#robotics Logs
Apr 08 2017
#robotics Calendar
12:15 AM rue_shop3: http://hackaday.com/2017/04/06/3d-printed-key-code-is-plastic-digital-logic/
03:22 AM Jak_o_Shadows: 3D printing the hexapod end plate
03:22 AM Jak_o_Shadows: ie. the quadrapod end-of-ribcage plate.
03:22 AM Jak_o_Shadows: It's the biggest thing, in terms of width/length, that I've ever printed.
03:23 AM Jak_o_Shadows: I did lower the extrusion multiplier - only 150% for the base layer. still needs go down a bit I think
03:23 AM Jak_o_Shadows: I can probably speed up the base layer speeds
03:26 AM zhanx: Jak_o_Shadows: Got a sound card?
03:32 AM Jak_o_Shadows: Erm. Not a separate one.
03:32 AM Jak_o_Shadows: If you can point out a cheap one that has gameport support though, I'm all ears
03:33 AM zhanx: https://soundcloud.com/valerie-jensen-1/the-house-that-built-me
03:33 AM zhanx: most are usb now days
03:34 AM Jak_o_Shadows: Yeah. Not sure how many have gameport.
03:34 AM Jak_o_Shadows: Suppose I'll have have to port that adaptor firmware from teensy to stm32
03:34 AM zhanx: i am doing can bus right now
03:44 AM Jak_o_Shadows: Nice
03:44 AM Jak_o_Shadows: That's a future project
10:42 AM branjb: are there any good hardware stores in the US that sell extruded aluminum in a brick and mortar?
10:42 AM Tom_L: sure
10:43 AM Tom_L: now..
10:43 AM Tom_L: are there any hardware stores in the US that sell good extruded aluminum
10:43 AM Tom_L: probably not
10:43 AM branjb: haha
10:56 AM jesseg_ is now known as jesseg
11:33 AM SpeedEvil: scaffolding poles.
12:14 PM anniepoo: Ace hardware has a small selection. The same selection is sold by Home Depot/
12:16 PM robopal: what does "brick and mortar" mean in this context?
12:26 PM deshipu: robopal: physical shop
12:31 PM robopal: ah yes ok
12:31 PM robopal: didnt read it properly
12:37 PM jandor: hi
12:38 PM rue_house: hmm what out ther for force sensors
12:39 PM rue_house: eeeeek! $9 ea!
12:40 PM jandor: does anyone work with gazebo here?
12:41 PM rue_house: only the occasional people hwo come in, ask, and then leave
12:41 PM rue_house: if they stuck around, yes, there would be
12:42 PM jandor: :(
12:42 PM jandor: ok
12:42 PM jandor: so, what sim then?
12:42 PM rue_house: player/ stage
12:43 PM jandor: really?
12:43 PM jandor: is it still alive?
12:43 PM rue_house: such is my understanding
12:43 PM jandor: I thought that player is dead long ago
12:43 PM rue_house: gazebo aint no spring chicken either
12:44 PM jandor: true
12:44 PM jandor: but they still do releases
12:45 PM jandor: ok, I'm here not for arguing
12:45 PM jandor: I'm just curious
12:45 PM jandor: what sims are used now and by whom
12:45 PM jandor: I've seen VRep, Gazebo and morse
12:45 PM jandor: what else is out there?
12:46 PM anniepoo: hi
12:46 PM rue_house: I dont know of anything else, only university people use that stuff, and there are almost no university people here
12:47 PM rue_house: those of us who do anything, actually make stuff
12:47 PM anniepoo: yah, honestly, I looked at gazebo and wasn't sure what it was buying me
12:47 PM anniepoo: like much of ROS, it has a high cost of entry and a low return on it
12:48 PM anniepoo: while I'm doing simulation on the snail, doing it in blender's just as effective,
12:49 PM jandor: blender?
12:49 PM jandor: ok...
12:49 PM jandor: any tutorials for that?
12:49 PM anniepoo: yes, about a billion
12:50 PM jandor: I'll write down blender as an option , thx
12:50 PM anniepoo: blender's a widely used animation program
12:50 PM jandor: we're stuck with TOS/Gazebo for now, but I'm not happy with it
12:50 PM jandor: yes, I know, I didn't know you can actually do simulations there
12:51 PM jandor: and what about controlling your robots inside that simulation?
