#robotics Logs

Aug 12 2015

02:50 interested anyone here able to answer questions about academic robotics research?
02:55 deshipu try and see
04:34 Jak_o_Shadows This is beautiful. I know what a Kalman filter is now
04:55 veverak :D
12:35 veverak ok, so I finished proper automatic udev loading of devices (such as usb serial devices as arduino...)
12:35 veverak (it gives you events based on when/what happens)
12:36 veverak I also finished network stack that implements jsonrpc and gives yo uabillity to simply implement RPC callable functions
12:36 veverak automatic network discovery
12:36 veverak well, I suppose I am running out of handy features into robot brain
13:11 blockh34d this is the build space i settled on for my DIY cnc: http://s30.postimg.org/paloa9mu9/cnc_new_landscape.jpg
13:11 blockh34d http://s24.postimg.org/4k0xp5vn9/cnc_new_portrait.jpg another pic, closer up
18:53 wolfmanjm yea I just got my Edison to run the PS3 controller stack and my hexapod controller on boot, sweet now it is totally stanalone, runs from the PS3 controller over bluetooth. Now I wish the batteries lasted more than 10 minutes :)
18:54 wolfmanjm theoretically 2700mAH lipos should last around 45 minutes. not sure why they don't
18:55 orlock Maybe they are not really 2700mAH? :)
18:55 wolfmanjm Maybe but they are pretty good quality named brand lipos :)
18:55 wolfmanjm still 10 minutes is fine for just playing
18:57 wolfmanjm ordered some 1amp lipo chargers so I can do quick recharge :)
18:58 veverak wolfmanjm: you could just miscalculate something
18:58 veverak or
18:58 veverak best is to measure current that goes from it
18:58 veverak so you knwo if you miscalcualted or it's shitty
18:58 veverak :)
18:59 wolfmanjm I bought a good fluke DVM to measure the peak current, which under load is 3.5amp
18:59 orlock hmm reminds me
18:59 orlock i should sell my fluke
18:59 wolfmanjm which explains why my 3amp UBECs kept shutting down ;)
19:00 wolfmanjm I bought min eon ebay last week, love it
19:00 wolfmanjm should have gotten one of these a long time ago
19:00 orlock my Tek CRO has a built in DMM
19:00 orlock and my fluke is a bench meter as well
19:00 orlock Fluke 45, Tek 475
19:01 wolfmanjm I got the fluke 77 IV
19:01 wolfmanjm I needed the max/min/ave measurements
19:02 wolfmanjm all my other meters said I was drawing under 1amp :)
19:02 orlock Fluke and Tektronix are both owned by the same company
19:02 wolfmanjm but they were cheapo DVMs
19:02 orlock WHich also owns other companies that make high end robotics components
20:08 blockh34d wolfmanjm: bluetooth has a low power and a high power mode it allegedly auto-detects and switches to the lowest acceptable usage mode
20:08 blockh34d maybe your custom implementation would require specific manual settings to implement the low power mode
20:09 wolfmanjm the power is going to the servos, I have a separate battery running the edison and it runs for ever on a single charge so it isn;t the bluetooth. Plus the PS3 controller does not support BLE
20:10 blockh34d ah ok
20:11 SpeedEvil Bluetooth has many modes now
20:12 blockh34d cool i haven't really done much with it
20:12 blockh34d just reading up on it for when i do
20:20 xulf Hey
20:21 SpeedEvil hey
20:21 xulf Hey rue_shop3
20:21 theBear hurrrooooo
20:22 Halfwit theBear: heh
20:22 theBear rue school ? he learning or working ? and he ain't been around almost 24 hours, so he bound to turn up soon
20:50 xulf anyone ever make a robot that digs a hole
20:51 Halfwit I've thought of it.
20:52 Tom_itx does cnc count?
20:52 Halfwit Auger front, but I couldn't rectify how to deal with torque on the body. I guess you could rely on keel weighting, or something.
