DJI Robomaster S1

Definitely on my wishlist!

Hats of to Boston Dynamics

Tis what we like to see!.

New from Boston Dynamics today

First is the longest video of spot yet with some screen captures of the actual software taht is running on it.

Second atlas is jogging around in the brush, jumping over a log

Awesome new basic IoT technology: LoRaWAN

I am going to let Marco Reps do the talking, because I have nothing on his soothing robot-like Germanly accented voice and matching dry humour.

Welcome Hubert the Humanoid!

If you havent already noticed, there is a new kid on the block.

You can read all about him here.

We look forward to supporting your hardware. Hugs from the OctoMY™ robot platform!

All you need to know to build kick-ass LiPo batteries

I came across this excellent series of videos on the subject of building your own LiPo battery. It was made with electric bikes in mind, but the information is equally useful from the perspective of someone making batteries for any other application, such as robotics.
I decided to share the playlist containing 5 parts here.
A summary of the parts:

• Part 1: Battery layout, serial vs. parallel etc.
• Part 2: Welding batteries together using special purpose spot welder and nickel strips.
• Part 3: Choosing and installing a BMS (Battery Management System).
• Part 4: Sealing the battery with shrink wrap tube, kapton tape and foam.
• Part 5: Choosing an appropriate charger.

And finally, a web-shop that supplies the best 18650 cells (Panasonic 18650GA).

How to judge a 3D printer.

In this post I want to list the things that matter when you buy a 3D printer:

Creality CR10

Point	Details
Bed size	While many crave a huge print-bed, I have found that most things I print are small. Why? Because most 3D printers are much slower than you think. In fact most points on this list are about speed vs. quality. But if you have a fast printer that prints high quality, or if you really need to print big and have the required patience, then bed-size is still important.
Motor speed	How fast can the motors transport the extruder around the work?
Motor torque	How fast and steady can the motors accelerate?
Extruder max temperature	Will the extrude cope with the high-temperature filaments?
Extruder temperature stability	Will the extruder manage to hold temperature steadily during printing, even at higher temperatures?
Extruder temperature speed	How fast will the extruder warm up from room temperature at the start of the print?
Bed max temperature	Will the bed cope with the high-temperature filaments?
Bed temperature stability	Will the bed manage to hold temperature steadily during printing?
Bed temperature speed	How fast will the bed warm up from room temperature at the start of the print?
Enclsure temperature control	Some filaments like ABS may require the temperature around the work being managed using an enclosure and heater.
Direct vs. Bowden filament feed	The size of the print head directly affects the speed and accuracy of your printer. A big head will slow down and cause the printer to wobble if it is not rigid enough. To get around this many printer manufacturers look for ways to decrease the size of the head. One feature, the "bowden tube" allows the extruder motor to sit on the frame instead of the head. However this reduces the filament capacity somewhat which in turn affects print speed.
Interchangeable extruder head	You might only care about the standard 1.75 mm filament through 0.4 mm nozzle size. However there are lots of options out there when it comes to nozzle sizes. Having an easily interchangeable head/nozzle is desirable, and a printer that can handle the higher heat requirements of a larger nozzle/filament of course.
Multiple extruder head	Having more than one extruder provides some benefits, for example if you are printing with more than one material per part. Example usages are: flexible filament for rubber seals, washable support material, dual color prints etc.
Noise	Remember your printer will be running for a long time. Print times are usually measured in hours, and sometimes in days..
Build quality & basic features	This qill require a lot of "getting to know" the printer. Basically all sorts of small practical details such as positioning of the user interface, display size, where is filament dispensed from, how are the wires connected? etc. etc. You can often get an impression of these things by looking at printer reviews on YouTube.

3D Printed case for iMacwear W1 (DM98)

I made a protective case for the W1 Android watch.

iMacwear W1 in protective 3D printed case with servo mount.

The idea was to make a case for it that would protect it while also providing better mounting options. The current version of the case sports a native RC servo horn mount, but I am also looking at different mounting options including a gimbal mount and a simple "screw me on" mount.

I submitted the whole thing on thingiverse here if you want to check out the details. It includes source CAD file, lots of pictures and details etc.

Wheeled rig build complete!

I finally managed to overcome myself and complete the wheeled rig hardware!

Now its only software left....