12:51 PM jandor: how do you do it?
12:51 PM anniepoo: I'm still putting this all together
12:51 PM anniepoo: so I'm talking blue sky here
12:52 PM anniepoo: but my intent is to wire the robot control in using blender's python scripting
12:53 PM anniepoo: I have a model of the robot, rigged
12:54 PM jandor: ok...
12:54 PM anniepoo: I'll be able to attach to the MQTT message broker that robot messages go through
12:54 PM jandor: is it in blender's format?
12:54 PM anniepoo: and use the normal robot controls
12:54 PM anniepoo: what's 'it' in your sentence?
12:54 PM jandor: what is 'normal' here?
12:54 PM jandor: it - your model
12:54 PM anniepoo: yes
12:54 PM jandor: or is it in some interchangeable format
12:54 PM jandor: ah, ok
12:54 PM anniepoo: my model was made in blender.
12:55 PM anniepoo: I could be convinced I'm making my life hard.
12:55 PM jandor: can't say so, never tried that
12:55 PM anniepoo: but the little I experimented with Gazebo, it just seemed like a pale version of a real 3D package
12:56 PM jandor: so, is blender's simulation faster then gazebo ?
12:56 PM jandor: and what physics engine is used there?
12:56 PM anniepoo: you can do physics with blender. Honestly, I'm not anticipating doing much physics based simulation
12:57 PM jandor: and what is "normal robot control" ?
12:57 PM anniepoo: there's several pluggable choices for physics engines
12:57 PM anniepoo: so, I'm building an animatronic robotic snail
12:57 PM anniepoo: so my concerns are mostly things like getting good animations
12:58 PM jandor: ah
12:58 PM anniepoo: now, I will have the limitation that the animations also have to be something the servos can acutally do
12:58 PM jandor: sure
12:58 PM anniepoo: so I'll exercise the physical robot, get a gamut for the servo phase space
12:59 PM jandor: and you have to simulate servos
12:59 PM anniepoo: and then write a tool that checks animations for exceeding the gamut
12:59 PM jandor: aha
12:59 PM jandor: got it, cool
01:00 PM jandor: gamut
01:00 PM jandor: what a word
01:01 PM anniepoo: 8cD
01:01 PM jandor: I'm still learning english, you know
01:01 PM jandor: googled it and liked it a lot
01:01 PM jandor: gamut
01:01 PM anniepoo: 8cP gotta be hell being in tech if english isn't your first language
01:01 PM anniepoo: I learned Hindi as an adult. Hardest thing I've ever done, and my Hindi's still pretty poor
01:02 PM jandor: well I read fluently, that's almost all that is needed
01:02 PM anniepoo: anyway, blender is an animation program.
01:03 PM anniepoo: it's what you use to make a 3D model of a house, then animate a guy walking thru it, and render that out to make a film like Avatar or something
01:03 PM anniepoo: never intended for robotics
01:03 PM anniepoo: but robotics and 3D graphics share a lot of underlying principles
01:04 PM anniepoo: and, sadly, organizations like willow garage had a strong 'not invented here' syndrome
01:04 PM jandor: lol
01:04 PM jandor: good one
01:04 PM jandor: I made a pull request to one of ros's basic libs
01:05 PM anniepoo: but Blender seems to me a good platform to base a ROS on
01:05 PM anniepoo: I used to work for a social robotics company, RoboKind
01:05 PM jandor: they still argue, whenever apply my patch to the lib intended or push it in more general lib
01:05 PM anniepoo: they had the same problem - thought they had to build their own toolchain from scratch, so we had a bunch of crappy in house tools
01:05 PM jandor: or is it wherever
01:06 PM anniepoo: I'm trying to find good tools, wherever they come from
01:06 PM jandor: well, I think you have to build your own tools at some point
01:07 PM jandor: you might then put them aside
01:07 PM jandor: but you have to build it to understand the problem
01:07 PM anniepoo: well, I've been building software since 1975
01:08 PM jandor: wow
01:08 PM jandor: and what do you think about what I said?
