#robotics Logs
Aug 18 2014
#robotics Calendar
00:02 Triffid_Hunter Oracle989: fwiw, the arduino libraries are generally fairly terrible, I prefer to program the hardware in straight C
00:03 Oracle989 Looks like either [A/B]IN1 or [A/B]IN2 is high, and the other is low, and that sets the direction, then the PWM[A/B] sets the speed from 0 to 255. I know I have to pull STBY high for it to turn on the motors.
00:07 Loshki Seems straightforward enough, only two primitives, stop() and move(), and he's left a nice little comment about what the arguments in move() do, and when you look, all it really does is write the values into registers. If you have the same hardware as his, why can't you just straight copy 95% of his code?
00:08 Oracle989 Once I figure out how the code from the Tankbot instructable works, I'm going to see if I can just drop in the one from bildr.
00:08 Loshki Yep, he sets STBY high as the first thing doing a move()
00:14 Oracle989 So I just set AIN1 and AIN2 (or BIN) opposed to each other, and then send the PWM signal to the PWM pins, right?
00:16 Loshki Triffid_Hunter: Now I'm in my 50s I can't afford the luxury of recoding everything/anything from scratch, though sometimes it's really faster if you know what you're doing (or if you've no choice, because the library doesn't work). I used to think the library was one of comp. sci's great unsung gifts to mankind, a true labor saving device. Now I think it's the Roomba.
00:16 Oracle989 Loshki: Kind of works usually but not as good as doing it yourself in most cases?
00:17 acle989 adores his robotic va
00:17 Loshki No, Good enough if you're a lazy slut who won't clean up after themself... (joking)
00:18 Oracle989 Keeps the floors clean-ish between moppings, and I can turn it on when I leave for the day and have it done when I get back
00:19 rue_house who was making the second layer board for the arduino to control the servos on their robot?
00:20 Loshki I can't believe I waited so long to get a neato/roomba -- being someone who loves computers because they do work for me while I sit and watch. And if it's wrong, just retype it. Irresistible...
00:21 Oracle989 I have a Samsung Navibot.
00:21 Oracle989 Got it for $70 on Craigslist
00:21 Loshki I meant to ask, and this is the place, is the Irobot create any use, or is it a dinosaur which doesn't even suck?
00:21 Oracle989 Works like a champ
00:22 Oracle989 My dad's got the iRobot Looj, which cleans his gutters.
00:22 rue_house I been thinking of making a floor sucking robot
00:22 rue_house I have two broken roombas (batteries)
00:23 Oracle989 The Scooba's the one that mops for you, right?
00:24 Loshki Yes. The Scooba's the one that wet mops. It sprays, scrubs & sucks. A bit like my cat...
00:26 Loshki The Samsungs that seem to go for a grand or more on Amazon? So envious. I really like my neato, but it's developed a fault *already* within 90 days, so it's going back.
00:28 Loshki rue_house: you're not supposed to buy a new roomba every time the battery runs out! If you'd rather vacuum than buy batteries, ship me your old roombas...
00:29 rue_house you think I bought them?
00:29 rue_house I presume a roomba battery is >$80?
00:32 Loshki rue_house: Roomba batteries have come down quite a bit, check out amazon/ebay. But I know what you mean, I've bought old Scoobas off ebay for parts/repair with perfectly functioning batteries, for less than the price of a stock replacement battery. It's kind of a crap shoot though.
00:34 Loshki Someone referred to them as "rummage electronics". Great term, not mine...
00:37 rue_house huh
00:37 rue_house I recall its a strange voltage, cant just park an sla on it :)
00:37 rue_house 19?
00:39 Loshki Erm, 14.4? NimH.
00:39 rue_house only something like 1.8Ah iirc
00:39 rue_house guess I'm online and could look it up
00:39 rue_house I dont have a station for it....
00:40 Loshki rue_house: lame...
00:40 rue_house but I can make whatever I want
00:41 rue_house and its fun
00:41 rue_house then I get to use my own alg
00:41 rue_house and have a funny robot buzzing around the house
00:41 rue_house which is just expected of every mad technologist
00:45 Loshki rue_house: I'm with you on the floor sucking robot, except that Scooba has most of that solved well enough that it's no longer pressing. But I *need* something that does edges, stairs, walls, toilets (though I suppose I could buy one of those Japanese bum-ticklers).
00:46 rue_house I just need to keep up with cat hair
00:48 Hyratel Loshki, for the corners, why not mod a roomba with a crevice tool?