Wheeled rig for OctoMY™

Canuckistanian Dictionary

I have compiled this rudimentary Canuckistanian Dictionary, so that you may also follow the teachings of The One True Canuckistanian.

Schmoo	Any liquid, be it hydrophillic or hydrophobic, homogeneous or pasteurized, that has a viscosity between that of Canuckistanian Beaver Semen at one hour after ejaculation ( 9.35 +/- 0.99 centipoise ) and Canuckistanian Maple Syrup (175 +/- 25 centipoises).
Chooch	To move, either orthogonally, laterally or radially, or any combination of the aforementioned. To let pixies pass through the wires of a contrivance. See also "Pixies".
Pixies	Small, usually obedient particles that are expected to form lines inside wires to make contrivances chooch. Se also: "Chooch", "Angry Pixies".
Angry Pixies	Pixies that for some reason are no longer obedient, and may for no reason at all step out of line. Se also: "Pixies".
Bumblefuckery	An activity that may result in a contrivance stopping to chooch. See also "Pop fart and give up the ghost".
(The room formerly known as) wife's sowing	A traditional in-home style Canuckistanian man-cave. Dedicated to learning from books and staying in front of the screen with the occational work with brain boxes. Tempered at around 23 Dungrees.
(The) shop	A traditional out-of-home style Canuckistanian man-cave. Dedicated to performing bumblefuckery with the bridgeport. Tempered at around 15 Dungrees.
(The) bridgeport	An age old contrivance for manually and forcefully opening snail-mail, cracking plexiglass, bending and annealing end-mills and making vodka glasses from sheets of copper.
(The) screen	Special purpose contrivance that allows Canuckistanians to learn stuff from the interwebs and youtubes.
Keep your dick in a vise	Have a nice day. See also "Keep your stick on the ice".
Brainbox	A contrivance dedicated to the controlled conversion of pixies into angry pixies, thereby making one or more other contrivances chooch.
Sexpert	Dumb fuck.
Enginerd	Engineer
Stupidvisor	Supervisor
Frankenstein	Unit of measure for temperature. 1 °Dungree = ( °Frankenstein - 32) × 5/9 1 °Frankenstein = °Dungree × 9/5 + 32 Se also: "Dungrees"
Dungrees	Unit of measure for temperature. 1 °Dungree = ( °Frankenstein - 32) × 5/9 1 °Frankenstein = °Dungree × 9/5 + 32 Se also: "Frankenstein"
Vijeo	Sequence of images displayed in rapid succession with accompanying audio.
Wank overload	An event where too much wank happened.
Cromulent	Important
Redonculous	Ridiculous
Jelly 4 ur Jam	Bang for your buck
Bifocals	Glasses
Canuckistan	The land of the polar beers.
(Canuckistanian) Copeks	Primary unit of wealth in Canuckistan. See also "(Canuckistanian) Pesos".
(Canuckistanian) Pesos	Secondary unit of wealth in Canuckistan. See also "(Canuckistanian) Copeks".
Scientician	Learned Canuckistanian.
Scienticious	Actions carried out exclusively by learned Canuckistanian. See also "Scientician".
Yada yada yada	I don't feel like elaborating now.
It's the cicle of life	At this very moment, I am having an epiphany.
Dog bless the nanny state	Idiomatic exclamation of pure satisfaction equivalent to "God bless the government of Canuckistan for looking after its citizens"!
Pop fart and give up the ghost	To stop chooching.
Flogg it like a Rented mule	To start chooching.
Son of a diddely	Mild expression of disappointment.
Safety squint engaged	Eyes squinting momentyarily to avoid damage. See also "Bifocals".
Fantabulous	Mild expression of approval.
Scokum	Of right Canuckistanian quality.
Keep your stick on the ice	Good day. See also "Keep your dick in a vise".
Rippums	Rotations Per Minute.
Meat hook abortion	Contrivance of unknown or non-Canuckistanian origin. See also "Chinesium".
Chees grade	Of considerable softness.
Bob's your auntie	Let's try this.
The sharpest bowling ball in the shed	Round Contrivance typically kept by land owners of Canuckistan in out-door sheds. Used for measuring relative mental capacity.

Wheeled rig update

Just a quick update on the wheeled rig. Electronics are starting to come together.

Power bar created.