01:08 PM jandor: is that true?
01:08 PM anniepoo: I agree that you don't really understand a problem until you've built the tools
01:09 PM jandor: ^_^
01:09 PM anniepoo: but I know from experience that everything takes longer, costs more, and that you're not actually any smarter than the other engineer
01:09 PM anniepoo: so only start from scratch if you can't start from somewhere further along
01:11 PM jandor: agreed
01:11 PM anniepoo: anyway tell me more about gazebo
01:12 PM anniepoo: cause I do have an imp on my shoulder telling me to use ROS
01:12 PM jandor: well
01:12 PM jandor: first, you have to implement your robot as an URDF model
01:13 PM jandor: you can't just use gazebo's SDF format
01:13 PM jandor: because then most of ROS packages won't be able to use it
01:13 PM jandor: so URDF
01:13 PM anniepoo: ok
01:14 PM jandor: not big deal, you can do a tool for generating it, there is a xacro tool for xml macros, or you can write your own thing
01:14 PM jandor: and then all hell breaks loose
01:15 PM jandor: to work with gazebo, you have to properly specify a lot of coefficients
01:15 PM jandor: physycs
01:15 PM anniepoo: ok, so urdf is older version of sdf?
01:15 PM jandor: I believe so
01:15 PM jandor: since they have much in common
01:15 PM anniepoo: but gazebo's not been updated - basically
01:15 PM jandor: not been updated?
01:16 PM jandor: there releasing 8 version soon
01:16 PM jandor: it is being heavily developed no
01:16 PM jandor: now
01:16 PM anniepoo: I'm asking
01:16 PM anniepoo: so why don't they share a file format?
01:16 PM jandor: gazebo can use urdf
01:16 PM anniepoo: seems like it's missing the point of ROS
01:16 PM jandor: gazebo can open and use urdf and convert it to sdf automatically
01:17 PM jandor: but other packages of ROS can't use gazebo's SDF
01:17 PM anniepoo: I see
01:17 PM jandor: so might add some of gazebo's specifics right into urdf
01:17 PM jandor: urdf has a xpecial tag for that
01:18 PM jandor: '<gazebo>"
01:18 PM jandor: not a surprize, right
01:18 PM anniepoo: okey dokey
01:18 PM jandor: so then, in this tag, you gave to specify a lot of physics properties
01:19 PM jandor: like friction coefficients, friction direction, bouncyness etc
01:19 PM anniepoo: ok
01:19 PM jandor: sometimes you have to specify some properties for underlying physical engine
01:19 PM jandor: most of the time it is ODE
01:19 PM anniepoo: 8cD this is why I've found this sorta thing less useful
01:20 PM jandor: you know, I'm trying to write an article on that thing
01:20 PM jandor: because there is a lot of info, but it kinda sparse
01:20 PM jandor: some outdated ros / gazebo tutorials or docs
01:20 PM jandor: ODE manual
01:20 PM jandor: and so on
01:21 PM anniepoo: we didn't use ROS at work. I convince myself the pro thing to do is to learn it, but every time I start into it, I run into that
01:21 PM anniepoo: lots of versions, lots of outdated info
01:21 PM anniepoo: it just all feels like it was designed by some defense contractor
01:22 PM anniepoo: stupid question - what's the point of having your own file system?
01:22 PM anniepoo: roscd, etc.?
01:22 PM jandor: what I learned, it is better to look at the sources directly instead of trying to use their docs
01:22 PM jandor: most of the time
01:22 PM jandor: it is not a file system actually
01:23 PM jandor: they were trying to build a system-independent layer
01:23 PM jandor: I think so
01:23 PM anniepoo: Xcp
01:23 PM jandor: so I use roscd quite a lot
01:23 PM jandor: what is xcp?
01:23 PM anniepoo: I tell myself I sholdn't be down on ROS til I know it beter
01:24 PM anniepoo: my smiley -
01:24 PM anniepoo: X is closed eyes, p is tongue out
01:24 PM anniepoo: 8cD <-- me in happier times
01:24 PM jandor: guys were asking me "why use ros, we can build our own system"
01:26 PM jandor: and then I was like "Okay, guys, what do we need? a communication server? check. some standard mechanism for passing messages? check. some message description rules? check - we do that and we just build ourselves another ROS"
01:26 PM anniepoo: ok, but there are many messaging systems.
