#robotics Logs

Jun 28 2017

#robotics Calendar

12:21 AM rue_house: I need to work out a screw sorter machine
12:24 AM rue_house: I'm kinda torn between the pneumatic ideas and the robot arm ideas
12:24 AM rue_house: I have 4 robot arms
12:24 AM rue_house: I suppose I dont have to hold up the first robot on placing hte screw
12:31 AM hypodyne: well I know how they sort oranges, and coins.
12:31 AM hypodyne: screws would be a bit trickier.
12:34 AM hypodyne: i guess you could use that new machine learning api.. take a photo of each screw, match it to a database.
12:35 AM rue_house: knowing where to put them is done
12:35 AM rue_house: I need to work out how to get them into ~60 bins
12:48 AM Anniepoo_: rue hows it going?
12:50 AM rue_house: I'm stuck deliberating
12:51 AM Anniepoo_: you are
12:55 AM rue_house: I have lots of solinoids
12:57 AM Anniepoo_: seems like a good thing
12:58 AM rue_house: I could make an xy conveyor maybe
12:58 AM rue_house: or a tall sylindrical robot?
12:58 AM rue_house: a silo manager?
12:58 AM rue_house: c
12:59 AM Anniepoo_: do the simplest thing
12:59 AM rue_house: I'm not sure what that is yet
01:00 AM rue_house: the pneumatic thing could be a problem if a screw gets stuck in a pipe at a coupling
01:00 AM rue_house: the robot arms dont ahve much workspace, so they couldn't do a large work area
01:00 AM rue_house: ... goes without saying eh?
01:01 AM rue_house: "being red makes it an awefly deep shade of pink"
01:01 AM Anniepoo_: yes
01:01 AM Anniepoo_: its the hard part of engineering
01:01 AM rue_house: i can see making bins from pvc pipe
01:04 AM rue_house: 99% of the screws are steel
01:05 AM Anniepoo_: hmm
01:06 AM rue_house: I see a honeycomb of pvc pipe ends
01:06 AM Anniepoo_: magnetic manipulation
01:06 AM rue_house: and I'd like to pour the screws into them
01:06 AM rue_house: (its one at a time)
01:07 AM Anniepoo_: OOoh - make a bunch of electromagnets, put them under a plate (mdf?)
01:07 AM rue_house: ... hmm like those microrobots
01:07 AM rue_house: drive them to their destinations
01:07 AM Anniepoo_: yes
01:07 AM rue_house: I thought you were encouraging me to make a simple solution?
01:08 AM Anniepoo_: I am
01:08 AM rue_house: ... right
01:08 AM Anniepoo_: ok, variation
01:09 AM Anniepoo_: make a something that presents screws one at a time on a plate and then lets it fall to right or left
01:09 AM rue_house: oh
01:09 AM rue_house: and binary tree it
01:09 AM rue_house: I wonder if I could do that witout them getting too bouncy
01:09 AM Anniepoo_: run everything thru sorting out just one sorta screw
01:10 AM Anniepoo_: then return others to hopper
01:10 AM rue_house: thinking on your idea
01:10 AM rue_house: na, for the 60000 screws it would take toooooo long
01:10 AM Anniepoo_: 86400 seconds in a day
01:10 AM Anniepoo_: yah, it'd take 9 months or so
01:13 AM rue_house: I think some kinda big xy robot is the best way
01:13 AM rue_house: I could break it into 100 bins easy
01:15 AM rue_house: !!!!
01:15 AM rue_house: I have a medical chemistry analizer
01:15 AM Anniepoo_: magnets tend to make screws hang vaguely vertical
01:15 AM rue_house: its got an XY system for the little pipe things
01:15 AM Anniepoo_: do you have a CNC router?
01:15 AM rue_house: ooo
01:15 AM Anniepoo_: oh, yes, a lab robot would be good
01:16 AM rue_house: or, what if I did a REALLLY long 1 axis?
