#robotics Logs
Jul 14 2012
#robotics Calendar
00:01 katsmeow-afk http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/project-angstrom-award.html
00:03 katsmeow-afk http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/profile-roy-1128.html
00:04 furrywolf wow, quick response. "An extrusion this size, with a pin in the die, will require a precision press. This drives the cost of the extrusion up by a factor of 3 and make it economically not viable / competitive with what's on the market."
00:05 katsmeow-afk it can't be any more precise than any other press
00:06 theBear oooh, working natural language forklift is kinda cool
00:07 rue_shop hmm I dont have a box for encoder-steppers yet
00:07 katsmeow-afk wow, this is one heck of a record : http://img.mit.edu/newsoffice/images/article_images/20110425124439-1.jpg
00:08 tsmeow-afk ponders playing that on a regular record pl
00:10 katsmeow-afk furry, mud is going to be a big problem down at the creek
00:10 furrywolf build a settling pond of some kind?
00:10 katsmeow-afk i haveto move the intake to a bigger pool with a rock bottom, meaning there's going to be 4 or 5 ft of suction lift
00:11 katsmeow-afk there's no place to build anything where i am getting water now
00:11 katsmeow-afk there's two places much wider and deeper 30-50ft further down towards where i planned on getting water 20 years ago
00:12 katsmeow-afk and solid one-piece rock bottoms
00:12 katsmeow-afk like 6ft across, 4 inches deep, a foot wide
00:13 katsmeow-afk places scoured clean with every big rain
00:14 katsmeow-afk there may be only a series of springs in 2ft deep rock holes now, but if a hurricane hits the creek gets 4ft deep in places and 15-20ft wide
00:14 katsmeow-afk lots of stuff gets moved around
00:14 furrywolf heh
00:16 katsmeow-afk anyhow, 3 days of pumping, the 2000gal pool-tank is slightly overfilled, and there's plenty more water in the creek (at pumping rates of 1 gal/minute)
00:16 katsmeow-afk the rains were had made no difference in the flow rate
00:17 katsmeow-afk a mess of counties are declared drought disaster zones, for state and federal aid, including this county
00:18 furrywolf I only pull about 2-1gpm (depending on how long I've been pumping... starts around 2gpm, slowly drops to a continuous 1gpm after 12 hours or so of continuous pumping) from my well, with tanks to supply the demand.
00:18 katsmeow-afk the recycling center has a 10ft dia cow watering tub, but i think i am asking for disease issues if i get it
00:18 furrywolf dump a bottle of bleach in it, wash it, put a piece of opaque plastic over it as a lid.
00:19 katsmeow-afk plus going and getting it, patching it, unloadingit here, putting it into place, and i have a seriously bad back
00:19 katsmeow-afk it's heavy steel, old fashioned heavy
00:20 furrywolf heh
00:20 furrywolf they had an above ground pool at the scrapyard here a while ago... amazed me how thin the aluminum walls were.
00:20 katsmeow-afk i wouldn't mind having it, if i know i wouldn't catch anything from it, and had help moving it
00:20 furrywolf since it's all under tension and nothing else, it was just a big sheet of thin aluminum.
00:21 katsmeow-afk prolly holds over 600 gallons, be a place to raise fish
00:22 katsmeow-afk i wish i could use my proeprty again,, the pond was to hold something like 27,000 gallons
00:23 katsmeow-afk the dam is only short by a good dumptruck load, then another one or two to do leveling around the backside
00:23 katsmeow-afk but it annoys the dogs for me to be on my proeprty, and that's mental cruelty to animals
00:25 katsmeow-afk take about 5 days to fill it after a hurricane or tropical storm, last me 9 months at 100 gallons/day draw , even if i never added any more water to it the whole 9 months
00:25 katsmeow-afk 9 months is 2 grow cycles int he garden
00:26 katsmeow-afk the rest of the year is "winter"
00:26 katsmeow-afk that was the plan
00:28 katsmeow-afk but the pond would never get low, not when i can add 700 gal/day with a 1 gal/min pump
00:28 furrywolf I can fill my 1500gal tank in, at a guess, 18 hours.
00:29 tsmeow-afk
00:29 furrywolf with the little shurflo pumps I'm using for the well.
00:29 katsmeow-afk i have a lot of back pressure down there, from gravity going up the mountain
00:29 furrywolf I don't know how fast I can pump the well... after 12 hours at 1-2gpm, it stabilizes pretty far down.
00:30 furrywolf why I haven't gotten larger pumps. I suspect that if I did, I'd just pump the well dry.
00:30 tsmeow-afk
00:30 furrywolf since it takes so long for the flow to drop, the problem is overall permeability of the soil, not poor flow into the well from the soil.
00:31 furrywolf after 12 hours, it's dried out the surrounding soil
00:31 furrywolf well, somewhat dried out - the level is stable, and it'll pump at that level for days straight.
