Tag Archives: bay area maker faire

Prepping for Maker Faire Bay Area 2024

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It’s always a whirlwind heading into Maker Faire.  This year is no exception.  This past weekend we got things mostly ready for the Rocklin Maker Faire.  All of our robots were functional, which was really great.  A quick update to document progress and also act like a to-do list of sorts:

  • MakerKnit’s companion robot
    • My wife has knit her octopus
    • I’ve installed the Adafruit QtPy, NeoPixels, and touch sensors connected via BrownDogGadgets conductive thread through the legs
    • It’s been programmed to “blink” the two LED eyes randomly plus a small number of light shows for the body
    • Designed/3D printed several eyes, settling on a nice design that should make the eye animations look good
  • Kim’dael LightningSlayer’s Pendant
    • The youngest’s project has morphed from an LED arm to a CircuitPlayground in a pendant that just plays some notes when she presses buttons.
    • A long extension for the battery pack, using thicker gauge wire wound through the back of stock CircuitPlayground enclosure, is now the “necklace” portion for this project.
  • Dexter Starfighter’s ED-E
  • MakerBlock
    • My robot wasn’t quite ready for Maker Faire last year, but “ready enough” to share.  Last year the little bot was just sitting in a jar I carried around and not really visible to anyone.
    • This year I’ve added feet (entirely cosmetic), changed the battery pack around so it is removeable, swapped out dome diffusers, and am working on new animations/behaviors.
    • I realized that my old LED goggles were… janky.  This was because I had soldered some buttons to one side and then wired them into the Trinket directly, without any resistors.  While it /worked/, it caused some problems whenever I pressed a button.  I pulled the Trinket out and swapped in my new favorite board, the QtPy.
      • I really prefer programming / updating via CircuitPython over Arduino since there’s no pre-compile time and fussy Arduino connections.
      • Besides the programming/uploading, I love the built in RGB, up to 6 capacitive touch sensor, and easy serial communication
      • As an added plus, I soldered on the 2MB flash chip so the project as a ton of space. 1
      • And at almost the same price as a Triket ($0.50 more than the original, $0.50 less than the M0 Trinkets), it’s just easier to swap them into any project I would have previously put a Trinket into
  •  Soldering
    • I’ve really upgraded my soldering experience and it’s made a world of difference.  We moved about a year ago and there’s a space in the house where I can keep a soldering station out and ready to use.  Just having it available is such an upgrade.  I’ve had several handheld / pen style soldering irons over the years and they’re usually pretty terrible.  In fairness, this is also because I’m kinda terrible at soldering.  I had a basic garbage soldering iron from the local hardware store, upgrade one that had a little temperature control from Adafruit, and then upon the recommendation of a friend upgraded a few weeks ago to an X-TRONIC soldering station.
    • I gave my old soldering iron to my neighbor so he could work on a project for his wife.  As I got to finishing up work on the above projects I realized I couldn’t find my pen soldering iron from Adafruit – and that I didn’t want to find it anyhow.  It was fine.  It worked.  But, my soldering iron holder was cheap and flimsy and easy to tip over and the helping hands I had from Adafruit were “okay” for very small projects, but the joints came loose easily and the helping hands kept falling off.  Rather than spend $20 on another soldering iron I would hate, I dropped $70 on the X-TRONIC station which has built in helping hands and soldering iron holder.  Setting aside that it heats up very quickly, has good temperature control, melts solder quickly, and has great helping hands… it has a way to hold the soldering iron in a way that isn’t constantly anxiety inducing. 2
    • Having the soldering station handy has meant I don’t really mind whipping out a quick battery pack extension cable for our projects.  I just need to strip some wires, fire it up, drop some solder, and turn it off again.
    • I may have ruined the first soldering iron tip kinda quickly.  Again, I have no idea what I’m doing.  I would add solder, dip the tip in flux, wipe on sponge, and then do it all again.  This is a terrible process since all it does it add extra contaminants and gunk to the tip, reducing the ability of it to transfer heat effectively.  Instead, after watching a video, I learned I should run it at the lowest temperature appropriate for the solder/joint, just dab the tip in the brass wool to clean it up a little, then maybe wipe on the slightly damp sponge, and absolutely coat the tip in solder before putting it down.

Things left to do!

