Articles by spetku

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…

Flower

A Robot Named Flower

This is the first robot I made while attending SAIC in Chicago. It was the project which got my feet wet and ultimate caused me to fall in love with electronics and fabrication. I had never used any shop tools before or even touched a soldering iron for that matter. I came a long way in four months from literally knowing nothing to programming, engineering, and building a working robot from raw materials. This little drawing to the left was the first concept sketch I proposed to my professor. I called this robot ‘Flower’ and aimed to have wire pulleys powered by two servo motors tug its spring body in the direction of any onlooker its sonar sensor could pick up in the vicinity. In addition to leaning, I wanted the light bulb on top to glow and dim according to how close people came to it. The flower was…

General Stuff

And so it begins

I suppose I should begin by introducing myself. Well, I am Sarah, a student from Las Vegas, Nevada with a long history in visual arts. For the past decade I’ve been sharpening my skills as a painter, digital illustrator, graphic artist, and sculptor from my beginning days in high school at the Las Vegas Academy of Performing and Visual Arts, all the way to the Art Institute of Chicago. It was in Chicago that I made the leap from the more tradition mediums to the realm of art technology and began thinking I was more of an engineer than just an artist or designer. I don’t have much background in programming languages, circuit building, or metal fabrication, but I did pick up some basic skills in Chicago at SAIC in their Art Tech program. If I had stayed there it would have been to continue down that path. Even though…