00:31 tsmeow-afk
00:33 katsmeow-afk since the lil cherphloe will pull an awesome vaccuumm, am i really going to lose that much with a 5ft primed suction lift?
00:34 theBear i thought 5ft primed suction lift was a porno manouvere
00:34 katsmeow-afk how high do you haveto lift the water out of your well at most?
00:34 furrywolf cherphloe?
00:34 katsmeow-afk dunno, i don't watch porn
00:34 katsmeow-afk it's as valid a spelling of sureflow as shurflo is
00:35 furrywolf lol
00:35 theBear aww, not even a smile :(
00:35 furrywolf you won't lose much with only 5ft of suction
00:35 katsmeow-afk ok
00:35 furrywolf my well is only 30ft deep. level starts out about 10 feet below the ground, drops to 20ft below the ground after a day of pumping at 1-2gpm.
00:36 katsmeow-afk oh, then i am not worried anymore
00:36 furrywolf pumps are located about 2ft over ground level, as they're in the pump shed, which is over by the tanks, not by the well.
00:37 katsmeow-afk i figure horizontal distance doesn't matter at all if the pipe is big enough
00:37 katsmeow-afk for a gallon/min, 3/4 pipe is plenty
00:38 furrywolf I used 1/2" poly, because it's cheap. heh.
00:38 katsmeow-afk i may use 1 1/2 as the suction tho, so i can maybe put the 1/2 hp pump down there beside the cherphole sometimes
00:38 furrywolf I monitor the water level with a vacuum gauge at the pumps, which also shows how much loss I'm getting in the suction piping, by comparing pump running to pump off.
00:39 katsmeow-afk what's it say?
00:39 furrywolf numbers in inhg, which are roughly fth20. :)
00:40 katsmeow-afk yeas, another thing i need to build is a low-water cutoff that logs, rocks, deer, dogs, frogs, possums, etc can't mess up,, just to avoid the pump sucking air and losing prime
00:42 rue_shop its a custom motor, there isn't rating data for it
00:42 katsmeow-afk hmm, if i put a check valve at the suctcion side of the pump to release pipe pressure, i canuse a valve and feed some of that gravity pressure water int he pipe into the suction pipe down at the foot, and reestablish prime n about 2 sec
00:42 rue_shop I have to phone them and try my luck
00:42 furrywolf as long as there's no pressure on the output, it should reprime from 5ft on its own.
00:43 katsmeow-afk there's gobs of pressure on the output at all times
00:43 furrywolf without needing to add water to the intake
00:43 furrywolf I mean, if you put a check valve on the output, and a vent valve to release the pressure.
00:43 rue_shop I also got 2 type K thermocouples out of it
00:43 rue_shop with LONG leads }:)
00:43 katsmeow-afk kool
00:44 rue_shop now I can clean up the toaster oven
00:45 katsmeow-afk heh, a valve on the pressure side canbe used to keep varmints away too
00:46 katsmeow-afk i gotta go get dead pine logs tomorrow morning, if i don't he'll set them on fire and i'll haveto breathe them
00:47 furrywolf I have two of the shurflo pumps plumbed in series for the well pump, as that way it primes even if the well is 20ft down.
00:47 furrywolf they'll prime 10-15ft normally
00:48 katsmeow-afk k
00:49 furrywolf however, they will _not_ prime against backpressure.
00:49 katsmeow-afk i have noticed that
00:50 furrywolf that's 10-15ft total, intake suction + output pressure... so if it has even just 5psi on the output side, you just lost your whole priming ability.
00:50 rue_mohr bar code scanner
00:50 rue_mohr I think
00:50 rue_mohr LHA2127RR1S-201
00:50 rue_mohr FC-054-01021
00:50 rue_mohr MADE IN JAPAN
00:51 katsmeow-afk how to automagically determine the highside pressure unloader valve must be opened
00:51 rue_mohr washing macine valve
00:51 rue_mohr swtich
00:51 katsmeow-afk that just closes on like 1.2psi
00:52 katsmeow-afk there's ~30psi on the line anyhow
00:52 furrywolf katsmeow-afk: hrmm... a vacuum switch on the suction side. if no suction, pump must not be primed, open the unloader valve?
00:52 rue_mohr put in a bigger spring
00:52 katsmeow-afk now if i had a vac switch
00:52 rue_mohr http://hackaday.com/2012/07/13/sorting-resistors-with-speech-recognition/
00:53 furrywolf or if you just left a small bleeder valve open on the pressure side, before the check valve, it wouldn't have any backpressure until it was pumping.
00:53 rue_mohr capacitors are just wrong
00:54 katsmeow-afk unless it lost prime as it was pumping
00:55 furrywolf then the check valve closes, the bleeder valve bleeds off any pressure between the check and pump, then there's no backpressure, and it tries repriming. if it's pumping air, it'll just keep pumping air out the bleeder until it gets filled with water again.
