#robotics Logs

Mar 31 2012

00:34 rue_bed cause people need something to sell that they wont lose much money on when learning how to sell on ebay
00:34 rue_bed I did sell a stupid little screw
00:35 katsmeow-afk there's maybe 20 of them
00:38 katsmeow-afk TB6560AHQ TB6560 IC for CNC Stepper Step Driver Control...
00:38 katsmeow-afk $0.01 , free s&h
00:40 katsmeow-afk http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=TB6560AHQ&_sacat=92074&_odkw=&_osacat=92074&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313
00:44 katsmeow-afk qty 30 ; 2N4401 40v 500ma npn transistor ; $1.79 free s&h
01:42 Gevallen_Engel hello :)
01:54 Gevallen_Engel hm
02:03 katsmeow-afk http://i.imgur.com/Iou1c.jpg
02:04 Gevallen_Engel hiya katsmeow-afk
02:06 katsmeow-afk hi Gevallen
02:06 Gevallen_Engel I ended up figuring out what that stepper controller was, still havent gotten it working though
02:06 Gevallen_Engel http://www.naic.edu/~phil/td/PK2200UM.pdf
02:08 katsmeow-afk my brains is off
02:09 Gevallen_Engel hehe
02:21 katsmeow-afk wth?! : http://i.imgur.com/idOMG.gif
06:29 Yukinohana Hi
06:52 sw0rdfish Hey
06:58 Steffanx Heyo
06:59 sw0rdfish how's it goin Steffanx
06:59 Steffanx Fine.. there?
06:59 sw0rdfish not bad :)
06:59 sw0rdfish think I chose line-following-robot to be my first project :)
06:59 Steffanx Not bad is good enough
07:00 Steffanx That was my first project too
07:00 Steffanx (and my last one)
07:01 moriarty sw0rdfish, for university or?
07:01 sw0rdfish nah
07:01 Steffanx Hobby bobby project
07:01 sw0rdfish lmfao Steffanx your last one
07:01 moriarty that's nice :-)
07:01 sw0rdfish well also not like that Steffanx
07:01 sw0rdfish I am preparing for college
07:01 Steffanx Yeah, it was like ~5 years ago :P
07:01 sw0rdfish learning C and robotics
07:06 moriarty sw0rdfish, could try inductively powered line-following-robot :)
07:06 sw0rdfish moriarty, will look that up, thanks :)
07:06 sw0rdfish and I love the nickname btw
07:06 sw0rdfish you SHERLOCK fan :D
07:07 Steffanx Then all you need is that wire.. no need for a visual line anymore
07:19 Yukinohana Can I have some question?
07:20 sw0rdfish just ask Yukinohana
07:20 Yukinohana If I'm a beginner, how can I start?
07:21 sw0rdfish lol I'm a beginner too
07:21 sw0rdfish I chose to make a line-following-robot.
07:21 Yukinohana lol :) I would like to build something for the robotwar
07:28 Yukinohana Of course what I really would like to build finally is one of the most difficult one. (I think)
07:49 saschi hi
07:57 sw0rdfish hey
10:50 SolarNRG Hi guys
10:52 Steffann lo
10:52 rue_house katsmeow-afk, eek, they have the same thing as those chieep
10:57 rue_house gev has a pretty overkill stepper controller
11:03 SolarNRG Cal I see Gevs stepper controller rue?
11:03 SolarNRG I have some big steppers I'd like to control on a budget, not for CNC, but just to rotate my skydish
11:41 rue_house !thislog
11:41 tobbor This one: http://rueshouse.dyndns.org:82/~ircjunk/irclogs/html/%23robotics-2012-03-31.html
11:41 rue_house it dosn't drive them, just a cpu
11:43 SolarNRG Sorry rue, I'm forbidden from seeing that
11:45 rue_house haha me too!
11:45 e_house f
11:45 rue_house fixed :)
11:47 SolarNRG clap clap clap
12:05 katsmeow-afk AACKK!