  • Things to finish
    • I’d really like to finish up the Fallout themed shirt/vest to go with my project
    • A way to attach my wife’s octopus to a purse strap
    • A better way to wear my robot on my shoulder – may use a similar foam paldron
    • A big chunky seat belt looking thing for the strap wearing my robot
    • I’ve got designs for a new bag to wear/carry around Maker Faire, but haven’t sewn them up yet – maybe this week!?!!?
  • Make sure we have
    • Enough batteries, battery packs, etc for our projects
    • USB chargers for our LiPo batteries in goggles
    • Finish my goggles (install battery, update code, possibly change out diffusers
    • Bring a few Maker Coins to give out (I bought 100 of the 5,000 minted, probably never to be minted again…)
    • Ways to show people links to learn more about our projects – probably via QR codes – though I might also use an RFID tag :)

Okay, back to work on… work… so I can get back to making!

  1. Note to self:  It requires a different version of CircuitPython, Haxpress, to make use of the chip storage [↩]
  2. I used to tape the cord of my soldering iron to the table and then place it on the flimsy stand [↩]

Beep Boop: Emotions for ED-E

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So I’m trying to program emotions for ED-E.

Better ed-e dialogue at Fallout New Vegas - mods and community

In Fallout New Vegas, ED-E doesn’t use regular dialogue, but communicates through beeps. Basically, he gets <(Emotion) + beeping> as his dialogue. Obviously the only way to research his beeping for this project is to replay Fallout New Vegas and talk to everyone’s favorite eyebot. I came up with a list of some of the emotional beeps he has in the game (and some that I just want) to start programming into him. I have ideas for what I want him to sound like, but I just need to find the right pitches and durations.

By this I mean I am sitting in my room and saying “beep beep” to myself at different pitches in sync with a program I wrote.

Yesterday my dad was checking in on me and how my programming was going and asked how I was doing. I replied, approximately, “bleurrrrghhhhh.”
I was having trouble programming the emotional beeps because I have very specific ideas for what ED-E should sound like and no way to get that into a computer. I’m a huge music nerd, but I unfortunately don’t have perfect pitch or some superhuman ability like that to use to get ED-E to sound exactly like I want him to.1 Dad suggested using a loop with an array going up every time, which made everything so. Much. Easier.
This plays frequencies starting at 100hz and going up by 10hz every time. I started with 100hz but going up by 50hz every time, but I liked the specificity of 10hz. Once I get in the ballpark of where I want to be, I can then just run the program and correct the pitches if need be.
If you read my last post, specifically the spoiler section, you will know why I started with a shy beep. If you didn’t read my last post, go do that! If you didn’t read the spoiler section, that’s fine. What you really need to know is that I want ED-E to make noises.
I’ll admit, this took a while to get right. Not playing the tones or even figuring out what pitches they were or how long they should play for. No, getting the tones to play was easy. Getting them to stop… was much harder.
ED-E was shyly screaming at me on repeat for at least 10 minutes while I was slowly losing my mind and trying to make him shut up.
I turned to ChatGPT to help me fix this, but it was utterly unhelpful and I ended up fixing the problem myself by deleting a bunch of the garbage it generated. Now the problem was that I had to continually upload the code to make the ShyBeep function run again. I was happy that it wasn’t looping anymore, but I wanted to fine tune the beeps and making it upload again and again was a pain. That’s why I decided to make it run when a button is pressed.2
It took a little while to make it run when a button was pressed, but then it would only run once and never again, even if the button was pressed. I finally realized that this was happening because runOnce was set to false, and fixed that.
Now that I have this framework, it has been much easier to program more beeps. Now I have a sad beep, and I’m going to start working on a happy beep because I have had just about enough of ED-E’s negativity.3
  1. I almost decided to use the definitions of pitch from my Rickroll code so I could just ask the computer to start at middle C and go down or say I want the pitch to be a half note in 3/4 time. I then realized I was making this WAY more complicated than it needed to be and just used seconds and hz like a normal-ish person [↩]
  2. I seriously love Circuit Playgrounds. They have everything. [↩]
  3. Just kidding ED-E, I love you [↩]

ED-E Project: Origins

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Hi, I’m DexterStarfighter, offspring of MakerBlock.1 I am a maker and artist with possibly too many interests that include drawing, writing, cats, theatre, video games, horror podcasts, folklore, coding, Jenga, history, triangles, succulents, and reading literally anything. I have been going to MakerFaire for basically my entire life and it has always been something I look forward to for the whole year. As soon as Dad told me MakerFaire was coming back, I knew I had to make something super cool for the occasion. This brings me to my latest project, a companion robot.