00:56 rue_mohr sweeet
00:56 rue_mohr have datasheet
00:56 katsmeow-afk haveto be a small bleeder , considering i am pumping 1/2 gal/minute
00:57 furrywolf a small valve just cracked open would work, and be easy to clean when it clogs, which it will.
00:57 furrywolf you could also monitor pump current, and use that to open a solenoid valve. the current drops when it loses prime.
00:58 katsmeow-afk might be better to just open a small valve if the high side pressure tween the pump and check valve is below some value, and when the pump turns off
00:58 katsmeow-afk yeas
00:58 furrywolf once it loses prime, it pretty much runs unloaded. speed goes up, current drops.
00:58 tsmeow-afk has heard
00:59 furrywolf a current sensor, a timer, and a solenoid valve... if current is too low, open the valve for a minute, then close the valve.
00:59 furrywolf if current is still low ten seconds later, open valve for a minute...
01:00 furrywolf at least, unlike a regular well pump, they're not damaged by running dry. they'll run dry all day with no damage at all.
01:00 katsmeow-afk hmm,, this is all presuming the pipe up the mountain didn't go dry, because if it is, there's no back pressure
01:01 furrywolf hence the extra wait ten seconds in my above algorithm - some time to get water in the pipe.
01:01 katsmeow-afk 10 sec is 1/10 of a gallon
01:02 furrywolf adjust for however long it actually takes. heh.
01:02 furrywolf the current goes up a lot just having water in the pump, due to friction losses in the valves, etc.
01:02 katsmeow-afk yeas, it would cycle a bit, but shuld build up if the valve isn't open more than a fraction of a sec
01:02 furrywolf well, not a lot, but definitely noticably.
01:02 furrywolf they prime slowly... plan on opening the valve a minute at a time.
01:03 furrywolf they're meant to pump water, not air.
01:03 furrywolf takes a few minutes for mine to suck the air out of the run to the well...
01:04 rrywolf curls up on katsmeow-afk for bed
01:04 katsmeow-afk but it doesn't take that long for air to escape
01:05 furrywolf time for me to get to sleep. too late.
01:06 katsmeow-afk me too
01:06 katsmeow-afk gnitesss
01:07 rrywolf tucks katsmeow-afk in, then curls back up on top of her, since warm top-wolfies help people s
01:08 katsmeow-afk :-)
01:08 katsmeow-afk <pet><pet>
01:09 theBear hmm... life is cruel... a fortnight ago i was so very happy and warm curled up in bed with company, now i'm just more lonely than i already was :(
01:11 furrywolf :)
01:11 furrywolf theBear: :(
01:11 furrywolf (the smiley was to the pets, not the lonely bear)
01:12 ace4016 i know the feeling theBear :/
01:12 ace4016 'tis ok, if you really wanted to, there are other fish to catch
01:13 furrywolf bbl
01:15 theBear i don't want other fish :(
01:15 theBear '
01:15 theBear 'cept maybe salmon
01:16 theBear heh, on that note, logistics are also cruel
01:17 theBear it's hard to be a few thousand km's away when i live here and don't have any money...
03:12 e_mohr hands bear a fishing
03:13 rue_mohr you can give a man fire, and he's warm for a night, or you can set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
03:13 e_mohr folds his
03:33 rue_shop whatever guage wire is 2.5 thou thick, is too small for this relay
03:34 rue_shop going up to 32 guage
03:39 rue_shop 32 works, but draws an amp
04:19 rue_mohr that sucks
04:19 rue_mohr I dont have any intermediate wire sizes that I know of
09:07 katsmeow-afk rue, you may be forced to throw in towels and use a small voltage doubler circuit for gate drive or something
09:08 katsmeow-afk in usa and Canadia, the impossible is merely outside the box, in Africa it may be in a parallel universe
09:21 katsmeow-afk "we have gone so long doing so much with so little, we can now instantly do anything with nothing"
09:21 katsmeow-afk except in the real world
10:08 rrywolf stretches, yawns, fluffs tail, and curls back up next to katsmeow-
10:10 furrywolf "Sunday 7/14 Huge Multi Family/Business Sale" so, which do you think it is? sunday or the 14th? lol
10:11 katsmeow-afk did you move to Alabama?
10:11 furrywolf ... no.
10:12 furrywolf I own more than five dildos. I'm a felon there, remember? :P
10:12 katsmeow-afk that's something they'd do here
10:12 katsmeow-afk oh, right
10:31 furrywolf ##electronics gets stupider by the week. bleh.
10:34 Modeuse hello
10:37 furrywolf heyas
10:39 furrywolf katsmeow-afk: any thoughts on those batteries I pasted last night?
10:41 furrywolf I know there's some people in ##e who have worked with them, but there's way too many idiots in there right now, like always, to expect to actually have any form of useful conversation.