• Main power bar was created and connected to battery.
• Relay board high end connected to power bar.
• Ribbon cable to carry signal between controller and relay boards was prepared with apropriate connectors.
• RC Servo pins soldered to stand alone PCB that allows for combining power with signal from different sources.
• RC Servo, ESC and power connected to RC servo board.
• ESC connected to power bar.
• Audio amplifier connected to power bar.
• Buzzer and warning light was connected to the power bar and relay board.
• Most circuits tested.

 Now only software remains!

Test circuit for RC servos.

• 
  

Wheeled rig update

So I put in some time on the wheeled rig:

OctoMY™ Wheeled rig with speakers, buzzer, warning light and electronics mounted.

Side closeup showing the battery mounting bracket and port holes where wires will be fed into the electronics box.

Front closeup showing the stereo speakers and alarm buzzer.

New features include:

• Created and mounted two separate stainless steel speaker housings made from the caps of  awesome waterwell™ bottles.
• Mounted a piezo deterrent/attention grabbing buzzer.
• Created a mounting bracket from stainless steel wire to hold the lead acid battery.
• Found the perfectly sized and shaped weather proof electrical box for mounting all the electronics for the robot.
• Created a mounting plate for the electrical box from an old plastic plate I had laying around my shop.
• Mounted a LED warning/attention grabbing flash-light on top of the electrical box.

Still on the TODO list:

• Mount all the electronics in a smart way inside the electronics box
• Connect all the electronics together and test it
• Protect the wires from wear/damage/water
• Protect the whole rig from water
• Paint job? Not sure about this

iMacwear W1 First impressions

Good news: I managed to build, deploy and run OctoMY™ Agent without any changes to the source code! It crashed a few times, and I have a bad feeling that these crashes are due to out-of-memory. I really have not been able to debug that fully yet. Will continue in this trail soon. But it got past the delivery and having the Agent eyes looking back at me from the small screen is a delight!

OctoMY™ Agent running on iMacwear W1 Android Smart Watch

After my last post about the iMacwear W1 unboxing, I have now had some time to form a first impression.

At first I was not sure the devivce was actually running Android as it claimed, but I soon figured out that this is because it runs a custom version of Android called "FunOS". I have not managed to find any information about this OS online. But in practice it means that many stock Android applications have been replaced with less resource intensive and more compact ones.

The main UI and navigation makes sense once you get used to it, and getting used to it takes about 15 minutes. I find it lacking a bit in the aesthetics department, the icons are not well executed. But the UX is ok, and as we all know, form follows function!

I had some problems with getting the device to register with Ubuntu. The device reports the USB vendor of HTC with a device ID of 2008,  (0bb4:2008), so if you need a line for your Android udev.rules, it will look like this:

# iMacwear W1
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0bb4", ATTR{idProduct}=="2008", MODE="0666", OWNER="<username>"

I found that enabling developer options in the settings on device and installing mtpfs package helped a little, but it was still unstable.

sudo apt-get install mtpfs

In the end, just retrying a lot makes it work. Once it works it will work for some time. I also found you have to keep the pogo connector completely still the whole time, because just unsetting it a little will break the USB handshakje and the connection/debug session/whatever.

iMacwear W1 Unboxing

I recently purchased the iMacwear W1 Full Android smart watch for testing with OctoMY™ software. I will put it as a recommended device in the shop page as soon asi get the OctoMY™ agent to run without problems. But before that, le't do the unboxing!

Neat gift box with magnetic lock

Tidily arranged contents

Top compartment contains user manual

Watch is strapped to black velvet cushion

Polishing cloth under the watch

All the box content side by side

Accessories box open in the short end

Contains pogo USB data/charging cable in plastic bag

Pogo cable removed from bag

Closeup of pogo USB connector showing gold plated pogo pins and magnets

Back side of watch showing wrist band

Protective film for screen (I removed once already)

Backside of watch

Closeup of backside showing pogo pad and sim slot.

pogo cable connected

After 3 hours of charging, showing main watch screen.

After removing protective film

 

Main menu

4-Wheeled rig build

I currently have 3 "rigs" I want to integrate OctoMY™ with. The hexy hexapod robot from arcbotics has been featured a few times before on this blog, but the other two have yet to be exposed. This post is about a 4-wheeled rig based on an old Traxxas TMaxx nitro engine RC truck.

This is how the tuck looked initially (with cover off).

At this stage I have stripped everytihng except the steering servo (which will be used).

Just a random "shop" image. This room is now painted gray and tidied up to look like a TV studio.