20:52 xulf I was thinking about just using a back hoe that I control
20:54 Halfwit Oh, sorry. I was thinking of how to route plumbing/electrical lines in a less intrusive manner, (and therefore, at a heavily reduced cost)
20:55 xulf most people use a pneumatic bore for that
20:56 xulf sometimes called pneumatic piercing
20:56 xulf I'm thinking of digging like a pool for example but making it automated
20:57 Halfwit Eh. Most people aren't nerds, though.
21:00 theBear heh
21:01 theBear rue has a couple gardening related bots, give or take, but i not sure about a holedigger, certainly not a pool digger :)
21:01 theBear i've recently been introduced to the world of err, horizontal boring ? not even sure what it's called, that's pretty heavy duty stuff, still 99% human-operated afaik
21:03 Halfwit I've worked a core drill, is that somewhat analagous to what you're referring toL?
21:03 Halfwit to *
21:04 theBear from what little i know about both subjects (i was brought in as a tech/electronics dude, not a operator, i'm too crippley these days) basically, just sideways... maybe, can you "steer" a core or are they just basically bigger versions of yer 2/4 man little core-bit drills ?
21:05 theBear actually probly a bit less heavy duty than coring bits, but steerable, and findable-under-ground so you can aim accurately even when yer silly-"deep", like halfway across a 6lane highway or whatever
21:06 Halfwit Ohh that'd be interesting
21:06 Tom_itx http://www.ditchwitch.com/directional-drills/directional-drills/jt5
21:07 theBear that's where i come in, things like wiring the aiming screen/radio units and working with the beacons, err, they call em some other word from memmory tho
21:07 theBear that's actually almost the exact model i'm most familiar with
21:07 theBear oh, it's a slidehow
21:07 theBear meh, they all look similar
21:08 theBear the electronics (the smart ones, not the starter key etc :) are made by another (us?) company tho, at least on the models i working with
21:08 Tom_itx dichwitch makes alot of them
21:10 theBear pretty cool stuff technically... he's also got a general kinda "super metal detector" kit, looks suspiciously like the tk series guidance thing at the bottom of the page... that's kinda cool... nothing too special, but various bandpass/freq-ignoring kinda options to avoid things like power lines blah blah, and much more modern than the other stuff (buddy owns the business/gear)
21:10 theBear mmm, i suspect ditchwitch come from here... i definately remember in primary school when the only thing they made was a kinda giant-chainsaw-on-a-trolley-platform, thus their name, and well, you can guess what that was for
21:11 Tom_itx still used here too
21:11 theBear i really should finish doing the fiddling i gotta do to the unit (small, remote thinger) in my laundry and get it back to him one day soon
21:12 xulf the mole finder thing is expensive
21:12 theBear tho i won't feel too bad in the meantime... he has his own habit of getting real excited about doing something then forgetting about it for a month or 6 :)
21:12 xulf the handheld device that tells you where you're boring
21:12 Tom_itx i did one manually under my driveway
21:12 theBear yeah, it's all super expensive stuff... lookup the beacon/puck/wtf they call 'em things that go in the tip/drillbit for locating
21:12 Tom_itx with a pipe and garden hose
21:13 xulf I was thinking about just using a metal detector or something else for trench less boring
21:13 theBear yeah, this is more 10s or 100s of thousand dollar jobs for govt/infrastructure dodging important stuff like gas and major trunk lines
21:13 theBear or whatever they got instead of trunks these days :)
21:16 xulf beacons shouldn't be that expensive. Look at the ones for wildlife or that thing you put on your keys that lets your iPhone find your keys
21:16 xulf all those things can be adapted to work in the ground
21:17 theBear nothing should be that expensive, but you get a worldwide known big name printed on anything, add a few regulations/approvals and suddenly everything is expensive
21:18 theBear i mean, the big engine heavy duty part, it's gotta be half as "complex" as a small car, but they don't sell many thousands a year, and the stuff i just mentioned, means they cost crazy money
21:19 theBear i wonder what those "GIANT circular saw" thingers they use to slice the edge off of rocks/mountains/mines these days cost, you know, giant steel "circular blade" maybe 20' or more dia... i bet they ain't cheap
21:21 xulf there's big profit on heavy large steel parts that are dumb
21:21 xulf like the directional drilling machine, it's basically just a hydraulic cylinder that pushes the rod
21:22 theBear those giant saw things blow my mind... just slicing thru frigging mountains like they were butter
21:22 theBear oh yeah, i'm the guy that "fixes" the electronics, it didn't take much headscratching to workout how the mechanical side works :)
21:23 theBear and the beacons are just a heavy-duty cased single-freq radio transmitter i'm 99% sure
21:24 theBear at most a specific-modulated version of the same, the newer models are certainly a lot more expensive than the older ones
21:25 theBear and i suspect the different freqs are more about range/penetration of varying "ground materials" than anything like interference
21:25 xulf I'm wondering how well "thetileapp" works in the ground
21:25 theBear ahh there it is .. "directional drilling/ers"
21:25 theBear the what ?