11:39 rue_mohr whats for robotics today
11:39 ace4016 floating camerarobots
11:39 ace4016 using dirigibles
11:46 rue_shop "Get out of the basement and come have supper!" "Not now! I'm PLAing"
11:46 rue_shop reprap joke
11:48 ace4016 lol
11:54 GuShH how long until someone starts extruding nastier stuff and gets lung cancer?
11:55 GuShH after all they are in the arduino group, sooner or later they'll start playing with pvc and other nasties.
12:05 rue_shop ? they already use pvc for printing
12:09 GuShH rue_shop: do they sport a nice rust layer on everything in the basement too when the heat is set too high?
12:10 GuShH hint: it'll take a few years until they start falling like flies anyway
12:15 rue_shop they dont set the heat too high
12:15 rue_shop they set it within a fraction of a degree, from what I can tell
12:15 rue_shop usually with pid control
12:17 rue_shop there is a box called "IIMT SENSOR" thats just an analog circuit in a box
12:17 rue_shop from what I can tell, IMT is inverse magnetron
12:31 GuShH rue_shop: do you regularly use your lawn mower bots?
12:56 rue_shop when its sunny
13:56 katsmeow-afk “Suppose that you’re making a plane reservation, and it has two legs,” says Liskov. “You’re not interested in getting one of them and not the other. If you run this as a transaction, then the underlying system will guarantee that you get either both of them or neither of them.
13:56 katsmeow-afk because a plane with only one leg is not gonna fly
13:57 katsmeow-afk the internet can be an inteesting place sometimes
13:58 ace4016 eh?
14:00 katsmeow-afk you don't find that statement interesting?
14:03 ace4016 i'm not sure what a plane has to do with legs
14:03 ace4016 which is the part that confuses me, unless legs is another term for wings
14:04 tsmeow-afk confesses to it being ooc, “Suppose that you’re making a plane reservation, and it has two legs,” , where "it" refers to the reservation processing software
14:05 katsmeow-afk legs" refers to the paths the software takes
14:05 katsmeow-afk then it makes more sense, at least more sense than a plane with legs
14:06 katsmeow-afk "the pilot made his plane hop off the cliff and fly away"
14:12 sw0rdfish hey
14:13 sw0rdfish whata hell's the matter with me I don't like new movies anymore... just went to watch the new spider-man movie... and I didn't like it... didn't like Prometheus last week too.
14:15 ace4016 lol
14:15 ace4016 sw0rdfish, most things bing produced today are shit. and this isn't evena nostalgia thing
14:15 sw0rdfish yeah
14:16 sw0rdfish directors and writers just wanna get on the 3D hype
14:16 sw0rdfish and sheet.
14:16 sw0rdfish and good story line, character development...etc means jack sheet to them these days
14:17 sw0rdfish ever since cameron made that big money making movie, Avatar... they've all started caring less about story line...etc
14:17 sw0rdfish as long as there is awesome 3D effects and cool action scenes its ok!! to them
14:19 ace4016 it's usually been that way
14:19 ace4016 use the current fad to make more money
14:19 ace4016 the good movies didn't use the fads to make more money; they used the fad to better tell their story
14:20 ace4016 realistic 3D started popping up around Pan's Labyrinth; the director took the skills learned from Hellboy and used it in Pan's Labyrinth to make a wonderful film that better showed what the story was suppose to tell
14:21 ace4016 that's how you use technology and such
14:21 ace4016 not michael bay's mehtod of making explosions and camera movements more actiony; although sometimes a good mindless action film is nice if it doesn't try to pretend it's not :P
14:24 sw0rdfish i've never heard of Pan's Labyrinth
14:28 ace4016 i enjoyed it
15:11 katsmeow-afk Mr Tinmouth pointed out a number of profiles which had names and details that appeared to be made up.
15:11 katsmeow-afk Continue reading the main story
15:11 katsmeow-afk VirtualBagel Facebook page
15:11 katsmeow-afk Read and watch Rory's VirtualBagel experiment
15:11 katsmeow-afk One, going by the name Agung Pratama Sevenfoldism, showed his date of birth as 1997 and said he had been a manager at Chevron in 2010.
15:11 katsmeow-afk Mr Tinmouth said this seemed "unlikely".