This is how it looks now with 12V Lead acid battery, RC ECU and mobile holder.

Closeup of RC-ECU and separate power for it.

Underside shows the geared electric motor (notice it is now only 2wd).

Closeup of mobile holder in front.

Right now it works as an RC car, but I will soon integrate it with OctoMY™. The current blockage is that the final step in discovery needs to be implemented (handoff, storage and use of recent connection parameters from discovery through to pairing). This part in turn needs some more UI work to allow sensible multiplexing between devices in remote.

Anatomy of a hydraulic cylinder

Hydraulic cylinders look like this on the inside:



The pin eye and clevis is where the cylinder is mounted to the appliance, and are the points between which the cylinder exerts its force.

The barrel is the body of the cylinder where the piston and rod can slide in and out.

The ports are where the hydraulic fluids are pressed in or out.

The wiper keeps dirt from reaching the gland. O rings seal the crevices between parts. the seals and wear rings keep the rod wear and leak free.

The nut keeps the rod securely attached to the rod.

Hybrid BLDC ESC & GX25 ECU

I have advanced my thinking about the power train. More specifically the details for the board that will handle generator stage has converged somewhat. This is the current idea:

• Use Brushless DC (BLDC) motor as both starter and generator connected to Honda GX25 motor.
• Build a simple DIY ESC circuit that when powered will rotate the BLDC shaft to start the GX25 (working as a starter motor).
• Build a rectifier circuit that when engaged to BLDC will make it generate power for charging batteries and giving the robot an extra power boost in the hour of need.
• Build an ECU circuit with inputs for tachometer, voltmeter, ammeter and outputs for throttle servo and mechanical relays that allows engaging/disengaging the ignition, ESC and rectifier circuits on demand.

GX25 BLDC generator

The basic API for the circuit should look something like this:

• Low-level
• Start engine
• Stop engine
• Set throttle
• Set charging
• High-level
• Start generator only when battery is low and/or power drain is high
• Adjust throttle to accommodate load
• Detect, alert and manage overheating
• Detect, alert and manage low-fuel
• Manage motor warm-up under different ambient temperatures.

How this circuit will communicate with central command and what will happen when communication breaks down is still to be decided.

How are lubricants classified & graded?

After reading the manula of the emco F1P CNC Mill and learning that it recommends 4 different lubricants for different parts of the machine I have attained a genuine interest in learning more about lubricants, so I have now asked a question on the chemistry stack site, asking exactly how they are classified and graded.

You can find it here.

A study of spiders

The decision of copying spiders in the physical design of the robot has spawned some extra focus to the project.

Here are some you-tube videos showing spiders moving in slow motion:

 

And here a study of the degrees of freedom found in the legs of a spider, summarized elegantly in the two shamelessly borrowed figures below:

Range of freedom in XZ plane (Z is up)

Range of freedom in XY plane (ground)

Cobalt blue tarantula

Lately I have pondered (in-between the bouts my extremely demanding and satisfying job) about how to model the physical layout of the robot.

I have proclaimed it to be a hexapod from the start. This idea seemed like the most logical at the time. 4 is too few and 8 is too many. Having an odd number of limbs leeds to more complex gaits. Also, keeping the number of movable parts per limb low would reduce the cost and complexity of each limb.

However now I am not so sure any more. I personally like spiders better than insects and spiders have 8 legs. Also, the number of moving parts per limb in a spider (and in insects too for that matter) is much higher than 3. Evolution is the best mechanism to achieve optimization there is, and it has been working for over 4 billion years to perfect the spiders we see today. It follows thusly that one would be unnecessarily stubborn/proud not to at least observe, analyse and learn from the way spiders are.

Anatomy of a spider, for study before deciding on the anatomy of a robot.

What's in a spider anyways?

So I decided  to go all in, and find the perfect spider species to use as a template for the design of the robot. I ended up with the cobalt blue tarantula as the best  candidate for the following reasons:

• It is strikingly beautiful both in color and proportions. I firmly believe that aesthetics play a bigger role in design than merely pleasing one's eye.
• It is not too specialized. Many spiders have specialized into niche markets that make them unfit as a model to a "general purpose" robot. It is a solitary hunter and so is my robot.
• It has an well balanced anatomy that would be relatively easy to replicate.
• It has a temper similar to that which I want to give the robot (shy but aggressive).