21:26 xulf there's directional horizontal boring too
21:26 xulf it controls the direction by twisting the pipe to the head pushes in a different direction
21:27 xulf the thetileapp is a little chip you put on everything you lose all the time and your phone will tell you how far away it is from you
21:27 xulf to help people find their remote control, keys, wallet, etc
21:29 xulf I was thinking about putting a tile chip on the end of a directional bore to tell where it is
21:31 xulf works at 100 feet using bluetooth so I imagine it can go through the ground at a few feet
21:34 theBear ahh... i'll have to look it up.. i don't lose a lotta things like some people seem to, but every few years i drink a bit more than usual, and do something like lose my phone in my own couch for a day (while feeling a bit worried/disappointed...) i always thought one of those rubber wristbands (like rfid commonly uses for pos systems etc) that vibrated when it lost contact with a phone would be the way to go, but tags/tiles for wallets and other
21:34 theBear things would make it extra useful
21:35 xulf i don't know what you would do if you lost your phone because this product is designed for you to use your phone to find other objects
21:36 xulf there's all kinds of other applications for this
21:36 xulf like kids can put one on their parents car so that they know when they're coming home
21:37 Hyratel xulf, thats why you have a house phone
21:37 xulf one could cut into the sole of a shoe and implant a tile chip
21:37 Hyratel a corded, non-wireless phone
21:37 Hyratel so you can call your phone
21:39 theBear mmm, in that example/idea you would be banking on the wristband being a little smart, or i suppose not loosing (AND not finding as soon as you start vibrating) your phone AND your tagged item(s) at the same time (so not-lost phone could tell wristband to vibrate if it lost the other tags, perhaps implying non-existant software also :))
21:39 theBear Hyratel, :)
21:39 theBear of course, like a month ago (2nd phone misplacement in err, ever) the one time you do lose your phone, the battery had just gone flat and thus it could not be called or wifi/bt-detected, sigh
21:40 xulf oh but you can use someone else's phone on this tile-app, it would let you track your phone if you put a tag/chip on it
21:41 xulf the other person just needs to download the app
21:41 theBear i been watching my server tho, i'm fairly sure it's in the house somewhere, and if not it was wiped/reset before being powered on with any kind of network (mob/any inet) 'cos homescreen widgets constantly update something off my server
21:41 theBear which is better than losing it AND having someone messing my email etc until passwords were updated
21:42 xulf what's worse is that people's email apps don't require a password
21:46 theBear mmm, made me really appreciate that the banking app insists on manually entering details (annoying as it can be when you are trying to hurry), and even consider putting a code/lock whatever on my fones in future, as much as they bug me (for example, if someones young child messes a code onto a friends fone, i'm the dude that has to deal with it... seeing everything from a repair perspective can jade you in some areas that normal people don't even
21:46 theBear notice)
21:46 xulf the only thing on my phone that asks for a password is my bank's app
21:48 xulf in theory you could copy the key chain off someone's phone and login to their accounts
21:48 xulf because you probably don't need a password to copy the key
21:48 theBear mm, same applies to the recently lost one of mine... but the server logs are reassuring, and while i was getting kinda fond of it ("between phones" for many years now, and had a tiny screen blackberry looking one for the year before it, plus i had it setup just nicely, and had a damned super-fast and expensive 32gb sdcard in there, only fast or big one i got/had) it WAS only a frankenfone made from literally 3 different ones in the spareparts/dead
21:48 theBear pile
21:49 theBear mmm, if it's a IOS fone it's way easier than jsut in theory, it's amazing the stuff you can pick outta those things without any real effort
21:51 xulf momentary physical access to a phone can lead to permanent access to a hacker that allows him to login from his device without a password