15:11 tsmeow-afk thinks "mr Tinmouht" is also highly unli
15:16 katsmeow-afk latest on the roof garden : http://designerthinking.com/images/garden/DSCF2812m.jpg
15:17 katsmeow-afk preparing for winter : http://designerthinking.com/images/DSCF2810m.jpg (that whole pile, 3 trailerloads, was free, and they loaded it)
15:17 ace4016 quite a crude rain catcher system there... >_>
15:17 ace4016 :P
15:18 katsmeow-afk yeas, the dirt int he buckets keeps the wind from blowing them away before they fill with water
15:19 katsmeow-afk i have 9 -12 more buckets to do, prolly vining string beans, it's too late for corn
15:20 furrywolf not too much at yard sales today... stopped by the place I went to last week, gave him $25, got another new grundfoss circulation pump with fittings, 200ft of PEX, an air vent, a dust bag for my chop saw, two thermorest camping mattresses, an in-pipe thermometer, and a couple little things... at other sales, picked up two craftsman adjustable wrenches for a quarter, a new gallon herculiner kit for $20, a large plastic tub for $1, and t
15:20 katsmeow-afk too hot and late for lettuce, cabbage, etc
15:20 katsmeow-afk why are people giving their stuf away, furry?
15:21 furrywolf because it takes up space and is in the way
15:21 katsmeow-afk especially stuff to make food, i'd think would be good to keep, make that stuff pay for itself
15:21 katsmeow-afk but you have picked up 100's of feet of pex
15:21 furrywolf he had a whole bunch more, I just didn't need it. heh.
15:22 katsmeow-afk was someone trying to do a waterheated slab, or walls, or something?
15:22 furrywolf he had some really, really cool stainless steel tubing last week, but I didn't have the cash for it then, and when I went back, someone else had grabbed it. :(
15:23 katsmeow-afk my eyes are all blurry again
15:24 furrywolf http://www.flexsure.net/
15:24 furrywolf he had a whole pallet of it, stacked about a foot and a half high
15:24 furrywolf wanted $100, which I didn't have. :(
15:24 furrywolf said it cost him $8/foot
15:26 furrywolf their website says it's $15.21/foot retail. ouch.
15:26 furrywolf I could have had ~500ft for $100, but.... didn't have the $100.
15:27 katsmeow-afk this is the problem i have with the word "worth"
15:28 katsmeow-afk you know if you buy all that sort of building material, you can take it to any of the big fires this year where peole are rebuilding with insurance money, and make a killing?
15:28 katsmeow-afk evn if you sell for less than in the stores
15:29 katsmeow-afk and this time, sell them an inground swimmng pool and self-powered sprinkler system
15:30 furrywolf I wish I'd bought the pallet of it... I went back with more money, but someone else had gotten it. :(
15:30 furrywolf it seems like the ideal solar collector plumbing.
15:30 katsmeow-afk might be, rue wants some
15:31 katsmeow-afk i am thinking more of focussed suns
15:31 katsmeow-afk i just need to figure how to adjust an acre of mirrors with only 1 or 2 motors
15:32 furrywolf fresnel parabolic trough
15:33 katsmeow-afk glas fresnels are heavy, plastic fresnels don't last
15:33 furrywolf that was my idea before I realized I don't get enough direct sun here to be worth it
15:33 furrywolf fresnel mirrors
15:33 furrywolf not lenses
15:33 katsmeow-afk fresnel mirror is a array, hopefully maybe i can avoid sterring a huge array
15:34 furrywolf ah, but a fresnel parabolic trough is an array of long elements, and you only need to steer each full-length element, not lots of tiny ones.
15:34 katsmeow-afk i know that, see the 3x7 fresnel mirror array in http://designerthinking.com/images/solar/figuring%20angles%20in%20driveway.jpg
15:35 katsmeow-afk only one 1x1ft mirror installed tho, for aiming purposes
15:35 furrywolf but you don't use 1x1ft mirrors... you use 1x100ft mirrors.
15:35 katsmeow-afk so the neighbors began sending their dogs over then, pretty much that day i took that pic, and that was the end of it
15:36 katsmeow-afk i set 1x1 sibe by side
15:36 furrywolf find some way to add a "death ray" mode to your mirror aiming. :)
15:36 katsmeow-afk zoom in on the frame, you can see the inset 1/2x1/2 angle set at angles
15:36 katsmeow-afk at least on the top row
15:37 furrywolf trying to focus on a point is a lot more work than focusing on a line, like a parabolic trough.
15:38 katsmeow-afk why do you think i built such a thing?
15:38 furrywolf I don't know. I can't tell anything from that image.
15:38 furrywolf it's some metal, at an angle.
15:39 katsmeow-afk but, the linear fresnel is also an array, moved as an arry, and once i have it built and aligned, i had zero help getting it out o the house, so much like the pcb driller, i cut it up into little pieces as scrap
15:40 katsmeow-afk [15:27] <furrywolf> trying to focus on a point is a lot more work than focusing on a line, like a parabolic trough.
15:40 katsmeow-afk [15:27] <katsmeow-afk> why do you think i built such a thing?
15:40 katsmeow-afk </sarcasm>
15:41 furrywolf I can't tell what that thing IS. heh. I don't see any mirrors on it, or anything else to tell how it works.
15:41 katsmeow-afk and you have no positive feedback, only negative, so i have no incentive to explain
15:41 katsmeow-afk i should just delte the pic
15:42 furrywolf I don't have any feedback, because I can't even tell what it does.
