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

quick recollection on setting things up

If I can swear that the password is correct, then it's possible that I'm getting the ID wrong. Hadn't logged into the web server in a couple of months and was unable to SSH into it. After an hour or so, I ended up deleting the instance and recreating a clean instance (read: erasing everything). I then realized I'd been putting the wrong ID. apt-get install sudo apt-get install Anyways, some links I visited when setting things up (pretty much a dump of whatever I copy-pasted to notes) : Raspberry Pi http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/optimize-the-power-of-your-raspberry-pi-with-raspbian/ Logging http://docs.python.org/2/howto/logging-cookbook.html Tornado - Python webserver that supports Websocket http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2924991/what-popular-webservers-have-support-for-html5-websocket http://lowpowerlab.com/blog/2013/01/17/raspberrypi-websockets-with-python-tornado/ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11695375/tornado-identify-tra...

warming up

I still don't have all the parts I need to do what I need to do, but I started working with what I had around. I had a 4-digit 7-segment led which I had ordered previously, but for the longest time I had thought I needed additional parts to make it work. It was only today that I realized that that was not the case. Getting some help from this site , I was able to get the digits fired up: This method uses way more wires than this guy (which uses a serial communications protocol called I^2C), but it's good to see it work. I still do want to try the less-wire led setup, as I would like to try playing around with I^2C. In addition, I had recently purchased an Arduino Pro Mini , which contains all the capabilities of the above Arduino Uno but requires pins/connections to be soldered into the board. I had attempted to solder one part of it (the serial/USB connections) a few days ago (note that this was my first attempt ever at soldering), and the USB-to-Serial interface...

chunk update: most parts printed and assembled

currently: stuff that happened are: wired the fingers added screws to necessary assemblies witnessed first failed print during this: servos haven't come yet, but once they do, we can start installing them into the hand/forearm. as always, credit to the Inmoov project.

the quest for robots

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