01:26 PM jandor: sure
01:26 PM jandor: but you know, at this point they're quite similar
01:26 PM anniepoo: I'm a prolog programmer in my day job, so a homoiconic messaging system makes more sense to me, and that doesn't require message description rules
01:26 PM jandor: isomorphous for us
01:27 PM jandor: have you worked with visual prolog?
01:27 PM anniepoo: yup
01:27 PM anniepoo: oh, no, not much - I know what it is
01:27 PM jandor: so that's exactly your point - why build it ourselves if there is ROS already
01:27 PM anniepoo: I'm a commiter on SWI-Prolog
01:28 PM anniepoo: yes
01:28 PM jandor: never used swi
01:28 PM anniepoo: but then I start into ROS, and find myself in some hell of dealing with ROS
01:28 PM jandor: I worked with Arity
01:28 PM anniepoo: ah, very nice
01:28 PM jandor: arity is love
01:28 PM jandor: arity is life
01:28 PM jandor: it was dynamic
01:29 PM anniepoo: funny how broken up the prolog community is
01:29 PM jandor: do you still use swi?
01:29 PM anniepoo: yes
01:30 PM anniepoo: in fact if I wasn't talking with you I'd be working on some stuff for swish
01:30 PM jandor: I have to google homoiconic
01:30 PM anniepoo: so you work for Arity?
01:30 PM anniepoo: or just use Arity Prolog?
01:31 PM anniepoo: http://www.arity.com/ <-- these folks?
01:31 PM jandor: I used it only
01:31 PM jandor: not working for them
01:32 PM jandor: no, not them
01:32 PM jandor: http://www.edm2.com/index.php/Arity/Prolog
01:34 PM anniepoo: so is the ROS work for day job?
01:35 PM anniepoo: sorry to be asking questions, but we're really headed similar directions,
01:35 PM anniepoo: which is pretty rare
01:35 PM anniepoo: 8cD
01:38 PM jandor: well it kind of a work job
01:38 PM jandor: I work for university where we're starting a robotech department
01:38 PM anniepoo: I see
01:38 PM jandor: nobody knows anything
01:38 PM anniepoo: neat
01:38 PM jandor: we tried to work with a large android first
01:38 PM jandor: and got to know ros/gazebo/etc
01:39 PM anniepoo: reasonable
01:39 PM jandor: now we have abandoned it in favor of our own little bot
01:39 PM jandor: and our knowledge got handy
01:40 PM anniepoo: I have a day job in anomalometry , writing SWI-Prolog
01:41 PM anniepoo: I'm also half owner of http://theelginworks.com
01:41 PM jandor: let me see
01:41 PM anniepoo: I'm a former RoboKind employee, I'm interested in social robotics
01:42 PM anniepoo: Im also a contributor to SWI-Prolog
01:42 PM jandor: I work with python mostly and to some little things here and there
01:43 PM anniepoo: the snail's a side project, not exactly a hobby, but not exactly a commercial project
01:43 PM jandor: like that : https://github.com/eugene-katsevman/keeper
01:43 PM anniepoo: for the elgin works
01:43 PM jandor: how do you control the snail?
01:44 PM jandor: we ended up with simple text-based protocol for our bot
01:44 PM anniepoo: I'm not quite there yet
01:44 PM jandor: so one can connect it to usb and start playing with it without any kind of special software
01:44 PM anniepoo: the snail plays animations - like a computer game, you blend animations atop each other
01:44 PM anniepoo: in real time, you can communicate commands to the snail
01:44 PM jandor: and since protocol is simple and text-based, we can really pipe any commands into usb
01:45 PM anniepoo: (again, vaporware so far)
01:45 PM anniepoo: yes - the snail's on an mqtt message server
01:45 PM anniepoo: so you just inject messages from wherever
01:45 PM jandor: haven't used that yet
01:46 PM jandor: is it better than any other approach?