15:42 furrywolf the only feedback would be to scan at higher resolution. heh.
15:44 katsmeow-afk see the 2x4 pointing up to the right?
15:44 furrywolf I'm thinking a house-roof-sized array... it'd be assembled in-place, not moved as a unit.
15:45 katsmeow-afk if not moved as a unit, how will it track the sun
15:45 furrywolf with 6" wide mirrors, a 15ft wide roof would only need 30 actuators, no matter how long the roof is.
15:45 furrywolf or 15 actuators for 1ft mirrors
15:45 furrywolf you move each row of mirrors to change the focal point, not move the whole unit
15:45 furrywolf changing the shape of the reflector
15:46 katsmeow-afk you need more control that that, there's a lot of lightout the end of theparabolic at extreme sun angles
15:46 furrywolf my plan was to extend the collector over the ends of the roof. :)
15:46 katsmeow-afk o
15:46 katsmeow-afk well, then you don't need me to explain my design
15:47 furrywolf also, you get very little power that early/late in the day, so doing a lot of engineering for a small percentage of the power...
15:47 katsmeow-afk it's only small if yoou have a really long run of mirror
15:47 furrywolf yep
15:48 katsmeow-afk and, if you don't have a moveable array, you het mirror shadowing
15:48 furrywolf yep
15:48 furrywolf but you can build it flat on a roof or the ground, using only a few actuators.
15:49 furrywolf it may not be the most efficient for mirror area, but the cost savings elsewhere should make up for it.
15:49 katsmeow-afk no, *i* couldn't
15:50 katsmeow-afk i built it inside and asked for help moving it to the elevator shaft, and got no help, all i needed was someone to mind where it was swinging so mirror didn't get broken
15:50 furrywolf my plan for an ultra-low-cost system was to use a wooden frame, with lengths of emt running the length of each element, with corrugated roofing scraps screwed to the emt, then mirrors glued to the roofing.
15:50 katsmeow-afk no human cared
15:51 katsmeow-afk yoour wooden frame would be mulch in 2 yrs
15:51 furrywolf the problem here is that most of my insolation is in the form of diffuse light, through clouds or fog, and not focusable.
15:51 furrywolf pressure treat holds up a decade or two...
15:51 katsmeow-afk no it doesn't, i have pressure treated decks outside
15:53 furrywolf hrmm, I drew a really crappy sketch of said solar idea, but can't find it.
15:54 katsmeow-afk i deleted the pic of measuing angles in the driveway
15:54 katsmeow-afk any others not worth it?
15:57 furrywolf ah-ha! it was in with http://fw.bushytails.net/css/imgwidget/imgtest.php
15:57 furrywolf moved to http://fw.bushytails.net/reallyfuckingcrappysolar.png
15:58 katsmeow-afk mine are so bad they deserve deletion, and you want me to look at your "reallyfuckingcrappysolar.png" ??
15:58 furrywolf I didn't say it deserved deletion. I said it didn't have enough detail to figure out what it was doing.
15:59 katsmeow-afk but it wasn't good enough anyhow, according to you, so i didn't explain it
15:59 katsmeow-afk i spent 6 months designing and building, and have yet to get a good word said about any of it, even my mom saying i deserved to be attacked by dogs if i made power with it
15:59 katsmeow-afk so fuck it
16:01 furrywolf what am I supposed to say? it looks nice a nice square frame? I can't tell what it is, and you didn't explain what it does. it's supposed to have 3 by 7 1x1ft mirrors? that would be focusing at a point?
16:01 rrywolf can't read people's mi
16:02 katsmeow-afk how would a linear fresnel focus at one point?
16:03 furrywolf you never said it was linear. you said it used 1x1ft mirrors, not long strips.
16:03 katsmeow-afk i statrted expalining, and you went off on it : [15:25] <katsmeow-afk> zoom in on the frame, you can see the inset 1/2x1/2 angle set at angles ; [15:33] <katsmeow-afk> see the 2x4 pointing up to the right?
16:04 furrywolf I can't zoom in. it's only 800x600...
16:04 katsmeow-afk i did too : [15:24] <furrywolf> but you don't use 1x1ft mirrors... you use 1x100ft mirrors. ; [15:25] <katsmeow-afk> i set 1x1 sibe by side
16:05 katsmeow-afk high rez wouldn't help, it was a film camera shot ~1994
16:05 furrywolf heh
16:05 furrywolf just because you know how it works, doesn't mean I know how it works, and I can't tell how it works looking at that picture, which was all I said. heh.
16:06 katsmeow-afk i tried 2x to exlain
16:06 furrywolf that picture, with accompanying text, would be more helpful... but I couldn't even see a mirror in it, while you said it had one...
