Articles by spetku

Light Play

Robot Army : Production Mode + Lime Light

June 18, 2014spetku5 Comments

Mark and I are FACTORY Now that the hype and excitement of Maker Faire has passed, we’ve buckled down and gone headlong into Fulfillment mode. Last week we started bagging things, like steel balls and hardware : The acrylic base pieces are in a cue to be fabricated, and our Rev. E brain boards will be sent in sometime this week once we verify that these- yes THESE are the final rendition to be included in the kit. Our friend Andrew from SYN Shop is also helping us mass produce our parts on his fleet of 3D printers. The production of the robot parts is what will potentially push shipment back the most. Luckily though, Andrew also taught us how to make use of our second extruder so that we can print the same amount of parts in half the time. Since we’re getting twice as many parts in a day as we…

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Light Play

Robot Army : Family Photos

May 29, 2014spetku0 Comments

While waiting for parts and components to funnel our way, Mark and I got around to taking some promotional photos of our brood. We have these 30 cool robots and soon enough we hope to start displaying them around town. Getting the word out about them is a must, and nothing conveys the idea of a dancing field of light wielding minions better than long exposure shots like these! I can’t wait until all 200 of them are built and dancing. ^.^ To see the whole album visit here : Long Exposure Shoot Maybe we’ll try getting them to spell out words… =o

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Light Play

Robot Army : Maker Faire

May 22, 2014spetku0 Comments

Mark and I rolled into Vegas yesterday right before the sun started to bow out of the sky. We stopped at Chipotle and picked up some over-stuffed puppy bags to push into our faces with beer upon finally returning to the house we left in pieces a week earlier. It felt like we had survived the apocalypse. After that ice-cold Carona we untethered everything from the clump in the back of Mark’s Kia and began dragging things into the house where they belonged. Once all three pallets of robots made it onto the table we both collapsed on the couch and giggled in delirious exhaustion. Maker Faire was exactly like it was last year; bursting with stimuli. The visuals were nonstop, even being trapped in our booth the whole time… which was right next to the bleeding stage Arc Attack performs on. I don’t care for tesla coils. They’re cool, but I don’t…

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Light Play

Robot Army : All Systems GO!

May 13, 2014spetku0 Comments

Ok, ok… I’m done lamenting about the late nights. They work… I’m happy. Time for a beer and some heavy hype building. Share this with your friends and stop by our booth at Maker Faire if you plan to be there. =] Robot Army FTW

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General Stuff

Robot Army : Less Than a Week Away

May 12, 2014spetku0 Comments

So the video above condenses a whole weekends worth of work into ten minutes. In the beginning we don’t have anything flashed or calibrated… and the arms aren’t even installed yet on the newer robots. By Sunday night all three pallets worth are working in sync and are ready to be fine tuned. As it’s Monday, I’m straightening out kinks now so that we have as smooth a time as possible once we arrive in San Mateo. Mark is required to work at Blue Man all week up until we leave, so he had to grind out the majority of the code/networking related stuff over the past three days so it’d all be done by now. We’re still flashing them with tweaks to the delta math which effect their range of motion… still working on a solution for the LED cables being a hair too short… still trying to get answers from…

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Fifth Element Mood Stones

Elemental Mood Lighting : Just Add Love

April 28, 2014spetku7 Comments

We probably shouldn’t have taken on this side project amidst all the pressure to prepare on time for our display at Maker Faire, however I’m glad we have this awesome life relic to show for it! Since my last update, I took the four complete 3D printed stones and gave their surface a rather sharp makeover. All those years in art school came in handy again. It surprises me just how many techies have never heard of gesso … so I’m tapping this apparent art secret for the sake of painting on an otherwise stubborn surface. ABS will take acrylic paint, however instead of priming it with anything you might get from Home Depot in the paint section… you can go to Blick and grab a pint of clear gesso (canvas primer). It may be a little more expensive, but it’s less volatile, doesn’t have any fumes, and has the best tooth when…

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Fifth Element Mood Stones

Elemental Mood Lighting : The Moving Bits

April 23, 2014spetku4 Comments

First I have to show off how nicely the prints turned out! Some of these larger pieces were printed over night for nine-hour periods and were completed without fail (which is surprising). In the morning there would be a loaf of stone sitting on the printer bed : Mark is responsible for creating these seamless linear designs on the face of the stones : We ran out of natural filament by the time we got to the ‘wind’ stone, so it’s in a silver/gray color instead. This one was printed last because unlike the other three stones, its design is on the upper portion which overlaps the wedge pieces that pop out. It called for a little more fuss and planning when designed : Over all, I’m extremely pleased with how they look so far. I can’t wait to paint them though….! I spent most of this past weekend getting the mechanical parts in…

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Fifth Element Mood Stones

Fifth Element Stone Mood Lighting

April 15, 2014spetku3 Comments

Now that we’ve ordered all of our bits, pieces, nics, knacks, and parts for Maker Faire… Mark and I are left with a brief lull while we wait for things to show up. Instead of relaxing, we decided to do a ‘weekend’ project to fill the time.  The Sci-fi contest Hackaday is holding right now seemed like the perfect thing to overt our attention to, yet keep us sharp and in our maker headspace. As such… we’ve chosen to make a sic-fi themed prop from my personal favorite sci-fi, The Fifth Element. This same article can be found on my hackaday.io page for this project here : The Earth Stone First of all, if you haven’t seen The Fifth Element, all you need to know is that we’re making replicas of these fancy things below which will operate with mechanical and electrical parts instead of spooky earth magic like in the movie =] Mark and I decided that regardless…

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General Stuff

So, I won a tablet…

April 11, 2014spetku0 Comments

Two weeks ago Mark and I attended the Atmel Tech on Tour seminar. This was my first time going to one of their events like this, so I didn’t know what to expect. The exercises brought back memories of being in my first electronics class in college, which also happened to be a grad level course I had no business being enrolled in. It felt sort of like I was drowning the whole time, but Mark was there to fish me out of any confusion I had while trying to navigate their massive programming platform. At some point before the lunch break our teacher… ugh…. person giving the talk (who thought I was Mark’s ‘secretary’), informed us that Atmel was holding a sweepstakes for a Galaxy tablet which you could enter by submitting a selfie taken with the Atmel trailer in the background. Sweet! I may not be able to program very well, but I can take a picture with my…

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