a step closer to robots

well, I'm back.

"back with a 3d printer" kind of back.

took a week off earlier this month for a stay-cation, and during this time of peace, I decided it was the right time to get my hands on one.

behold, the Monoprice Select Mini.
thoughts so far:
- very inexpensive for today's standards (got it for $200)
- produces great prints
- very non-proprietary

this review convinced me in the end that this printer is the one.

by the way, the above picture shows the 3d printer with the "sample filament," which I soon realized was way, way too little to do anything.

I honestly didn't know what I should do with it at first, trying to find 3D models to print in the internet, until I stumbled into this.

an open-source, 3D-printable robot.

it's always been a dream of sorts for me to build a controllable hand.
it was my intention to build something like that during one of my college projects, but it ended up being something else (software) that is controlled (the glove controller remained).

now, this printable robot offered a printable hand (and forearm, and bicep, and shoulder, and head...).

at this point, I've actually already printed a lot of parts and am pretty well-into the process of building this.

I will elaborate my progress so far in the next post.

Comments

duty cycle testing

Now that I saw a physical response, I should try to make it similar to how a servo should be controlled. Servos are actuators that receive (expect) position input (as opposed to motors, which receive speed/intensity input). Simply put, it registers input as pulses, decoding the ratio of high (a "on" signal) to low in a given period as a position value. A better explanation : http://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-8-using-a-servo-motor/servo-motors As I am waiting for my servo to be shipped, I will continue to work with the LED light. As opposed to my previous setup of having the light turn on every time the request is given, I will have the light turn on and off in a regular pattern until a request is given, upon which the pattern will change for one "cycle" (on-and-off pair). The on-and-off logic (previously the LED control logic) will be run in a separate thread: def dCycle(*args): global dCVal ...

dabbling with android

I've been wanting to dabble with Android development recently, and yesterday I realized that there is a Socket.IO client API available for Java/Android. The API is pretty straightforward, so I loaded a test Android project I had made for going through Android basics and connected to the OpenSesame Node server. and it works! I mean, the interface is non-existent and it's really just bare-bones, but having the servo respond through an Android application was pretty refreshing. (the web client and the android client "communicating" with each other--messaging is pretty much for debugging purposes)

playing with servos

some servos that I had ordered were delivered. the instructions suggested another brand/model of servos, but these were a much more economical (cheap). I tried adding them to the hand: I'll have to print the "pulley" pieces that will be attached to the servos. meanwhile, I did somewhat (hackily) got the wrist to work, for now: you keep hearing the "usb plugged out" sound in the background, and that's because the servo was being powered by the arduino. the servo's power draw appears to be causing a shutdown of the device. will need a better power source for the servos. it feels like these pieces that are supposed to be plugged into the servo will have size issues.

the quest for robots

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