01:46 PM anniepoo: but I have an 'air mouse' that will probably be what I use for real time control
01:46 PM anniepoo: well, I didn't want to invent own message server
01:47 PM jandor: I mean...
01:47 PM jandor: well
01:47 PM anniepoo: and MQTT was intended for internet of tghings - so basically like a robot, lots of short messages, going to low cpu devices
01:47 PM jandor: you have a snail
01:47 PM jandor: how it is connected to server?
01:47 PM jandor: who wrote an mqtt client?
01:47 PM anniepoo: >8@_ <-- annie has a snail
01:48 PM anniepoo: the snail's main cpu is a Raspberry Pi 3
01:48 PM anniepoo: it has 802.11n
01:48 PM jandor: ah
01:48 PM jandor: ok, got it
01:48 PM anniepoo: the snail runs python programs that talk to the mqtt broker on the server
01:49 PM jandor: how rpi is connected to servos?
01:49 PM jandor: directly thru gpio?
01:49 PM jandor: or you use some kind of a shield
01:49 PM anniepoo: via a shield that handles 16 at a time
01:49 PM jandor: twi maybe
01:49 PM anniepoo: it's got it's own cpu, talks over I2C
01:50 PM jandor: yep
01:50 PM jandor: almost same here
01:50 PM jandor: but we use uart
01:50 PM jandor: to simplify communications
01:50 PM anniepoo: I used this consumer-ish stuff because I have limited time to work on this, it was all neatly packaged for hobbyists
01:50 PM jandor: so you can "intercept" it easily
01:50 PM jandor: there is nothing wrong with this approach
01:51 PM anniepoo: re controlling the robot - I'm also going to experiment with using gestures and a kinect
01:51 PM jandor: with your aproach, i mean
01:51 PM anniepoo: the robot's purpose is to interact with children in educational setting
01:52 PM anniepoo: so having a covert control I can use while also being 'on stage' myself is needed
01:52 PM jandor: covert?
01:52 PM anniepoo: I'll have to get all this acutally working to know what will work in practice
01:52 PM jandor: ah, translated that one
01:52 PM anniepoo: yes - Annie stands up with Pomatia (the snail)
01:53 PM anniepoo: Annie wants snail to do something, annie has a small control in her hand
01:53 PM jandor: ... I just realised you're not a guy
01:53 PM anniepoo: I'm experimenting with the controller salespeople use to control powerpoint
01:54 PM anniepoo: no, I'm not a guy
01:54 PM jandor: :) ok
01:54 PM jandor: now I know what the covert is
01:54 PM jandor: we've played with inverse kinematics as well
01:55 PM jandor: with a home-built tool
01:55 PM anniepoo: yah, it's strange - these things are so common in the 3D world
01:55 PM jandor: so may be it'll be apropriate there as well
01:56 PM anniepoo: that's pretty much my architecture
01:56 PM anniepoo: python libs read low level stuff on robot, including camera
01:56 PM jandor: same here
01:56 PM anniepoo: put it all on mqtt
01:57 PM jandor: almost same here, but ros instead
01:57 PM anniepoo: SWI-Prolog program talks to MQTT
01:58 PM anniepoo: I've worked a lot in games, a robot, at least a social one like this, is basically a game character
01:58 PM jandor: in what sense?
01:58 PM anniepoo: it reacts to it's environment
01:59 PM anniepoo: keeping things reactive and frame based helps
01:59 PM jandor: what you mean by frame-based?
01:59 PM anniepoo: but at this point I'm talking thru my hat
02:00 PM anniepoo: (sorry, english idiom - means 'I don't have real experience, I'm speculating')
02:00 PM anniepoo: computer games have one big loop
02:00 PM jandor: what is frame-based? do you mean key-frames?