00:49 Loshki That's what set me off. We were robot-free until the cat arrived. And *people* cleaned our floors once a fortnight, and it was enough. Now, that still happens, but robots roam the house daily as well. It's worth it...
00:55 Loshki Hyratel: Promising, but suction on all but the very latest (and most expensive) roombas is generally weak, so same idea, but apply it to a neato instead. If you can control it without having to gut it and rewire, so much the better. And then spend the rest of your life tuning the algorithms, which are their family jewels.
00:56 Hyratel longhair or short?
00:58 Loshki Hyratel: short hair, incredibly light fly-away hair, like something from a shampoo advert. It floats! So it gets *everywhere*. Where can I upload a pic without a big song & dance?
00:58 Hyratel try imgur.com
00:59 Oracle989 Okay. I THINK I've doctored this code right. If not I'm going to need to Irish up my coffee...
01:00 Oracle989 Is it normal to have a sense of dread before attempting to compile and run code, or is that just me?
01:00 Oracle989 Well that's good, nothing works.
01:00 Loshki Does this work? http://imgur.com/xGqgdDs
01:03 Loshki Oracle989: No, we used to save the sense of dread for bugfixes for things that were measured in kilodollars per minute of downtime...
01:04 Oracle989 Those are good places to keep your dread.
01:04 Loshki Oracle989: Got a deadline for all this?
01:04 Oracle989 Loshki: 4 hours.
01:05 Oracle989 I blew all my previous soft deadlines. This one's much more firm.
01:06 Loshki Oracle989: then less IRC, and more coding. If I can help walk you through some code, I will. No guarantees though...
01:06 Loshki Nearly bedtime here...
01:06 Loshki Hyratel: Did this work? http://imgur.com/xGqgdDs
01:06 Oracle989 Oh okay, it's missing the WiFly library.
01:06 Hyratel yep
01:07 Loshki Hyratel: see all that belly fur? It flies...
01:07 Hyratel ohh boy
01:10 Oracle989 I've been directed to this guy's blogspot to get the WiFly libraries...and I see nowhere on this website that there are any WiFly libraries, just people talking about them.
01:11 rue_house hahah
01:12 Oracle989 http://arduinology.blogspot.com/
01:13 Loshki rue_house: new model Roombas and Neatos just got released, so there are bargains on older models, & tons of parts available for older machines.
01:14 Loshki Oracle989: https://github.com/sparkfun/WiFly-Shield ?
01:14 Oracle989 Loshki: Yes this looks more useful to my life.
01:14 Oracle989 I've been carefully picking through a Blogspot for the last 10 minutes thinking I'm missing an obvious link somewhere.
01:16 Oracle989 Hmm, it's missing things.
01:17 Loshki What kind of things?
01:18 Oracle989 WiFlySerial.g
01:18 Oracle989 .h*
01:18 Oracle989 And Credentials.h
01:19 Loshki This guy gutted a Scooba 230 and replaced its brain: http://www.robotreviews.com/chat/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=17999
01:19 mrdata gcode
01:20 mrdata it's just like kung fu
01:20 Loshki Oracle989: seriously, wtf is a .g file? mrdata: you read my mind
01:21 rue_house its the format used before .h files
01:21 Oracle989 Loshki: It's a typo is what it is.
01:21 Oracle989 Oh okay, the files are hosted on a Sourceforge page that doesn't exist.
01:21 Oracle989 That's nice.
01:21 Loshki Oracle989: thank god. Ok, google for the missing files....
01:21 rue_house what your experiancing is called "faporware"
01:21 rue_house skjldf
01:21 rue_house "vaporware"
01:22 rue_house like the software for operating a billy bass from a parallel port
01:22 rue_house vaporware
01:22 Oracle989 Aha! I've found it.
01:23 Loshki Oracle989: you know what they say. 90% perspiration...
01:23 Oracle989 What's a .cpp file?
01:23 rue_house C Pete Poop
01:23 rue_house dont open it!
01:24 Oracle989 And I don't know where the hell to get Credentials.h, it seems like each project has its own.
01:24 rue_house hmm, these ups' I have use "stepped sine wave"
01:24 Loshki Oracle989: usually C/C++ source code, equivalent to a .ino file. More rarely, a C preprocessor intermediate file.
01:24 Oracle989 Oh. Okay I understand what's happening now.
01:25 rue_house do you have to compiel the library?
01:26 Loshki rue_house: usually. That way, you provide one copy of the source code, instead of a billion different binaries. It's not microsoft...
01:26 rue_house indeed
01:26 rue_house any of you the ones working on the china arduino with the power board added for running the servos?
