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What stuff are you making?
Lemming
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This thread is for things you are making or want to make. I'm copying it from the Christmas forum because I posted it right as it was on its way out :V
Earlier I was messing around with a small motor I found in my basement, just a small hobby one, I think it used to be in some tiny car thing. Anyway I was getting frustrated because I was trying to get it to move at different speeds depending on how much current I gave it, but it was pretty much an either on or off dealie, with not enough current it wouldn't move, with enough it moved at max speed. I did some more research and it looks like for doing torque control (which is what I want to do) stepper motors work better, especially at low speeds, and the application I'm interested in is either zero or low speeds, so that's neat.
I bought an arduino online last night, which is basically a fancy microcontroller that has a pretty large homebrew/open source community so it's easy to use, so now I'm looking up how to interface it with a stepper motor so I can control it directly. Apparently there are "shields" you can buy, which is a fancy way of saying something you can plug the arduino into and you can do everything you want to just from the software, but I'd like to make my own.
I'm also taking a mechatronics course next semester, and the point is to make a sumo wrestling robot that pushes other robots out of a ring. I don't really care about the autonomous part but the rest of making robots is cool and I hope to learn a lot from it.
The point of all this is something I've been thinking about doing for a while, which is making a robotic hand (or finger to start out with) that connects to a force-feedback glove you could wear, so you can control it directly. I'm a junior mechanical engineer right now, so I think that's going to be my senior project, and I'd like to get working on it sooner to see how feasible it would be to actually do. The cool thing I'm thinking about doing is that the robot hand wouldn't need any sensors; if you did the control right on the stepper motors, and had potentiometers that were on the joints, you could determine all the forces on the hand, and relate that back to the gloved hand, and since you have all the torques, the system is totally defined, so you don't need any messy force sensors or anything.
What cool stuff are you guys doing?
Edit: A super neat site for doing stuff is instructables: http://www.instructables.com/
There are guides for making all kinds of stuff, including a fusion reactor. Seriously. http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-A-Fusion-Reactor/
Earlier I was messing around with a small motor I found in my basement, just a small hobby one, I think it used to be in some tiny car thing. Anyway I was getting frustrated because I was trying to get it to move at different speeds depending on how much current I gave it, but it was pretty much an either on or off dealie, with not enough current it wouldn't move, with enough it moved at max speed. I did some more research and it looks like for doing torque control (which is what I want to do) stepper motors work better, especially at low speeds, and the application I'm interested in is either zero or low speeds, so that's neat.
I bought an arduino online last night, which is basically a fancy microcontroller that has a pretty large homebrew/open source community so it's easy to use, so now I'm looking up how to interface it with a stepper motor so I can control it directly. Apparently there are "shields" you can buy, which is a fancy way of saying something you can plug the arduino into and you can do everything you want to just from the software, but I'd like to make my own.
I'm also taking a mechatronics course next semester, and the point is to make a sumo wrestling robot that pushes other robots out of a ring. I don't really care about the autonomous part but the rest of making robots is cool and I hope to learn a lot from it.
The point of all this is something I've been thinking about doing for a while, which is making a robotic hand (or finger to start out with) that connects to a force-feedback glove you could wear, so you can control it directly. I'm a junior mechanical engineer right now, so I think that's going to be my senior project, and I'd like to get working on it sooner to see how feasible it would be to actually do. The cool thing I'm thinking about doing is that the robot hand wouldn't need any sensors; if you did the control right on the stepper motors, and had potentiometers that were on the joints, you could determine all the forces on the hand, and relate that back to the gloved hand, and since you have all the torques, the system is totally defined, so you don't need any messy force sensors or anything.
What cool stuff are you guys doing?
Edit: A super neat site for doing stuff is instructables: http://www.instructables.com/
There are guides for making all kinds of stuff, including a fusion reactor. Seriously. http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-A-Fusion-Reactor/
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Instructibles
How-to guides to making your wildest dreams come true.
Also, paper beads and stuff.
I should probably just put this in the op
It seems pretty easy and looks like a unique decorating idea.
With wood and nails and screws and hammers and saws and powertools and shit.
What what.
I've been doing construction work every summer for the past... five years. I totally empathize, that shit sucks.
When building this thing we could be more like, saw off here. HAMMER SEVERAL TIMES HERE! Voila 10% of a wall.
So it was pretty fun, if I had to do it all over again next summer it would probably have lost its charm though.
Much of the stuff here I helped design and build (although I didn't do any of the machining myself).
What is it? A vacuum chamber? What's it for?
Edit: I see the word "beam" I can only assume lasers are involved.
Coolest tool ever? Yes, I think so.