01:16 AM Anniepoo_: that's my 'train' idea
01:17 AM rue_house: hmm
01:17 AM rue_house: if each pvc bin is 1.25"
01:18 AM rue_house: 6 feet for 64 bins
01:18 AM rue_house: but I could dump to left or right, giving me 128 bins
01:18 AM rue_house: waaaait
01:18 AM Anniepoo_: spiral
01:18 AM rue_house: oh, go polar on it
01:18 AM rue_house: but then I might as well do xy
01:19 AM rue_house: if I take a train
01:19 AM Anniepoo_: I saw a lab robot - it just rotated a disk full of test tubes, the dropper was on a slide, guided by rods either side, so it got cenered on each one
01:19 AM rue_house: and make two bins on it, one goes to inner rows 0/1 left/right the other goes to rows 2/3 left/right
01:19 AM rue_house: aaah rotate the bins!
01:20 AM Anniepoo_: like one of those screw carousels
01:20 AM rue_house: aaaah, or do like.... wallie's bins!
01:20 AM Anniepoo_: (maybe even use one)
01:20 AM rue_house: ooo
01:20 AM rue_house: 6 feet circumfrance is
01:20 AM rue_house: zippo:/tmp# circle -c 6
01:20 AM rue_house: Radius is : 0.954930
01:20 AM rue_house: Diameter is: 1.909859
01:20 AM rue_house: Circumfrence is : 6.000000
01:20 AM rue_house: Area is : 2.864789
01:21 AM rue_house: Sphere area: 11.459156
01:21 AM rue_house: Sphere volume: 3.647563
01:21 AM rue_house: less than 2 feet
01:21 AM rue_house: and it could move up and down too
01:22 AM Anniepoo_: back to the railroad idea
01:22 AM rue_house: radius>?
01:22 AM Anniepoo_: if you don't care about appearance you can go around really sharp corners
01:23 AM Anniepoo_: mount drawbars on the truck kingpins
01:23 AM Anniepoo_: and it'd be cool - little engine running back and forth sorting screws
01:24 AM Anniepoo_: you can buy beat up model rr cars at $10 for a soda flat at any NMRA auction
01:24 AM Anniepoo_: have a robot arm that takes a screw out of car
01:24 AM Anniepoo_: puts on table to be scanned
01:25 AM Anniepoo_: puts in one of n bins, whatever arm can reach
01:25 AM Anniepoo_: bins have hopper 'valves' on bottom
01:25 AM Anniepoo_: only need one actuator to open them all
01:26 AM Anniepoo_: push empty hopper cars under
01:26 AM rue_house: but, if I use a specialized trolley
01:26 AM Anniepoo_: weigh the cars a lot
01:26 AM rue_house: with two holders on it, both actuated at the same time by a servo
01:26 AM Anniepoo_: cause theyll be heavy loadeed
01:26 AM rue_house: end view
01:26 AM Anniepoo_: and you have crappy cars
01:26 AM rue_house: C A T B D
01:26 AM Anniepoo_: not understanding
01:27 AM rue_house: where A, B, C, D are rows of bins
01:27 AM rue_house: and T is the track
01:27 AM Anniepoo_: ok
01:27 AM rue_house: the trolley, ventered above T would have a tray, that could tip left or right
01:27 AM Anniepoo_: oh, yes - you can buy the trucks or steal them off garage store model rr cars
01:27 AM rue_house: the tray would have two divisions, front and back
01:27 AM rue_house: the front tray goes into bins B, C depending which way its tipped
01:28 AM Anniepoo_: arm(s) somewhere load one screw per car, you can weigh cars exactly, scan screws for OCR, etc
01:28 AM rue_house: the back tray to bins ...