01:30 Oracle989 Hrm. His code doesn't seem to be working. It's breaking before reaching anything I changed, at least.
01:31 Loshki rue_house: isn't a "stepped sine wave" just a square wave?
01:31 rue_house his email address should be at the top of the source
01:31 rue_house Loshki, according to a page I found, its more than 2 steps :)
01:31 rue_house so I'm thinking its an intermediate term
01:31 Loshki Oracle989: compilation or run time?
01:31 Oracle989 Loshki: Compilation
01:31 rue_house funny enough its meaningless without saying either harmonic distortion or number of steps
01:32 Loshki Oracle989: much easier to solve. Pastebin it...
01:32 Oracle989 http://pastebin.com/8sQqVzf7
01:33 Loshki rue_house: more than 2, it said. Translated from marketing speak, that means 3.
01:33 rue_house lgcline@ncsu.edu <-- email that guy
01:33 rue_house I may stick my scope on one and see
01:33 rue_house it runs my computer with PFC
01:35 rue_house yup, I just stick a full pc on there
01:35 rue_house http://ruemohr.org/~ircjunk/robots/buddy_II/p1040837.jpg
01:35 rue_house :( no pic with the full size wifi router on it
01:35 rue_house actaully, thats a horridly outdated pic
01:36 rue_house awe, buddy I needs updates pics too
01:38 Oracle989 rue_house: That guy's pretty bad at this stuff, I don't think he'll be much help
01:40 Loshki Oracle989: it's complaining about the use of "Serial <<" which is for printing. You're missing a definition. Are you using an IDE?
01:40 Oracle989 I'm using what you download from the Arduino site
01:42 Loshki Oracle989: that would be the arduino IDE, version 1.something, universally loathed.
01:42 Oracle989 Yeah.
01:42 Oracle989 I'm not a huge fan of it.
01:46 Loshki Oracle989: it's a c++ thing, which I don't know much about, but I think it's a small fix. Ask on #arduino?
01:48 rue_house am I right that there is a goggle set for using a 4.3" tablet for vr?
02:30 dptechnics Please check out our new robot kit on Indiegogo: http://igg.me/at/dptboard/x/7267862
02:33 rue_house grrrr
14:29 JEntrep Is anyone here familiar with sewing automation?
14:30 JEntrep Like if two pieces of material are cut via some CNC machine
14:30 JEntrep what are some methods for bringing them to a single sewing point in an automated process?
14:37 MrCurious that is a difficult task i think
14:38 MrCurious its usually handled by underpaid, poor work condition, forced labor
14:38 deshipu you hire a student to do it ;)
14:38 deshipu eaxctly
14:39 MrCurious i think that might be a task that could benefit form attaching small magnet to key points on the various pieces of cloth, then using the new MIT method for moving the magnets using a energized table...
14:39 MrCurious could work even with non magnet, but simply a needle
14:40 MrCurious that would reduce th problem to attaching the metal to the cloth segments with accuracy, but with only one piece of cloth that should be much simpler
14:42 MrCurious sorry, credited mit, it was darpa.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL6e3co4Qqc
14:42 deshipu alternatively, you could sew it first, and cut later
14:42 MrCurious but JEntrep i think this is the technology you need for your problem
14:43 MrCurious higher waste deshipu
14:43 JEntrep MrCurious, thanks for all the info
14:43 JEntrep what is higher waste deshipu?
14:43 MrCurious going to venture a guess, that a pair of magnets could just be clipped on to the cloth to actuate the alignment, then removed upon completion
14:45 MrCurious higher waste by cutting after sewoing would change the problem, as th peices of cloth for clothing are generally not symetrical.. that wwould change the problem to a garmet design problem requiring symetric parts... sorry for all the spelling errors. too many to correct
14:45 deshipu JEntrep: my idea was to sew the pieces of cloth first, while they are still large and easy to manipulate with just wheels or such, and then cut them
14:45 deshipu MrCurious: why symmetric parts?
14:45 JEntrep This is actually in regards to Shoes :)
14:45 JEntrep but I see what you mean by potentially higher waste
14:46 MrCurious because when they cut cloth for clothing, they generally lay sheets of cloth 10 or 20 deep, place cut stensils over them and cut with a press. they align the cuts to achieve the maximum number of usable parts from each sheet
14:46 MrCurious curse my incessent watching of How Its Made
14:47 JEntrep :P
14:47 deshipu I wonder how effective a simple line follower attached to the sewing machine, moving the fabric with its wheels, would be
14:48 MrCurious but i think once you have the parts, a pair of magnets could clamp the parts one on each side, and function as a actuator to align them, then be stripped off by a stronger magnet
14:48 deshipu MrCurious: not very precise
14:48 MrCurious another option would be to add alignment holes to the parts
14:48 MrCurious that could be placed over pins
14:49 MrCurious or a removable UV paint to facilitate alignment
14:49 deshipu how about a sweing machine header for a robot arm, similar to how there are point-welding headers?