First, some background. My favorite game is part of the Fallout series (New Vegas, if you were wondering). I started the Fallout series because my dad played them when the first Fallout came out and I wanted to be able to share a cool game with him. I started Fallout 1 and loved it, then played Fallout 2 and 3. Over the summer, Epic Games released Fallout New Vegas with all DLCs for free and of course, I played the crap out of that.23

In Fallout New Vegas, there are various companions you can take with you on your journey through the Wasteland. There are human companions of course (and ghoul and nightkin), but you can also take with you one nonhuman companion. At first I was super disappointed that I couldn’t find Dogmeat. I don’t actually like being around dogs in real life, but I got Dogmeat in Fallout 1 and somehow I have become very attached. (I do not even want to think about how many times I have reloaded a save to keep that little jerk alive.) I quickly got over my disappointment though, because there is a statue of a dinosaur and now I’m disappointed that you can’t have a dinosaur robot companion. Anyway, in my travels through the Mojave, I found two interesting nonhuman companions. The first one I found was this little eye bot named ED-E. I play as a charismatic nerd (high INT and CHA with good repair, speech, barter and science) so I was able to fix him up. ED-E was still only able to beep in ways I couldn’t understand and when I brought him to where I was supposed to for his quest, there was some sort of glitch and I couldn’t interact with the lady for the quest. ED-E seemed kind of lame to me then, so I took him back to the place I found him and left. I later ran into a dog named Rex who I had to take care of for an Elvis impersonator (no, really) and found he was a pretty good companion.

Flash forward to the endgame. I had met a cowboy robot, climbed a dinosaur statue, resurrected a B-29, fought a soldier for a dog’s brain, charmed a scientist, accidentally sided with the mafia, cleaned out an entire casino, assassinated a 261-year-old man, had my vital organs removed, stolen 27 bars of gold, befriended a man wrapped in toilet paper, and was well on my way to conquering New Vegas for myself. I had only one more thing to check off my list: walking the Courier’s Mile. Don’t worry, I won’t spoil the Lonesome Road quest for you- I’ll just tell you that I met ED-E again. Somehow, within the first few minutes of interacting with him, I had become so completely charmed by this little robot that I would do literally anything to protect him. I’m not sure what about ED-E made him so endearing to me, but he became my best friend. 

GameBanshee

In 2019, I met Odd_Jayy at MakerFaire. I remember seeing his spider bot and thinking how cool it was. I’ve always liked the idea of a companion bot, but I’ve never actually had a specific idea of what I want out of one. When dad told me that we would be going to MakerFaire again, I immediately thought of an ED-E companion bot.4 Dad loved the idea too and gave me lots of good tips on how to get started. I have a tendency to get lost in the details, so he helped me focus on the big picture and the first steps I could take to achieving my goals.

I have a lot of ideas about what I want ED-E to do eventually, but I’m a complete beginner at Arduino programming. Knowing this, Dad suggested starting small. First, turn on one light. Then multiple lights. Then make them flash. Then make them change colors. Then add beeps. Stuff like that. I was like “cool, cool” and immediately programmed ED-E to beep the entirety of Never Gonna Give You Up instead of doing literally anything sensible.

I regret nothing. It was frustrating at first because I was super out of my depth. I used Chlorondria’s arrangement of Never Gonna Give You Up and used ChatGPT to help me learn how the code works. ChatGPT was super helpful because I could get feedback on why my code wasn’t working. The sense of accomplishment when I finally recognized the tune made all the frustration so incredibly worth it.

After my self-indulgent first project for ED-E, I moved on to taking Dad’s suggestions. Sort of. I’m a teenager, and therefore I am legally obliged not to listen to any authority figures, real or perceived. I made ED-E flash some rainbow lights. I started with just red lights and it took a while to make the code work, but once I made it work, I just changed the color brightnesses. Fun fact: my ED-E bot now actually glows two shades of blue in his rainbow light show pattern. For some reason I decided RGB stood for Red Yellow Blue and messed up with the color values when I was trying to make green and accidentally made a light blue. The light blue actually looked pretty cool, so I decided to keep it.

Today, I worked more on5 ED-E’s… musical function. I’m going to warn you right now: there will be spoilers for MakerFaire below! I intend to take ED-E to MakerFaire with me, and if you meet him, there will be some fun surprises in store for you. Not if you read the spoilers, though. MakerFaire is a big place and I don’t expect everyone who visits this page to run into me at the Faire, so I’ll include some stuff about the surprises below. 