16:07 katsmeow-afk yea, so i must have been wrong, the sunny square on the underside of the osb on the end of the slanted 2x4 was all my imagination too
16:07 katsmeow-afk here i am , in real time, trying to exaplain, and instead you want me to put the txt on the webpage
16:09 furrywolf I didn't say that either.
16:09 katsmeow-afk i BUILT SOMETHING that WORKED almost 20 YEARS ago, got stoppped by DOGS TRESPASSING, and here i still am to answer your questions in real time, and it's not worth fuck
16:10 furrywolf grrr, I'm going to go back to gardening before I say something I don't mean and/or you take it the wrong way. bbl.
16:10 katsmeow-afk i already remove the pic, say what you want about it
16:12 furrywolf if this is what I get when I try helping, I'm not going to try helping.
16:12 furrywolf bleh.
16:12 furrywolf bbl.
17:56 furrywolf well, it's not exactly sunny, but it's the closest to sun I've seen in a while... told the charge controller to start an overdue equalization cycle.
19:26 e_shop stret
19:26 rue_shop winshield wiper timer for the truck?
19:27 rue_shop hmm tiny13
19:27 rue_shop dont feel like asm coding right now
19:29 rue_shop shop is tooo full
19:29 furrywolf rue_shop: should I buy those nife batteries? :P
19:30 rue_shop for what?
19:30 furrywolf my house.
19:31 rue_shop why not use lead?
19:31 furrywolf short lifespan. sick of them!
19:31 rue_shop 5 years?
19:35 katsmeow-afk http://designerthinking.com/solar.html
19:36 katsmeow-afk rue, lead acid doesn't last at decent power curves for 5 years
19:36 katsmeow-afk for max power storage, they last one year if you're lucky
19:37 katsmeow-afk i hope i trashed the pic enough for furry
19:37 rrywolf curls up and s
19:38 katsmeow-afk it's what you asked for
19:39 furrywolf you need to make one with seperately aimable mirrors, then "accidentally" have the control system "fail" and aim them at any dogs in the area.
19:40 katsmeow-afk "i"'d still be "responcible" for the "accident"
19:40 furrywolf brb, yelling happening outside
19:43 furrywolf some kind of typical altercation between a horse person and a car person, presumably caused, like always, by the horse person believing him/herself to be superior to all other road users.
19:47 katsmeow-afk i am trying to stay away from everyone with animals now, in fact i thought the people who i got the wood from this morning were not the people living there who owned the horses, but they are :-/
19:48 katsmeow-afk i have wood now, i am really REALLY not wanting to build a woodshed, or the asshole next door might wanna use it to beat the crap out of some poor child
19:49 katsmeow-afk but fact is, the road is for use by "motor vehicles", so electric cars have the right of way
20:12 rue_shop nodding off in the shop chair isn't helping get a mecha built
20:24 furrywolf http://www.neurowear.com/1img/news/imgE20120629153336.jpg I should get the grey wolf version. :)
20:33 furrywolf I can totally see going into work wearing those. muwahaha!
20:34 rue_mohr haha
20:34 furrywolf they're supposedly brain-reading, and you can move them, or something like that.
20:47 furrywolf bbl, friend bringing over his truck, won't charge.
22:13 rue_mohr I'm going to camp on the deck tonight
22:16 Tom_itx such a stupid mistake
22:16 Tom_itx been pestering me all evening
22:16 Tom_itx pullup on the wrong friggin pin
22:26 rue_shop heh
23:04 rue_mohr wow I'm getting a lot of nothing done today
23:04 rue_mohr I scrounged up a casting barrel tho
23:04 rue_mohr need to find sand for it
23:08 rue_shop I'm going to officially abandon a project, put it back in the parts bins
23:08 rue_shop :/
23:17 rue_shop free
23:22 Tom_itx what one are you gonna abandon?
23:23 Tom_itx i think i got all the rewiring and logic swapped around
23:23 Tom_itx freed up an encoder input so i can add my spindle encoder
23:39 katsmeow-afk will the cat wake you if the bear shows up to maul the tree again?
23:42 katsmeow-afk that would be funny, the cat wakes you while you sleep on the porch, and thebear shows up from Oz, and says he's the to maul the tree
23:43 furrywolf yay projects that take way too long.
23:44 furrywolf symptom: he's had the truck for a year. it's NEVER charged properly. he's replaced the alternator once and the regulator several times. some regulators don't charge at all, others run the field full on and overcharge the batteries.
23:45 katsmeow-afk bad gnd strap tween block and frame
23:46 furrywolf cause: the truck has a _lot_ of miles, and has developed a number of stress fractures on the body. turns out one of those fractures is around the bracket holding the tray on top of the wheelwell to the fender, so the metal tray is just sitting on the plastic wheelwell liner, and not grounded, so there's no ground to the regulator.
23:46 furrywolf and with no ground, ford regulators promptly fry themselves, and some would fail open (the ones that did nothing) and some would fail shorted (the ones that overcharged).