12:20 katsmeow-afk http://www.ebay.com/sch/Business-Industrial-/12576/i.html?Bandwidth=100MHz%2520%252D%2520349MHz&LH_ItemCondition=1000&LH_Price=250..400%40c&_nkw=oscilloscope+-usb&_trkparms=65%253A1%257C66%253A3%257C39%253A1&rt=nc&_dmpt=BI_Oscilloscopes&_sticky=1&_sop=15&_sc=1
12:21 katsmeow-afk last year, the adc chips in those cost more than the entire oscopes do now
14:46 rue_house and the times, they are a chaaaanging
14:47 SolarNRG Peltier units are now cheap enough for the common man to afford to make their own handheld 5watt supercool blue lasers
14:48 SolarNRG If I had the cash, I'd mill a block of pure silver as my laser heat conductor and pack it with hi efficient water cooled peltiers
14:48 SolarNRG I'd put the water pack at the front and the batteries at the back with a heatsink on the waterpack
14:49 SolarNRG I'd use lithium polymer batteries and the laser would be the size of a 6 D cell maglite
14:49 rue_house ok I' off to work! bbl
14:51 theBear SolarNRG, you ain't real old yet eh ?
14:56 SolarNRG 27, I estimate I am about halfway through my life as I am a smoker
16:23 rue_house the handy thing about a checkers board is its just as wide as a byte of data
16:23 rue_house matter a fact a whole board fits into a long long
16:23 rue_house ....almost
16:30 rue_house Tom_L, we made good progress today
16:30 rue_house the robot arm has a new drive motor
16:30 rue_house and the kid with no focus managed to assemble a transistor bistable led flasher
16:30 rue_house took him 2 hours but thats better than usual
16:33 katsmeow-afk was he happy he did that?
16:33 katsmeow-afk did he know why it does what it does?
16:34 rue_house there was a brief impression of a sense of accomplishment that briefly passed over his face, then he went back to finding videos on youtube
16:34 katsmeow-afk oh
16:34 tsmeow-afk offers condole
16:34 rue_house he asked if we were gonna cut a pcb for it next class, I said yes
16:35 rue_house so I gotta do that
16:37 rue_house kat
16:37 rue_house checkers
16:37 katsmeow-afk chess
16:37 rue_house the wikipedia says there are 32 obtainable positions
16:38 rue_house but it also says kinged peices can alo move forwards and back
16:38 rue_house which increases th obtainable positions to 64
16:38 rue_house I'm confused
16:38 katsmeow-afk i don't se why it increses the position count
16:38 rue_house and it dosn't say if there is a limit on the nuber of crowned peices
16:39 rue_house if you can go forward and back, and diagonal then on an 8x8 board there are 64 obtainable positions
16:39 katsmeow-afk well,,, you can't go diagonal unless you're jumping
16:39 katsmeow-afk so the square you are junmping is not obtainable
16:40 katsmeow-afk by that piece
16:40 rue_house 'A simple move involves sliding a piece one space diagonally forwards to an adjacent unoccupied dark square.'
16:40 katsmeow-afk umm, different checkers than i know
16:41 rue_house http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_draughts
16:42 rue_house http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_checkers
16:42 rue_house ah
16:43 rue_house I need to focus on something fun
16:45 rue_house if it weren't raining I'd put the tent back togethor
16:45 rue_house but I dont feel like getting wet and I dont have a larger tent I can make it under
16:47 katsmeow-afk i wish to do things too, but my back is killing me
16:47 rue_house hmm
16:47 rue_house I'd suggest assembling a nice little 6502 system or soemthing but if you dont have any firmware happening then you dont get much out of it
16:48 katsmeow-afk i have no firmware?
16:48 rue_house to run on a little 6502 system
16:48 rue_house do you?
16:49 katsmeow-afk if the olds floppies work, i have lots of homemade machine code to run on it
16:49 tsmeow-afk points to the VIC20 and C64 st
16:52 rue_house I wonder if google will buy the wikipedia
16:52 tsmeow-afk doe
16:53 rue_house aha
16:53 rue_house I could clean the deck, clean the livingroom, clean the kitchen, clean the back livingroom, clean the miscelanious little room that we dont know what was for, ....