***SPOILERS START***

 

If you’re still here, I assume you want to read this. One of my favorite things about ED-E in Fallout are the little conversations you can have with him. I want to be able to have a few little “conversations” with my companion bot, kind of like in the game. I’m going to have a Pip-Boy with various buttons to run functions for ED-E, but one of the first conversations I thought of had to do with his musical function. This was my idea:

 

Me: Hey, ED-E. Do you wanna sing them your favorite song?

ED-E: [Shy beeping]

Me: Aw, are you shy?

ED-E: [Shy beeping]

Me: Come on, ED-E. We’d all really like to hear you sing!

ED-E: [Questioning beeping]

Me: Yes, of course! Listen, I’ll ask them. Do you want to hear ED-E sing his favorite song?

Other person: Yes!

Me: See, ED-E? 

ED-E: [Pleased beeps, wait, then Rickroll beeps]

 

Obviously, I’m not going to make ED-E understand my words and respond to them. ED-E will be a shoulder mounted bot, so I want to be able to have conversations that trigger based on movement. I’m using a Circuit Playground, so I intend to take full advantage of all the different sensors it has. I programmed ED-E to run his Rickroll function if he senses a significant change in acceleration. I’ll pop my shoulder like I’m giving him a nudge, triggering the function. He waits for 8 seconds to give me time to talk, then plays the Rickroll beeps.

I have to admit, this took a WHILE to get right. It was still incredibly satisfying to see it all come together and go right. I was so excited when it started working! I did a lot of testing to get the sensitivity right because I don’t want it to trigger if I’m just walking around. I’m still fine tuning that part because I bumped the cord earlier and he started Rickrolling me. Then again, maybe ED-E just has a funny sense of humor.

 

***SPOILERS END***

So, what’s next for ED-E? I think the next thing I want to work on is getting his beeps right. I can make him beep music, and that’s great, but I also want to have him beep every so often and have “conversations” with him. I’m going to program some little beep clips for different emotions or situations that I can then mix and match into various conversations. I might also actually listen to Dad for once and work on a light show.

Thanks for reading about my ED-E project! I’ve enjoyed working on him and I’m so excited to share him with other makers. I’ll try to post updates regularly (they shouldn’t be as long as this one since you won’t need all the background next time). Thank you to Odd_Jayy for the inspiration, Chlorondria for the musical arrangement, ChatGPT for the troubleshooting help, Adafruit for making awesome boards, whoever made Fallout New Vegas, MakerBlock for being a great dad and helpful sounding board, and to you for reading this post.

ED-E Companion Bot Project

  1. ED-E Project: Origins
  2. Beep Boop: Emotions for ED-E

  1. I considered saying progeny and descendant of the House of MakerBlock, but offspring sounded the best. Progeny sounded weird and the descendant thing reminded me of Game of Thrones, which I have not read or watched, but I might someday and I don’t want to invite spoilers. [↩]
  2. I love Epic Games. Free games every week? Yes please! Disclaimer: I am not being sponsored by Epic Games, but if I was, that would be awesome. [↩]
  3. New Vegas is best Fallout, you can fight me on this. [↩]
  4. I also considered a Muggy companion bot. I love Muggy and if ED-E turns out well, Muggy might be my next project. [↩]
  5. Lol, moron [↩]

Practical 3D Printing for Everyone

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3D printing can sometimes get a bad rap.  At first people are excited by the possibilities, then after printing a few trinkets the novelty can really start to wear off.  However, our 3D printers have become an absolutely critical part of our home repairs.

We have printed literally dozens and dozens of things in and around our home.  As of the time I’m editing this post, we’re up to 82 things so far!  The vast majority of these are completely bespoke custom creations, with a few things that are printed from Thingiverse or mashups with things from Thingiverse.

My proposed Maker Faire Bay Area 2018 Presentation submission is for a presentation that discusses:

  1. Practical things everyone can 3D print for their own home
    1. Repairs
    2. Improvements
    3. Other useful things
  2. 3D Printing with Family and Friends
    1. Specifying a purpose (“Honey, can you make me something that…”)
    2. Specifying dimensions and purpose (“I need something that will…”)
    3. Simple techniques for creating replacement parts (using good reference photos, GIMP, Inkscape, and OpenSCAD)
  3. 3D Design with Family and Friends
    1. Photographs
    2. Sketches
    3. TinkerCAD and Sketchup

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