December 2013 – ROBOHEMIAN

General Stuff

There’s No Business Like Snow Business

December 25, 2013spetku0 Comments

I made it home from Michigan alive! My vacation in Harrison was both relaxing and productive (but mostly relaxing). I spent my time consuming warm food rich with carbs while beached on the fold-out bed as I played games online and watched the snow fall outside. I was like a fat over pampered bear in hibernation for the past week, but it was the medicine I needed. Any how, I hope everyone takes this week to slow down and enjoy spending time with the people important to them. =] Cheers!

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Robot Army : Kinect and Kinematics

December 12, 2013spetku1 Comment

All day Tuesday Mark messed with the delta math trying to map the motors to the Kinect input. It seemed like no progress was to be made until the 11th hour when he ran his code and everything suddenly went from fail to working perfectly. So that spooky kinematics hurdle has now been cleared. Today is turning out to be a bit stressful. I’m preparing to leave for a ten-day winter pilgrimage back east to visit family, and as such am going over a list of things that Mark and I must both take care of over the duration that we are not conjoined at the hip. He’ll be handling all the tangible stuff – while I crunch numbers and go into deep marketing mode. In other news, we were able to do some actual “light playing” this weekend. As a member of our hackerspace suggested, it would be really…

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Robot Army : Kinect Success!

December 4, 2013spetku1 Comment

Today was cold. I drove to Mark’s with frost caked on my car from the morning dew. BRR. Once I arrived, I drank a million cups of coffee and attempted to get some work done on my spread sheet… but let’s be honest, everything I did today was boring (prices and PR), and everything Mark did was amazing. So lets focus on his achievements. Ever since Saturday Mark and I have both been trying to figure out how to get the Kinect communicating with some servo motors. It seems that all the example code on the internet no longer compiles because of some issue between the new processing, java, and Arduino. In short, Mark began from scratch and at last today, typed in the magic numbers that made everything work. The Kinect isn’t controlling actual delta robot kinematics however. For today, the triumph is in having mapped a motor to each…

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Robot Army : Delta Goes to Florida

December 2, 2013spetku0 Comments

Suz and Pawel are going to a robotics conference in Florida on Wednesday with one of my children in tow. In preparation, Mark came up with some demo code to run various routines at random which were inspired by the movements of my parrot, Mango. The little-one will bob and wiggle, attracting attention for a full weekend (while simultaneously being stress tested for endurance). Suz promises to send me some footage of the delta doing its thing, as well as get feedback from the crowd. It is World Domination night at SYN Shop right now, my time to hold the fort. There’s a pretty good turn out and the room is buzzing with people working on projects, which makes me really happy to see. My promo cards came in the mail, and I’ve already handed out half the box in stacks for everyone I know to spread the word. Tomorrow I head back over to…