Skip to main content

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

Popular posts from this blog

websockets and mobile networks and ssl

Gahhh. Just going to ramble on this one: Websockets is unstable going through cellular networks Searched Google and solution seems to be SSL connections Tried to implement, and it works to some extent,  but realized that I'll have to have both Apache, which was running my web front end, and Tornado both listen to 443 which cannot happen Realize finally that Tornado is a SERVER just like Apache Try to implement web client through Tornado It works but Websocket server and the web client still different instances so still can't have both listen, or that's what I'm thinking but I don't have time to think about it at present. Gotta sleep.

GPIO testing

Since the environment of the client-server-target is currently quite functional in the messaging standpoint, I decided to try connecting a simple LED light to the Raspberry Pi to see if it could "open" a door when the command is received. Installed the RPi.GPIO module (a Python module that gives the user command of the GPIO--General-Purpose Input/Output--ports in the Raspberry Pi) and connected the LED light to a GPIO pin. When the target received a request message, it would signal the GPIO pin to drive a current to the LED to light it up for 2 seconds. in main: if __name__ == "__main__":   GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)   GPIO.setup(17, GPIO.OUT) in the on_message's request-received logic:      GPIO.output(17, True)      time.sleep(2)      GPIO.output(17, False) The video is a weak visual result. You can a click when the LED lights up; that was the sound of the key being pressed that sent the request message. Now, tim...

pwm..

I just realized that the RPi.GPIO library (for programming the Raspberry Pi's input/output) already has PWM control, giving me a much more efficient control of duty cycles... At least the previous exercise ("duty cycle testing") refreshed me on it. PWM control on RPi.GPIO: http://code.google.com/p/raspberry-gpio-python/wiki/PWM