02:00 PM jandor: with interpolation
02:00 PM anniepoo: they run the AI for each character and figure out what it'll do on the next frame, and move it (animate = move + maybe other stuff)
02:01 PM anniepoo: then render a frame
02:01 PM anniepoo: and repeat
02:01 PM jandor: you still have to do interpolation on the robot's side
02:01 PM jandor: so motions won't be ragged
02:01 PM anniepoo: character behavior is computed each frame, so characters don't engage in stale behavior
02:01 PM jandor: or what the word is
02:01 PM anniepoo: no, you decided I meant keyframes
02:02 PM anniepoo: I didn't
02:02 PM anniepoo: I mean frames
02:02 PM anniepoo: the interpolation between keyframes is done by blender when the animation is rendered
02:03 PM anniepoo: animations stored on the robot are every frame
02:03 PM jandor: I still think you have to have interpolation on robot's side. There will be some, since servos have some inertia, though
02:03 PM jandor: but that depends on a framerate
02:03 PM anniepoo: yes
02:04 PM anniepoo: no, I'll precompute all that
02:04 PM jandor: sorry for being too insistent on that, but we had some troubles
02:04 PM jandor: I don't know if mqtt is good
02:05 PM anniepoo: the only interpolation on the robot will be some simple PDI
02:05 PM anniepoo: I will definitely do that.
02:05 PM anniepoo: though experimenting with the driver package I'm using, so far just commanding position has worked ok
02:06 PM anniepoo: but I don't have the robot body fully assembled
02:06 PM anniepoo: so haven't tested with full mass
02:06 PM anniepoo: body mockup shots
02:06 PM anniepoo: https://www.instagram.com/anneogborn/
02:06 PM anniepoo: 3 minutes -
02:07 PM rue_house: void SimotaniouslyLinearlyInterpolateMultiAxis(axies2_t * this) {
02:08 PM rue_house: haha, conversation stopper
02:09 PM jandor: yep, everybody waits for a continuation
02:09 PM rue_house: float longest, i;
02:09 PM rue_house: ok?
02:09 PM anniepoo: back
02:10 PM rue_house: void SimotaniouslyLinearlyInterpolateMultiAxis(axies2_t * this) {
02:10 PM anniepoo: I have RSI, like most old programmers
02:10 PM jandor: do you use a vertical mouse?
02:10 PM anniepoo: I have a program that makes me get away from computer for 3 minutes every hour
02:10 PM anniepoo: no, tried a vertical mouse
02:12 PM jandor: my frield uses it
02:12 PM jandor: he got an rsi while preparing his thesis
02:12 PM anniepoo: so yes, I'll run a higher frame rate on the robot than the animation frame rate and interpolate
02:12 PM anniepoo: and I'll blend animations in real time
02:12 PM jandor: okay, sounds good )
02:12 PM anniepoo: this is why I chose blender
02:12 PM jandor: hey rue
02:12 PM jandor: you have a typo in your function name
02:12 PM anniepoo: it gives me all this stuff free.
02:12 PM rue_house: :)
02:13 PM anniepoo: and it gives me a node editor I can use to set up CV chain and such tools
02:13 PM anniepoo: I believe in keeping tech stacks short
02:13 PM anniepoo: blender was center of a minimum tech stack packing
02:13 PM anniepoo: and g'mornin rue
02:13 PM jandor: what is CV chain? Computer vision pipeline?
02:13 PM anniepoo: yes
02:14 PM rue_house: http://ruemohr.org/~ircjunk/robots/arm9/roboplayer.tgz
02:14 PM jandor: what's that
02:14 PM jandor: player implementation for ARM?
02:14 PM rue_house: its for playing the axis recording files for the robot arms
02:14 PM rue_house: it uses the interpolator iirc
02:15 PM rue_house: yup, its in there
02:15 PM jandor: what is iirc
02:15 PM rue_house: if i recall correctly
02:15 PM jandor: I'm not quite familiar with terminology, you know
02:15 PM jandor: thx
02:15 PM rue_house: uses a few of my libs
02:16 PM rue_house: SSC8Spooler
02:16 PM rue_house: genservo
02:16 PM rue_house: interlin2
02:16 PM rue_house: returnvalues
02:16 PM jandor: I'm glad I came here
02:16 PM rue_house: servoarm
02:16 PM rue_house: servo array
02:16 PM rue_house: ssls3 (super simple linux serial)
02:16 PM rue_house: transbuffer
02:16 PM rue_house: transformer
02:17 PM jandor: lol, so u use a text protocol too?