21:52 theBear mmm, fortunately (so far) it seems the only people that understand and can do that kind of thing, are people like us, and i'm assuming that like me, you aren't a thief and don't abuse these powers :)
21:53 Red_Onyx hello
21:57 theBear thieves are getting smarter tho... in the last maybe 10 years there have been two tech-naughties that kinda surprised/impressed me here... one round there was a bunch of "customized" pos/eftpos (checkout visa/bankcard machines) snuck into mcdonalds or some similar common big-company places across town, by guys disguised/acting as techs just doing routine maintenance/upgrades, but modified i suppose to send the money to the wrong bank accounts, and
21:57 theBear the other round was some surprisingly non-obvious little units that were placed in moneypoint/bankmachine-in-wall thingers more or less replacing the bezel where the card goes in, and were skimming stripes as the cards went past, never saw one outside the tvnews, but apparently some locations they also had cameras setup/hidden further away to see pin numbers to match the cards...
21:57 theBear both technically pretty advanced kinda crimes.... nothing AMAZING, but nothing your average idiot thief could do
22:00 xulf I dont understand all the effort to skim card numbers
22:01 xulf I think it just says the name, card number, and exp on the magnetic storage
22:01 Tom_itx here they've been tapping into the security cameras to get the pin as well
22:02 Tom_itx several branch ATM's have been hit recently
22:02 xulf the card numbers themselves have a scheme that is public, so you know if you have a valid number or not, which lets you generate them at all.. most of them will not be valid accounts but who cares, you can process a million of them a day rather easily
22:02 theBear but this isn't just credit cards, it woulda worked for "regular" card whatever you call it, not just visa/master/whatever
22:03 xulf and the expiration date isn't that hard to brute force either.. the name does NOT need to match, ever. Buy all you want on ebay under the name "Mr Pimp" and it will work
22:03 theBear and it's not the 90s anymore, just numbers ain't much use even if you can get the right expiry, cos of csv numbers that 90% of everyone wants before they accept visa
22:04 theBear and not that i ever tried, but i suspect bruting websites/whatever with visa details would almost always raise soem kinda flag
22:05 xulf there's people that have access to terminals that can push through millions of transactions a day easily
22:05 xulf I have one
22:05 xulf and all I need to do is match a four digit expiration with a card number that I can verify ahead of time, I don't need to send in the card number to check if it's valid
22:06 xulf so it's really just a matter of brute forcing the four digit expiration, no other information is required for the transaction to go through
22:06 xulf so I don't get these people that put all this effort into skimming CC information
22:07 theBear wtf ? what country are you in ? the banks have checked for a single registered caller-id source-number on machines here for MANY years
22:07 theBear unless your machine is 100% legit, in which case you must have some huge pendulous balls to be bruting with it
22:08 xulf well I would get cut off pretty fast I guess
22:09 xulf the four digits are always within five years from today's month, brute forcing it I imagine is really easy
22:11 xulf I've got the same issue with the ACH network. all you need is the number to debit a bank account. If you give me your bank account number and the name of the bank I can debt money out all day long
22:11 xulf it's dumb
22:11 xulf the whole system has no security
22:16 xulf so with bank account numbers on the ACH system you only have to match the account number with a routing number (which is public) and it will let you pull money out of that account, no questions asked
22:19 xulf if you don't have bad credit you can join the ACH network. It's that easy. There's no security at all. It's insane.
22:26 theBear mmm, moreso, not sure what it takes to get approved/access, but i recently found out how direct-debit works.... that's even worse, just having the details you normally give someone so they can pay YOU, and do nothing else, you know, acct and bsb, is enough for a direct-debit capable company to just pull money outta your account
22:59 Hyratel http://hackaday.com/2015/06/13/wifibroadcast-makes-wifi-fpv-video-more-like-analog/