16:54 katsmeow-afk if you clean the room you don't know what's for, how do you know it wasn't for to be an example of a dirty room?
18:28 SolarNRG Good evening
19:02 sw0rdfish good evening SolarNRG :)
19:02 sw0rdfish more like good morning here :)
19:36 SolarNRG beddy byes for snoozey pies
21:12 katsmeow-afk snoozey pies?
21:13 duckinator hi kat
21:13 katsmeow-afk heys duck!
21:13 duckinator before you ask, no clue what they were referring to :D
21:13 katsmeow-afk oh
21:14 katsmeow-afk so how are you lately? and would you mind too much coming over and put a pizza in the nukebox for me? i'll share with you
21:15 katsmeow-afk <cough>
21:16 katsmeow-afk ok then, i'll go do it mself, and not share
21:16 duckinator pretty good, now that i recovered most of what was lost when my HDD suffered a head-crashy death. and i wouldn't mind, except for the whole "half a country a way" (iirc) deal. you haven't made a robot to do that yet? :P
21:17 duckinator i mean come on now, everyone needs a pizza-cooking robot. but no, i sadly don't have one :(
21:26 katsmeow-afk i need robots, badly, yeas
21:26 katsmeow-afk several would be handy
21:26 m_itx gives katsmeow-afk all of
21:27 katsmeow-afk a beefy wide outdoor carrier for up to 1000lbs, a 3ft wide indoor-outdoor one for ~400 lbs, a tree climber-pruner, and a tall one with arms and paws to go grocery shopping (at least when the store is infested with humans)
21:28 katsmeow-afk the beefy one needs to be 3-wheel for always stability, with one wheel being 360degree steerable
21:28 katsmeow-afk the 3ft one, maybe 4ft long, being all weeh drive and all wheel steerable, so it can mow, can follow me around, and can carry the tall robot into the store
21:29 katsmeow-afk all i want are the basics, you see
21:31 katsmeow-afk doesn't everyone need those robots?
21:31 katsmeow-afk the beefy one to carry firewood, tow the car or trailer around, plow snow, plow the garden, etc
21:31 katsmeow-afk right?
21:32 katsmeow-afk put a boom on it and you have a steerable crane hoist to take up the weight of a large jackhammer, right?
21:32 katsmeow-afk anyone?
21:33 m_itx takes all his whimpy little bots and goes
21:34 katsmeow-afk WAIT!
21:34 katsmeow-afk have one fetch me some milk, please?
21:34 katsmeow-afk and park one under the house with a camera, to look for rodents
21:36 katsmeow-afk park one under the truck, see if that damned possum us up in the frame eating the rubber hoses again
21:36 duckinator alternatively: have one sit under the truck, whacking all possums on the nose when it sees them
21:36 tsmeow-afk ponders an arrangement where Tom can use her beefy bot and she can use his wimpy
21:37 katsmeow-afk whack on nose with a hollowpoint, maybe
21:38 katsmeow-afk those things can be mean when they don't get their way, and they can trash a vehicle
21:38 katsmeow-afk i have yet to have driveshaft boots last more than 6 months out here
21:41 Rayston looking for a robotics platform that is cheapish, relatively extensible, good for newbies, and good starter kit available, a good community around it would be good too, I already have an Arduino Uno so one that used that would be good something like the boebot but for arduino, any suggestions?
21:41 duckinator Rayston: buy a $15 RC car, and go to town :D
21:41 tsmeow-afk doesn't know premade robots, and sits down qui
21:42 Rayston have considered that route
21:42 katsmeow-afk yeas, with the RC part, you can drive it to heck and keep all the pricey electronics on your desktop
21:44 duckinator hmm, i still have a BASIC Stamp 2 and some old RC cars laying around somewhere...maybe i'll get an XP install on my old desktop that actually has a serial port
21:44 katsmeow-afk why do you need xp if you have a basic stamp? just to program it? right, duh
21:45 katsmeow-afk i need that pizza, and the nukebox just told me it was done
21:45 sw0rdfish nukebox?