I love using these. I look for excuses to use these instead of hammer drills and Tapcons.
Yeah it's a open vacuum chamber (the top portion is off). It's primarily for shooting big lasers at things and seeing what happens. There's quite a neat 6-axis stage inside as well. Pretty small vacuum chamber really for that sort of thing, they can go up to 10m in diameter.
Edit: You guys make me feel inferior.
How do I get your job?
PS2
FF X replay
PS3
God of War 1&2 HD
Rachet and Clank Future
MGS 4
Prince of Persia
360
Bayonetta
Fable 3
DS
FF: 4 heroes of light
Start doing a PhD in Plasma Physics.
Pass.
This is the very limit of my craftyness. Except for the type of craft that involves lies and theft.
Mind blown.
I am definitely what could be classified as a "maker" though I would usually use the term "production artist" or "fabricator" depending on the situation. I just like to make stuff.
I am an avid knitter and I have a lot of experience teaching it.
I also teach mold making and casting for sculptors at my day job so I know a good bit about that as well if people have questions.
at this exact moment, I am knitting a hat for a coworker... the only infotmation i have been given is "burgundy" so I hope what I've got will suffice.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
And now might consider starting on a new blanket for the new bed.
But I don't think that's going to happen.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
What kind of molds? A few summers ago some of my friends and I made a small foundry for melting aluminum in my backyard. I'd like to start that up again if I have time over the summer, casting stuff in sand with aluminum is pretty awesome.
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
The best build order is zealots -> carriers, but don't tell anyone my secret
Personally, I've been getting involved in wood shaping. I want to eventually get good enough to make an instrument.
SteamID: devCharles
twitter: https://twitter.com/charlesewise
I do consulting for all sorts of moldmaking, and at my job we sell foundry waxes and stuff for "burn-out" moldmaking.
most of my personal mold making is silicone rubber molds from sculpts I've done in clay or Castilene Wax, and then I cast in urethane resin. I also do some jewelry in the same fashion-- I collect vintage lucite rings and re-cast them in different colors.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
this sounds like a cool project. how far along are you with it?
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
As it stands now, I probably have half the first book done in my notes, and most of the game's mechanics I am happy with.
What does that mean? A way of trying to get a program to understand questions?
If we're including stuff like that then I've made an electrical sensor for saccharides. It is very expensive to produce and has bugger all sensitivity.
Basically, yeah, a way to get a program to understand the type of question (like, are you asking about a person, a place, a date, etc.). I've also made a program to understand the subject of questions. Once I combine them, I'll have a complete question understanding system.
Then I'll be one step closer to my ultimate goal of taking over the world.
How did you make it and how did it work? I assume you wouldn't just lick things.
Wow, that sounds really cool. Can you explain in retard terms how it works? Could you apply something like that to commands?
My preferred method is designing rules that represent the syntactic structure of queries of each type. My key innovation is in parallel, designing a hierarchy of language that allows me to mathematically measure and compare words and sentences. When I use it for question type classification, it becomes possible to compare queries and rules and to match queries to rules that are more similar, rather than look for exact matches like in other systems. So my system works well with only 14 rules, instead of literally hundreds in systems that need to find exact matches. I can also use it to learn new rules by finding the similar parts of different queries of a same type.
EDIT: You could apply it to commands I guess, but my focus is really on plain English questions of the type a human would ask to another human. I want the computer to understand English like a normal person would.
No, as it's an electrical sensor. And tongues are not electronic devices.
So:
I work on a fairly novel semiconductor rather than silicon. My device also didn't have a gate, instead I stuck down some long carbon chains with a terminal set of groups that interact strongly with monosaccharides. So in the presence of sugar, the charge distribution along the molecule changes which is effectively a voltage change at the gate contact, so you see a change in the current between source and gate.
It took me over three years to do that.
That sounds pretty neat. If I understand you right, you're saying that you have rules that define the structure of common questions, and then break down a question asked into what types of questions it's similar to, and then go from there.
So then if I asked the question "Why is the sky blue?" how would that get "understood" by the machine? Like what kind of data would that get turned into?
Hey man, tongues are totally electronic devices! It also sounds like they work similar to the way you made your thingy; when the taste buds come into contact with certain compounds, it induces a charge in a neuron which causes it to spike, and depending on what combinations of taste buds fire and how much of a certain type fire you get taste, and it sounds like your method is that, when in the presence of sufficient monosaccharides, then the gate opens and charge runs through. To increase the sensitivity, could you do something like make it take only a small amount of molecules to cause the gate to open, then put a bunch of gates in the solution, then depending on how many gates open you know roughly what the concentration must be? This would probably only work for very low concentrations, though.