14:49 MrCurious float it on a bed of air that turns to suction to align part a, then same to a second bed for part b, swing beds to mate, sew, and releast
14:49 MrCurious release
14:49 JEntrep MrCurious, float?
14:50 MrCurious like an air hockey table
14:50 MrCurious once in possition, reverse air flow and it locks it to table
14:50 JEntrep would need a demonstration
14:53 MrCurious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU8n51hv0dU
14:53 MrCurious the positive air flow reduces resistance, allowing easy movement
14:53 MrCurious removing or negative flow acts llike a draft table, and holds material in place
14:54 JEntrep MrCurious, what am I looking for?
14:55 JEntrep I get what you are saying
14:55 JEntrep but I would still like to see the effect of negative air flow on certain materials :P
14:55 JEntrep It could wrinkle some materials I imagine.
14:56 JEntrep maybe it's easier to just get cheap labor :/
14:56 JEntrep I would rather have full automation
14:56 MrCurious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTbPabnY2vk
14:57 MrCurious just handling 1 ATM pressure over a space of 1/10 mm
14:57 MrCurious thin plastic may deform...
14:57 Oracle989 Sure would be great if this WiFly would connect to my network.
14:57 Oracle989 Yep.
17:08 Loshki Oracle989: are you sure the WiFly hardware is ok? Can you test it in isolation?
17:26 Oracle989 Loshki: I don't know how I'd begin to.
17:28 Loshki Oracle989: Sorry, I can't help much. I've never used WiFly. Did you find anyone who has?
17:30 Loshki Oracle989: I see a bunch of instructables using WiFly though. Maybe you can find something else that works? Pain in the ass, I know...
17:37 Oracle989 Yeah, I'll look at it tonight. Cleaning up a bit before a dinner party this evening.
18:20 MrCurious light cigarette, take puff, put in ashtray, d some code, discover cigarette all burned up and long since cold.
18:20 MrCurious smoking. i am doing it wrong
18:49 Tom_itx doing it is what is wrong
18:53 MrCurious well duh
18:53 MrCurious more a shades of wrong, rather than a wrong/right thing
20:05 rue_house has the occulus rift been succeeded by googles cardboard vr kit?
20:41 MrCurious thats not just any cardboard... its magical cardboard
20:47 rue_house as it turns out I have stereo goggles for mapping
20:47 rue_house which works
20:51 rue_house so, now I just need to make a mirror assembly to split the view of one camera
21:58 robotustra I see I'm popular in brasil
21:59 robotustra my youtube was watched many times from there
22:00 robotustra may be it was some day off on 13th of August?
22:00 GargantuaSauce maybe you got linked on some blog?
22:03 robotustra no
22:03 robotustra may be somebody else?
22:04 robotustra GuShH is from brasil?
22:04 robotustra of argentina?
22:23 fluffywolf any suggestions on where to find seemingly hard-to-find timing pulleys? I need either HTD 5M (5mm pitch), 40 tooth, 15mm width, 12mm bore with set screw, or XL (0.2in pitch), 21 tooth, 14mm keyed bore with set screw... and can't find either one.
22:24 Tom_itx sdp-si dot com
22:25 fluffywolf hrmm, no katsmeow? :(
22:28 fluffywolf looks like the smallest they offer a 12mm bore in is 48 tooth... which probably means it's an unfinished bore.
22:37 fluffywolf my mill has 41 tooth XL pulleys on 12mm shafts with flats. my new steppers have 20 tooth HTD 5M pulleys on 14mm shafts with keys. I need to replace one set or the other to make them match, but can't find either one...
22:37 fluffywolf s/41/42
22:40 fluffywolf (and, no, the XL belts won't run on the HTD pulleys... I already tried that!)
23:48 rue_house we havnt' seen kat in a while'but last time I offended her enough to stay away 3 years
23:48 rue_house I dont think I offended her so much this time
23:48 rue_house as usual I'm not sure what I said
23:55 GargantuaSauce well she ignored half the active people in the channel before leaving
23:55 GargantuaSauce proud to say i was one of them
23:56 GargantuaSauce so i think it was more a question of attrition