past to google “miniature all in one metal shop” so how could I have assumed that something so helpful existed? Having one would have saved me a lot of trouble and limitation. If you don’t know what they are, which many of my friends did not, it’s a little machine that looks like an electric toothbrush yet comes with a zillion versatile attachments that do everything from cut steal, drill holes, to carving and polishing. If you make robots at home like me and have gone on believing that you are stuck depending on a college shop room to do all your modifications… go to Home Depot and change your life now! The highest end model is nice and will cost you about 100…

Light Play

Sad Delta Prototype

Yes, that sad looking thing held together by electrical tape, paper clips and rubber bands is none other than my mighty attempted to make a working prototype of my delta robot. I don’t have any metal. No scraps, no salvaged pieces, and even if I did I wouldn’t have a place to make any mods at the moment. So yeah, I used cardboard. I really don’t see this working too well…. but I wanted to make sure I was on the right track with measurements and all. At least I have push rods and ball joints right now. Tomorrow I will hit Home Depot and start searching for stuff. If anyone knows a good place to buy metal shapes…. let me know.

Flower

Flower (2 servos) Controlled by WiiChuck

There is nothing like getting a package from Sparkfun in the mail to get your morning off to a happy start! I have been waiting all week for my wiimote adapter so that I can get ready to use it to control my delta robot (once I’m done building it). In the mean time I found this super neat code that allows you to control two servo motors for a full range of movement. Cool! I immediately pulled Flower off the shelf and got her moving again. Aside from her cables needing to be tightened again, she danced nicely. For more information on the code I used, check out this site: Arduino and Nintendo Nunchuck for pan and tilt camera interface.

Projects

TouchOSC Controlling a Servo with a Dial

So, after I successfully made my RGB slider, I made a victory sandwich and then went out in the 110 degree weather to check the mail. It was worth the sweat because my servos came. (yay!) So I’ve been playing with them. Here is a neat tutorial I found on how to control a motor with a simple dial in TouchOSC for the iphone: Source code can be found here.

Projects

TouchOSC RGB Color Mixer with Sliders

Ok, moving on to slightly more advanced stuff regarding TouchOSC. Today I copied this nifty little project that I found on youtube which outlines how to make a simple slider that controls LEDs. I highly recommend following this tutorial and typing out the code as he explains what everything does. It was really helpful for a beginner like me as it solidified some of my understanding about the relationship between processing, arduino and the touchOSP app. And yeah, I am aware that my ‘blue’ LED is in fact yellow. I didn’t have any pretty blues ones on me for this project. =P The video I follow by Harrybj17:

Projects

TouchOSC 2 buttons, 2 LEDs

Several months ago I came across a couple of people who had created Delta robot models and were controlling them via the accelerometer on their phones. I thought this was a neat idea and decided to build my own charming little tripod and see what I could make it do. Today I downloaded the cool app TouchOSC for my iphone. If you don’t know what this is, it’s a rather nifty program that allows you to harness the power of your smart phone’s sensors by creating virtual buttons, sliders, and other input devices that will communicate with your arduino over your network. I am currently building up to this project by doing smaller tasks involving the OSC app and separately the delta bot. Right now I am simply getting a feel for using the OSC editor along with processing as I’m still somewhat new to programming all together. My first success…