02:17 PM anniepoo: hey jandor, glad yer here
02:17 PM rue_house: no, the SSC8 is binary
02:17 PM rue_house: 3 byte packets
02:17 PM jandor: what about pointTest etc?
02:17 PM rue_house: er 0
02:17 PM rue_house: er 4
02:18 PM rue_house: pointTest?
02:18 PM jandor: commandInterface.txt
02:18 PM jandor: ok, perhaps I misinterpreted that
02:20 PM jandor: how did you send me that message?
02:20 PM jandor: could you enlighten me a bit?
02:21 PM anniepoo: hey jandor, would you like to have access to my design docs for the snail? they're on google docs
02:33 PM anniepoo: ok, continuing convo started on pm
02:33 PM jandor: I'm going to have some food, will be back in 20 minutes or so
02:33 PM anniepoo: ok, tytl
02:33 PM anniepoo: ttyl
02:34 PM anniepoo: nice seeing you here, hope you become a regular
02:48 PM jandor: I didn't know you might but a camera lens replacement
02:48 PM jandor: we have two usb3 cameras with decent framerate and resolution, but no lens
02:48 PM jandor: good to know
02:49 PM jandor: buY
02:49 PM anniepoo: yes, the new lenses are a definite improvement
02:49 PM anniepoo: getting the old lens off wasn't as scary as I thought it might be
02:52 PM jandor: what's servo HAT?
02:53 PM jandor: I had a LOT of troubles with pocketsphinx
02:53 PM jandor: or I just couldn't construct a proper grammatics file
02:53 PM jandor: too many false positives
02:54 PM anniepoo: speech recognition's pretty hefty, I'll probably foist it off to the server
02:56 PM jandor: may I borrow some of your insights on childproof robotics?
02:57 PM anniepoo: lol - sure. If you do anything serious/publishable in that area, I'd like to be
02:57 PM anniepoo: in on it
02:57 PM anniepoo: but go for it
02:58 PM jandor: ok
02:58 PM jandor: thx )
02:58 PM anniepoo: I'm actively looking for a univ lab to work with
02:58 PM jandor: \notice rue_house good servo tutorial, btw
02:59 PM jandor: \notice
02:59 PM jandor: :\
02:59 PM jandor: \note
03:00 PM anniepoo: what are you finding useful in that stuff?
03:01 PM jandor: these word, "childproof", catched my eye
03:01 PM jandor: this little bot we're building is intended for children, too
03:01 PM jandor: if you consider a 15-20 yrs old still childish
03:02 PM jandor: so I'm yet to look closely on what you have there
03:02 PM jandor: for now, we're 3d printing most of our details
03:02 PM jandor: and we don't know if there are breakable or not
03:03 PM jandor: since we dont try to break them yet )
03:04 PM jandor: if theY
03:04 PM anniepoo: well, we'd love to be involved with you all some how.
03:05 PM jandor: I'll talk to our people )
03:05 PM jandor: I'm from Russia, btw
03:05 PM jandor: kazan federal university, former kazan state
03:06 PM anniepoo: but yes, robots move around and interact with environment, survivability is an issue
03:06 PM anniepoo: Cool!
03:07 PM anniepoo: we have a spinoff doing remote manufacturing startup, part of that work is done in Estonia
03:09 PM jandor: .com
03:10 PM jandor: sorry, wrong window
03:55 PM jandor: hey rue
03:55 PM jandor: do digital servos hace proper PID controller built in?
03:55 PM jandor: or is it just P?
04:00 PM deshipu: depends on the particular servo, I suppose
05:00 PM anniepoo: anybody want to do hours?
05:09 PM jandor: do what?
05:15 PM deshipu: chorus?
05:18 PM anniepoo: hi
05:18 PM anniepoo: hours is a productivity thing
05:18 PM anniepoo: we've done it a couple times here
05:18 PM anniepoo: basically those who are interested say what they'll do in the next hour
05:19 PM anniepoo: and in an hour we come back and say what we did
05:19 PM anniepoo: 8cD
05:19 PM anniepoo: simple, suprisingly effective in actually getting stuff done
05:20 PM jandor: is there a scoreboard of some kind?