23:46 katsmeow-afk tray?
23:47 furrywolf these ford trucks have a flat tray about a foot square sitting on top of the wheelwell, containing smog stuff, solenoids, vacuum canister, and the alternator regulator, among other things.
23:47 katsmeow-afk i had a Ford that had same charging issues, turns out the only gnd to the block was the exhaust pipe, and that was an accident
23:47 furrywolf the regulator grounds through its screws to this piece of metal, which should be grounded to the fender through its brackets... except there's enough stress fractures that it had broken free.
23:48 furrywolf and ford regulators fry if ran ungrounded
23:48 katsmeow-afk all mine were in the alternator
23:48 furrywolf fix: a foot of wire with two ring terminals, one on the fender, one on the screw on the regulator.
23:48 katsmeow-afk why the fender?
23:48 furrywolf of course, since the regulator is fried, the next step is to head to the auto parts store to pick one up....
23:49 katsmeow-afk fenders can be isolated off the frame by rust
23:49 furrywolf because fords ground to the body, not the frame.
23:49 furrywolf at least these trucks
23:49 furrywolf there's two grounds, one to the block, one to the fender.
23:49 katsmeow-afk the fender, the hunk of steel out in front that hits things?
23:50 furrywolf so, on the way to the auto parts store, about half way there... the truck starts bucking. switch to the other tank, no change. stalls. we're going up a bridge.
23:50 furrywolf that's the bumper. the fender is the part on the side that goes between the door and the front grille, over the tire...
23:50 rue_mohr how did you let it get empty?
23:50 furrywolf it wasn't empty.
23:50 katsmeow-afk the bridge should be grounded
23:51 katsmeow-afk no power tot he electrical, the pumps, fur instance
23:51 rue_mohr ah, alternator is shot?
23:51 katsmeow-afk the fender fell off?
23:52 rue_mohr why was the alternator attached to the fender?
23:52 furrywolf step on the clutch, just manage to coast to the level top of the bridge.... there's nowhere to pull over on the bridge. try starter-motoring to keep the truck moving, but because we weren't charging, the batteries are too flat. so we both hop out and push the truck the rest of the way over the bridge, which takes several minutes, in traffic...
23:52 katsmeow-afk no, the thing that goes tween front door and grill is "front quarter panel"
23:53 furrywolf all parts of the front clip have serious stress fractures (a common problem with ford trucks)
23:53 katsmeow-afk "honey, how did thay push that truck all the way up this bridge?"
23:53 rue_mohr the alternator is supposed to be situated between the front and back bumper no?
23:54 katsmeow-afk hence, you ground the hunkiest piece of steel available, the frame
23:54 furrywolf get off the bridge, start poking at it... no fuel pressure. both fuel pumps are running, and there's fuel to the pump. fortunately, he has a spare fuel pump. so, on the side of the freeway, we plumb in a new fuel pump, using vise grips and a leatherman...
23:54 rue_mohr brb, shop is filling up with moths
23:55 katsmeow-afk if i *ever* haveto redo a battery connection, i run gnds to block and frame, and body too if i can, preferably the firewall
23:55 furrywolf katsmeow-afk: why ground the frame? nothing else attaches to the frame. all the loads - lights, radio, etc, etc, etc - are grounded to the sheetmetal, not the frame.
23:55 katsmeow-afk if i am doing work on dashbd/radio, i run a new gnd every time
23:55 furrywolf grounding a big hunk of metal with not a single other wire going to it....
23:55 katsmeow-afk i ground everything to the frame, the body develops cracks and things quit working, remember?
23:55 furrywolf in any case, you can debate that with ford, I'm just telling you how they did it.
23:56 furrywolf so, we change a fuel pump in record time, and back to driving to the auto parts store...
23:57 furrywolf now, the governor bit in the injection pump goes wonky, and it alternates between coasting and flat out floored, without you even touching the throttle. we ignore it. we leave it running at the auto part store, of course, because the batteries are too flat to start it again. get a lot of odd looks as we leave a truck parked that's going VROOOM... pause... VROOOM.... all on its own.
23:58 furrywolf get a new regulator, swap it in the auto parts store parking lot, making sure the new ground wire is nice and tight. yay! it charges without overcharging! first time since he bought the truck.
23:58 furrywolf go to pull out... right as we leave the driveway, a cop pulls up behind us and pulls us over.
23:59 furrywolf it's dusk, and he didn't have the lights on yet, because until it was charging there was no battery power...
23:59 GuShH you don't need to drive with headlights on even during daylight? it's mandatory here.
23:59 katsmeow-afk yeas, you haveto let it VROOOOOM more in the parking lot
23:59 furrywolf and the cop is trying to find things to get us for, being a worthless waste of oxygen like every other cop. so he checks both our ids, the registration, the insurance, the plates, etc, etc, etc, etc....