Projects – Page 8 – ROBOHEMIAN

Light Play

Robot Army : Preparing the Army

January 3, 2014spetku0 Comments

So I made it back from the frigid cold of northern Michigan alive and in one piece. I survived the alcohol soaked meat fest of Christmas with the family and was just starting to ease back into Kickstarter mode when I came down with this Flu bug from hell which has brought my productivity level down to zero all week. Luckily Mark picked up the ball while I’ve been recovering in quarantine and has been developing code for our twelve delta demo we’ll be touring around town with during CES week. Today, while he debugged our code I did this doodle, because all I’ve been dreaming about while sick in bed is the not so distant future where we’ll actually be setting up our babies in the backyard for some showtime : With our original six deltas somewhat completed, we have the next set of six to build and optimize….

Light Play

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…

Light Play

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…

Light Play

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…

Light Play

Robot Army : Ditching the EEG

November 25, 2013spetku1 Comment

After a jolly romp to Quick Care to get antibiotics for my fluffy sinus, I ‘m in bed again writing emails. This PR stuff so far is feeling a lot like standing on my tip toes while shouting through a cardboard tube. >.< I did head down to SYN Shop yesterday for my first late night hang out since this spring. One of Mark’s old friends from Sun, Tsutomu, was in town for LDI (the lighting trade show) and I got to pick his brain while I was there. He was a great wealth of knowledge and gave some good feedback about me and Mark’s collaborative work as well as my light installation. Long story short, he persuaded me from using an EEG to control the robots like I was planning to. He voiced everything I had already assumed about the reality of using neural input to control anything electronic. Brain noise…

Light Play

Robot Army : Cuddling my Spreadsheet

November 21, 2013spetku5 Comments

Today, I find myself wanting desperately to feel as though I’m doing something right. I think it’s likely all the rain we’ve had that’s tainting my mood, but I’m discouraged. I’ve been adding things to my bill of materials and the proportions are seeming less than hopeful in some areas. Now I need to start shaving cost off things that are needlessly spendy. I guess this is where I learn to be inventive and shrewd all at once. It might just be my lack of experience in doing PR related stuff- but I’m stuck again with the getting the word out part. Maybe I’m not begging loudly enough. I’ve never been all that good at asking for attention. So this is another hurdle to overcome. This morning I did mock ups of several different variations Mark came up with for my delta’s arms. We foresee the cups that hold onto…

Light Play

Robot Army : We’ll Make More

November 20, 2013spetku1 Comment

Yesterday was another full day spent with Mark working on the Robot Army. He’s taken my sub par original revision of the delta brain board and is making it more practical for my needs and for my audience who will use it in the kit I’m Kickstarting. So far he’s made one huge adjustment : making it so VCC is not directly opposite from ground on the I2c bus. Apparently you can flip the connector around and blow things up this way (oops). He was either making a point, or practicing ritual sacrifice by blue smoking one of our three test boards >.< This is just one of the examples where he has filled in for my general lack of experience with his circuit wizardry and electronic prowess. While he tinkered, I did PR stuff. I’ve pretty much been rewording the same write-up in a dozen voices while emphasizing different…

Light Play

Robot Army Starter Kit : GO!

November 13, 2013spetku1 Comment

Dear World, The reason why I created this blog a little over a year and a half ago, was to reach out to noob techies like myself and help others see how fun and accessible the world of DIY electronics really is. My first post was about a project I started during my wee days in art school, involving a field of tiny delta robots that I would choreograph with my mind. This project was called Light Play. The idea is big and at the time seamed like a dream… but I’ve come a long way since then and now have the skills, contacts, and tools necessary to make this nerdy girl’s fantasy a reality. I’ve had a lot of delta robot content on this site over the past year. Since last March I’ve crawled my way from robots made of hangers and tupperware to a highly polished 3D printed…

Goggles

Disco Bug Goggles

November 2, 2013spetku1 Comment

[JUST TO MAKE THIS CLEAR: I do not use any of adafruit’s LED products in my goggles. These and all others on Robotic Arts are original pieces of work… and their editors should learn to cite things better.] It’s been a little while since I’ve pushed out a pair of goggles. It seemed like a good time to do so with October being the anniversary of when I created my first set, the 3D light goggles. I didn’t do anything new and unusual with this set. In fact, my goal was to see how interesting I could get these to look without the use of a micro controller. I keep getting asked if I sell these things, and I am too stubborn and sentimental to part with any of the others I’ve made in the past. This is a low-cost, ‘all that glitters’ pair that simply blinks and has the…

Jelly

Robo Jelly : Progress

October 14, 2013spetku8 Comments

Even since I first saw the Festo Aquajelly I’ve wanted to make one of my own. With the arrival of our brand new Flash Forge 3D printer…. this week seemed like the right time to start prototyping. If you haven’t ever seen the Festo Jelly, I advise you to check out the video below. This company inspires me. They sell fancy pneumatic parts and actuators but for shits and grins they make amazing robots that mimic the organic movement of animals. I mean, in a fantasy I’d come stay at their headquarters and make things with their parts for days on end…but who that I know of wouldn’t? I sat down earlier this week and drew up some parts in Sketchup. With a couple of revisions I made this jelly skeleton. It took about an hour to print one set of arms (I needed six total). So at around midnight…