05:20 PM anniepoo: nope
05:21 PM anniepoo: it's not so much 'task master' as 'help focusing'
05:23 PM anniepoo: in next hour I'll complete the estimate for this casting job, and try to call Mike again, and finish cleaning up the laser room
05:23 PM anniepoo: what are you all doing?
05:25 PM jandor: playing world of warships
05:25 PM anniepoo: ok
05:25 PM anniepoo: do you have a specific goal?
05:25 PM jandor: not yet
05:26 PM jandor: I have some issues with that
05:26 PM jandor: goal -setting
05:26 PM anniepoo: 8cD
05:27 PM jandor: I've sent you a repo address on github
05:27 PM jandor: two years ago I've started another home project - a tool for long term planning
05:27 PM jandor: this worked for a while
05:28 PM jandor: now it is not
05:28 PM jandor: similar to org-mode in some way
05:29 PM jandor: but if this hours work for you - this is good and I'm a little envy
05:30 PM jandor: those
05:33 PM anniepoo: yes, saw the rep
05:33 PM anniepoo: yes, saw the repo
05:34 PM anniepoo: the hours thing works for me
05:34 PM anniepoo: and for some other folks
05:34 PM anniepoo: the LT planner thing, I don't need, but know somebody who'se interested in such things
05:34 PM anniepoo: so it's all good
05:36 PM jandor: could you connect us? may be he'll give me some insights on that thing
05:36 PM anniepoo: sure
05:36 PM jandor: thank you
05:39 PM anniepoo: I know I opened the github page for this, but now I can't find it
05:39 PM anniepoo: what's the repo again?
05:39 PM anniepoo: nvm, found iut
06:32 PM jandor: how goes it?
06:33 PM anniepoo: hey
06:33 PM anniepoo: did most of it. can't complete estimate without actually finding mike, and having trobule doing that
06:34 PM anniepoo: how went world of warships?
06:49 PM jandor: not bad
06:50 PM anniepoo: good
06:51 PM anniepoo: So, this hour I'm just going to get started on SWISH work
06:56 PM jandor: is swish used in education?
06:57 PM jandor: ah, I see
07:01 PM jandor: anniepoo, may I see any of your code?
07:01 PM jandor: in prolog
07:05 PM anniepoo: hang on
07:05 PM anniepoo: https://github.com/Anniepoo/
07:05 PM anniepoo: most things in there are mine
07:05 PM jandor: k, thx
07:14 PM jandor: I wonder if "keeper" is rewritten to prolog, will it be more "natural" ?
07:35 PM anniepoo: probably would be
07:38 PM anniepoo: ok, sorry, was on phone
07:38 PM anniepoo: looks like it's mostly a planner, and that's a natural thing to do in Prollog
07:42 PM Tom_L: whassup?
07:42 PM anniepoo: hey Tom
07:42 PM jandor: hi
07:56 PM anniepoo: 8cD
07:57 PM Tom_L: didn't mean to kill the chatter...
08:06 PM jandor: you didn't
08:06 PM jandor: we were quiet for some time )
08:56 PM Jak_o_Shadows: aaand of course the print failed 5 minutes after I left home
08:56 PM Jak_o_Shadows: (I left it supervised by people)
11:00 PM rue_house: of course, and wouldn't have if you had just done your job, sat there, and watched it print!
11:04 PM branjb: lol
11:04 PM branjb: seriously
11:04 PM branjb: prints only succeed if you watch them
11:05 PM Jak_o_Shadows: Well, I could recover with pronterface
11:05 PM Jak_o_Shadows: Bugger if I know why it died. It just wasn't sending stuff
11:06 PM rue_house: heh, good luck on recovery
11:07 PM rue_house: I had a connector to the head heater blow up on me, which caused a temp alarm and stopped a print
11:07 PM rue_house: I decided that the low temp alarm might be a good thing
11:07 PM rue_house: I was going to remove it
11:14 PM Jak_o_Shadows: Yeah. Recovery mode made it a bit misaligned.
11:14 PM Jak_o_Shadows: But you know, roughly fixed that.
11:15 PM Jak_o_Shadows: I keep meaning to put some high temp cut-offs in line with power lines.
11:34 PM rue_shop3: mmhmmm