21:45 sw0rdfish oh and hi there everyone :D
21:45 katsmeow-afk microwave
21:45 duckinator yea. only my little old 700MHz Pentium 3 both works and has a serial port, and i don't believe it could handle Vista/7 :P
21:46 katsmeow-afk i feel for it, i can't handle vista/7 either
21:46 duckinator and silly BASIC Stamp2 software requires Windows, so would have to be XP or older i think
21:46 sw0rdfish hmmmm
21:47 Rayston anyone messed with boebot? http://www.parallax.com/go/boebot or the start here robot http://letsmakerobots.com/start
21:47 duckinator unless i missed a working alternative to the crapfest Parallax calls an IDE...
21:48 duckinator Rayston: i've used boebot in a highschool class...they're very pricey -- or were last i looked
21:49 Rayston yeah, they are kinda pricey
21:50 Tom_itx duck i thought you got an avr
21:50 Rayston duckinator : http://apsdev.com/stampdock/ not that I know anything about BASIC stamps, but is that what you might be looking for?
21:51 duckinator Tom_itx: i did, and i got the programmer from you. never could convince it to play nice :\
21:52 duckinator i fried like 3 AVRs trying to get a blinking LED, heh
21:52 katsmeow-afk ouch
21:54 Tom_itx how did you manage that?
21:54 duckinator not quite sure
21:56 duckinator but yea, i've not even done anything with that BASIC Stamp in the 7 or so (iirc, anyway) years since i got it
21:58 Tom_itx kat, is tiggr in c?
21:59 katsmeow-afk mirc
21:59 katsmeow-afk when humans cared abut here, her higher functions were in Euphoria
22:00 katsmeow-afk i deleted, erased, over a megabyte of code because smart bots are not wanted
22:00 katsmeow-afk i lobotomised her
22:01 Tom_itx i think i've given up on that venture
22:04 katsmeow-afk i wish someone would find a way to make it acceptable, useable, useful
22:05 katsmeow-afk people use Siri, and Google, and Wolfram, but not intelligence someone hasn't told them is great
22:07 duckinator Rayston: that's just for drawing stuff... i need a way to program it, and i only know of parallax's software for doing that
22:08 Rayston ahh
22:09 duckinator katsmeow-afk: you'll note that your bot responds in a one->many manner (even if it's only targeting a single person, many get it) -- a broadcast, in a way -- whereas the things you listed are generally one->one. perhaps it was not so much that it was too smart, but just that people weren't fond it the fact that it answering something relevant to a single person could disrupt multiple conversations?
22:09 duckinator of the fact*
22:11 duckinator from what i've seen, it's verbose. in many cases that's good, because you get all the detail you could ever want, but in irc channels with more than a handful of people it could get to be a bit much.
22:12 katsmeow-afk duck, who asked Tiggr to respond in pm to the human asking? no one
22:12 katsmeow-afk i did shut down *asking* in pm, because so many people were engaging in porn with her
22:12 Tom_itx that one i messed with gave options for response
22:13 Tom_itx in channel, pm or as a notice
22:13 Tom_itx etc
22:13 katsmeow-afk Tiggr has those options
22:14 katsmeow-afk they can be set by channel operators who log into her, or they can be set so someon can say "tell me _____" to get a pm
22:14 katsmeow-afk Tiggr had ~136 options that ops could set
22:15 Tom_itx i never learned how to set the options
22:15 katsmeow-afk and a user interface panel written in mirc
22:15 Tom_itx it had channel and user options
22:15 katsmeow-afk Tiggr treated every channel differently, and could treat any known user differently
22:16 Tom_itx i thought it would be something i could play with and learn something new
22:16 Tom_itx but i don't think i'll persue it
22:16 home sigh
22:16 home I am ashamed to be a programmer....
