Author: Maker Block

Roboapocalypse averted

Yesterday I got to hang out with Chris of DIYDrones.  We discussed this video and he assured me that SkyNet is still a little ways off.

What I didn’t realize about those videos is that they are, in Chris’ words, one step up from a simulation.  The rooms in which those copters are flying have no turbulence, are surrounded by sensors, all obstacles are clearly marked so that they can be picked out by the myriad of cameras surrounding the room, and all of the sensing and computing is being done by a computer – rather than the drones themselves.

Even if you had an army of robo-drones that could only fly indoors, how cool would that be?  Some of those videos show the little ‘bots lifting and assembling structures.  I would love to have a swarm of these things that did nothing but structures out of legos.

Now, I suppose, I only have to concern myself with the zombie apocalypse.

I kept thinking… SkyNet

@johnbaichtal had this to say:

Dude, quadrotors are scary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4

Watching an army of nano quadrotors fly in formation, swarm, and return to formation was almost surreal.  It really did feel like I was watching a clip out of Terminator.  If you get a chance, watch the other videos by this same uploader, “TheDemel” as they feature these quadrotors flying/diving through hoops, flying/diving through thrown hoops, and perching on vertically mounted landing pads.

DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VII

Yesterday I accomplished a little more with my DrawBot.  Here’s what I did:

  1. Drilled holes in my project box1 for running mounting wires through the box.
  2. Drilled holes in my project box for the power cord and USB cable.
  3. I added several yards of monofilament line to each spool.  The way I have the motors mounted into the box I had to add some filament line to it on the spool.  Obviously, I had no way of knowing how much line I would need, so I just added a few feet.  Today I cut off several additional yards, tied the new section to the shorter section already attached to the spool2 , cut off the little loose ends, and rolled the spool with a finger.
  4. Found studs in the wall, put two huge screws into two studs3 for holding the box on the wall.
  5. Ran some sturdy steel wire through the box for mounting on the wall.
  6. Cut a huge sheet of cardboard out of a box we had in the garage.  I wrapped three edges of it in packing tape, so that it would remain flat and not shed little bits of cardboard paper.  The fourth edge I covered with duct tape for a sturdier hold.  This was then mounted on the wall underneath the pine box using more huge screws going through the side with the duct tape.  The purpose of this is to give the DrawBot a flat surface to draw on, rather than the textured wall.
  7. I then plugged the power cable and USB cables in and tried to fire up the Polargraph software.  Since this is all being done in a different room, I’m connecting all of this to a totally different laptop using different software.  I have an older laptop running Windows Vista that is connected to my Thing-O-Matic and Cupcake.  Now it is attached to my DrawBot as well.
  8. At this point the only physical components of the DrawBot missing are the gondola which I haven’t installed and blank paper.
  9. Unfortunately, that laptop I connected the DrawBot to is having some kind of problem communicating with the Arduino.  But, that’s another problem for another day.
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  1. A long pine box [↩]
  2. Square knot [↩]
  3. True story:  My wife heard the new electronic stud finder going all wacky from the family room.  She called back, “If it’s making that beeping noise, you’re doing something wrong.”  I replied, “Yeah, I’m just running it over my belly just to see what it will do.”  My daughter ran over in disbelief and then called back to my wife, “Mom!  Daddy’s rubbing the finder on his tummy!”  Say what you will, that damn thing is accurate. [↩]

On Partially Closed Systems (or why businesses should share more)

Sometimes it is just silly not to share.  Take for instance mouser and digikey’s refusal to make a cost API available1 or Polulu’s refusal to share their 3D image files for their products.

I say these are partially closed systems because, for whatever reason, the system controllers refuse to facilitate sharing.  But, such websites and products as those mentioned above are only partially closed systems.  The problem with partially closed systems is that those portions of their systems that are public facing (a website or the physical dimensions of their commercial products) are not only available for public consumption, but they’re public facing because their business model requires it. 2

Now, I’m not advocating the need for open sourcing or sharing absolutely everything. 3  I’m just suggesting that facilitating the publicly available aspects of your system makes sense when it means you’re enabling your customers and clients and allowing them to better consume your products.

I suppose it is possible that a company’s competitors might misuse such knowledge, but it is almost trivial for those same companies to accomplish what one dedicated person can do by themselves.  While Amazon and Buy.com used to use a system that only allowed you to view special promotional prices when you added that item to your cart, it doesn’t appear as if Amazon does this any more.  I haven’t visited Buy.com in a while, but I would be a little surprised to see if they did.

The problem with any partially closed system is that it only takes one person to defeat the system.  Worse, no matter how much money, time, and resources you throw at the problem, it will never be enough.  Somewhere in the vastness of cyberspace there is one hacker4 who will work around the clock fueled by unlimited amounts of caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and hot pockets.  And they will do it for free.