22:16 katsmeow-afk ?
22:26 Gevallen_Engel ell
22:26 Gevallen_Engel o
22:28 katsmeow-afk Tom, maybe what we need is a sheltered place for bot/Ai development, where mean spirited comments, non-contributors, etc, are kickbanned
22:29 katsmeow-afk i am just tossing out some ideas
22:29 katsmeow-afk a place where it's not OS-specific, there's no specific language tyranny, etc
22:30 duckinator sounds like a great idea to me
22:30 Tom_itx my motivation was that tobbor seems a bit broken and could be more useful
22:30 katsmeow-afk my motivation was all bots are idiots, and shouldn't be
22:31 katsmeow-afk i have not seen tobbor's code, but i think he is less broken, and just not built to do more
22:32 katsmeow-afk i could be wrong..................................... rue?
22:33 katsmeow-afk but i don't want a Ai channel with a dozen, or 50 idle nicks
22:33 katsmeow-afk there's 59 nicks in here
22:33 katsmeow-afk counting chanserv and lorez
22:34 katsmeow-afk ;-)
22:34 Gevallen_Engel :x
22:34 duckinator katsmeow-afk: well i've been trying to get into AI stuff for a while (just not quite sure what to actually make it do...), so you'd have at least one non-idle person :P
22:35 katsmeow-afk you're at Tom's level, you two might be good together
22:35 katsmeow-afk just getting some reliable form of interaction is a start
22:35 katsmeow-afk which is what Tom was doing, and logging the interaction
22:36 katsmeow-afk i was *doing* more 20 yrs ago, even before i had a wintel pc
22:37 katsmeow-afk Tom?
22:37 katsmeow-afk we need a channel name
22:39 katsmeow-afk i have a feeling this fell apart 10 minutes ago and has no chance of starting
22:40 tsmeow-afk s
22:40 duckinator i'm not sure i want to go with NLP, though...that's neat and all, but i'm more curious about somehow getting it to actually do something. my last attempt was trying to make something pipe it's i/o from/to to a `telnet irc.freenode.net 6667`, give it a list of possible responses, and have it "succeeded" if it got a 001 numeric from the ircd -- i got it to the point of sending NAME and then flood out
22:40 duckinator immediately (instead of sending USER).
22:40 duckinator wow that was longer than i thought
22:40 katsmeow-afk shit duck, type shorter lines so they show up faster
22:40 duckinator sorry :P
22:41 katsmeow-afk most bots do not use any language parsing at all,
22:41 katsmeow-afk they wouldn't know a "word" unless you hardcoded it
22:41 katsmeow-afk Tiggr, however, has a huge multilanguage db to look words up in
22:42 katsmeow-afk not that she can, after that lobotomy
22:43 katsmeow-afk what did we, or i, do wrong that ran Tom off?
22:44 katsmeow-afk is ANYONE here?
22:44 duckinator i am, but i was getting a drink when you asked :P
22:44 katsmeow-afk o
22:46 Gevallen_Engel I am :x
22:46 katsmeow-afk well, we chewed up 35 minuted, and got nothing done
22:47 katsmeow-afk i don't mean to be a nazi about it all, but we have not even joined a common channel to do any work
22:47 katsmeow-afk Tom LEFT
22:48 katsmeow-afk i feel i am wasting energy pulling people along already, that don't want to be moved
22:48 duckinator hang on just a sec
22:48 katsmeow-afk right
22:57 m_itx goes to bed.. no reason of the cha
22:58 katsmeow-afk TOM!!
22:58 katsmeow-afk wait?
22:58 katsmeow-afk you got no invite?
22:59 katsmeow-afk hello?
23:00 duckinator kat, it's ok. i sent him a PM in case he missed it...i think he's one of those strange people who actually leave when they say they do ;P
23:00 katsmeow-afk k
23:01 katsmeow-afk i dunno about those people, they say bye, and then leave with no warning
23:05 duckinator rue_shop rue_house rue_shop: which one of your personalities is lurking currently? :P