Ultimately trying to prevent access to a partially closed system is useless (those measures will be circumvented) and counter-productive (since that information was already made public).  The only people who are truly deprived of that information are those could do the most for the company holding the partially closed public information.

  1. No longer there.  Bummer. [↩]
  2. An e-commerce website without prices?!  A physical product that has no physical dimensions?? [↩]
  3. In fact, I like the idea that creators of intellectual property can reap financial rewards for their work.  Perhaps it is because I some of my own income is derived from my own intellectual property.  However, I think rewarding content creators for their efforts is probably a good thing even outside of my own selfish desires.  I believe that incentivizing work and the creation of content is a good thing and critical to a well-functioning capitalist society.  That said, I love open source hardware and software projects and actively devote my time and efforts to both. [↩]
  4. I say hacker to mean a person in the strictly technical, non-perjorative sense, of one who makes use of things in ways they were not originally intended. [↩]

Kodak, Kodak, Kodak…

Over the last few weeks Kodak has been on NPR several times.  Kodak invented digital camera technology, but never tried to push it – since it didn’t advance their core method for making money… selling film.  I’m reminded of this because I’ve finally come very very close to finally using up my 5 pound coil of black ABS that I’ve had since December of 2009.

I’m both excited and saddened at this prospect.  In the last two years I’ve run through 5 pounds of clear PLA, 5 pounds of black ABS1 , and another kilogram of clear PLA.  I’ve used a smattering of other colors, but not a whole lot yet.  Black has been my go-to color since I’ve had so damn much of it.

  1. Almost [↩]

Can you tell I’m trying not to work?

I’ve been sick the last few days.  Yesterday I thought I was feeling pretty good and ran a bunch of errands.  By the time I got back home and took care of a few small projects around the house…  I was totally wiped.  It felt like someone had just pulled the plug on me.  Obviously, although I’ve been as weak as a kitten, I’ve been posting all kinds of nonsense. 1

  1. Amazingly, as much as I’ve been posting this month…  this has only been my third most prolific month ever. [↩]

DrawBot – Printed Parts

So far I’ve got three types of printed parts:

  1. Spools
    1. These spools hold the monofilament and are friction fit onto the motor shaft.  You can check out the designs on Thingiverse.
  2. Motor Mounts
    1. The Thingiverse page actually has a lot of information about the motor mounts.  They’re designed in OpenSCAD and are mostly parametric.  Since I’m mounting these motors inside a box, the mounts are designed to go into the corners of the box.
  3. John Abella’s Gondola
    1. I haven’t hooked everything up yet, so I don’t know how well this will work.  I can’t wait to find out!
  4. Arduino Mount
    1. I’m kicking around some ideas for how this would work.  Ideally, I’ll end up designing a bracket that the Arduino and motor shield can just snap into.
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DrawBot – The Assembly, Part VI

Okay!  It was a good day for drawing robots in the MakerBlock household!  Here’s what we got accomplished:

  • I designed some motor mounts, printed one… and had to redesign it.  Gotta love having a 3D printer!
  • I selected a long shallow pine box to hold the motors and electronics.
  • I tried a variety of sound insulating materials.  Bubble wrap was easily the most effective, but least practical.  I settled on some corrugated cardboard.  I placed some cardboard between the motor and the motor mount and between the motor mount and the wood.
  • I soldered some longer wires to the motor leads.
  • I drilled holes in the wooden box, attached some monofilament line to the spools, put the spools on the motors, mounted the motors, ran the leads to the Arduino, powered it up… and it moved around and stuff!

As this point the next step is to mount it on the wall and actually attempt to draw stuff.  Yay!

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Simple Series – Half-Life; Market Research

I’m wondering at what point will the downloads on this plugin plateau.  Whatever the eventual baseline download rate, I would suspect that speaks to the amount of maximum market share that is possible for a plugin that performs these functions.1  I would think that downloads would spike when I release a new version of the plugin.  Given that I released about five updates to this plugin the first day, I would assume some of those initial downloads were duplicative.

As far as rankings go, at this time this plugin is #5 on WordPress.org’s plugin search page, #5 inside WordPress’s internal “Add New” plugins search page, and no where to be seen in the Google rankings.  Looking at Google Keywords, it appears that there’s no small amount of search traffic for the keywords “WordPress series.”  There’s some 200,000 global monthly searches.  One of the reasons I’m following this so closely is that I’ve had a few ideas for plugins that I could sell.2

Here’s the WordPress.org plugin download stats for “Simple Series with SEO!” for the first four days.

  1. 1/26/2012: 1 download
  2. 1/27/2012: 99 downloads
  3. 1/28/2012: 37 downloads
  4. 1/29/2012: 20 downloads

What will tomorrow bring?

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  1. I promise I won’t subject your RSS feed to my obsessive stats checking.  Much of the time I use this blog as a way to document/save/organize information that is probably really only interesting to me. [↩]
  2. A brother’s gotta earn, right? [↩]