01:28 AM rue_house: sorry front A,B
01:28 AM Anniepoo_: sort cars as you will
01:28 AM rue_house: back C, D
01:28 AM Anniepoo_: and have some dumper mechanism
01:28 AM rue_house: 9g servo
01:29 AM rue_house: the arm takes it off the scale, puts it in the front/rear bin depending on where its got to go
01:29 AM rue_house: move the trolley to the right place, and tip left/right depending
01:30 AM rue_house: :) thanks anniepoo
01:30 AM rue_house: the track drive can be bike chain
01:30 AM rue_house: the track .... hmm bedframe
01:30 AM Anniepoo_: yah, I see
01:30 AM rue_house: the trolley a few toy car wheels and lots of 3d printing
01:30 AM Anniepoo_: ys
01:31 AM Anniepoo_: kind of a + arrangement - track crosses what rr's call a transfer table
01:31 AM rue_house: in 6 feet I could have 256 bins
01:31 AM rue_house: but it'd be linearly scalable
01:31 AM rue_house: if I play my cards right, I could use 20' of the house deck
01:32 AM Anniepoo_: http://www.metronorthnmra.org/models/images/structurescratchbuilt/Transfer-Table-6.jpg
01:32 AM rue_house: small test is in order
01:32 AM rue_house: yea
01:32 AM Anniepoo_: sort of a straight line turntable
01:32 AM Anniepoo_: used in engine shops
01:32 AM Anniepoo_: cheaper than lots of switches
01:32 AM Sol is now known as Guest79463
01:32 AM rue_house: digital control of model trains changed the game completely
01:32 AM Anniepoo_: 8cD lego trains
01:33 AM Anniepoo_: it did
01:33 AM Anniepoo_: I was way into model trains for a while
01:33 AM Anniepoo_: now I have more capabilities, am on to 'bigger' things
01:33 AM rue_house: me too
01:33 AM rue_house: no timespace now
01:34 AM rue_house: aha,
01:34 AM Anniepoo_: but i'd still totally do this with the trains
01:34 AM Anniepoo_: oooh!
01:34 AM Guest79463 is now known as Solgriffin
01:34 AM Anniepoo_: do you know what a Ewing monorail is?
01:34 AM rue_house: instead of a bedframe track, I should use someting more reliable, like ... !!! curtin I beam!
01:35 AM Anniepoo_: basically, the car/engine runs on steel wheels in center, with double flanges
01:35 AM Anniepoo_: the engine's center of gravity is a bit to one side
01:35 AM Anniepoo_: and there's a rubber tire on that side
01:35 AM Anniepoo_: it's a good geometry for this
01:36 AM rue_house: na, I'll chain drag it, then I can be sure of the position
01:36 AM rue_house: w/ stepper
01:36 AM Anniepoo_: pulleys for sliding doors available cheap
01:36 AM rue_house: I ahve a zillion steppers to use up too
01:36 AM Anniepoo_: ok
01:37 AM Anniepoo_: dang, now you have me thinking
01:37 AM Anniepoo_: every so often Kevin and I talk about building a model rr to run around the shop
01:37 AM rue_house: :)
01:37 AM Anniepoo_: other stuff is always ahead of it
01:37 AM rue_house: have it sort screws :)
01:37 AM rue_house: use hopper cars for them
01:37 AM Anniepoo_: but this would give it a reason to exist
01:37 AM Anniepoo_: hmm
01:37 AM rue_house: w/barcode serial numbers
01:38 AM rue_house: I have barcode readers if you want
01:38 AM Anniepoo_: if the cars were big enough it could have practical use
01:38 AM rue_house: no, just use lots of them
01:38 AM Anniepoo_: put a tool down in special hopper (lots around shop)
01:38 AM rue_house: software to retrieve the cars with the screws you want
01:38 AM Anniepoo_: and it would migrate into a car, be taken back to tool crib, id'ed
01:39 AM Anniepoo_: and returned to bin
01:39 AM rue_house: hmm
01:39 AM rue_house: if I could get a zillion little bins big enough for bar codes
01:39 AM Anniepoo_: you have speech recog. and mics around shop
01:39 AM rue_house: ... wait, a peice of pipe would ahve enough room for a vert bar code
01:39 AM Anniepoo_: (kinects are amazing for this, they beam form mics)
01:39 AM rue_house: ah, but might be turned wrong
01:40 AM Anniepoo_: bet I can do 90% of it with mass of tool
01:40 AM Anniepoo_: "shop, get me a pair of vise grips"
01:40 AM rue_house: vacuum form bins...
01:41 AM rue_house: well your into something larger than HO then
01:41 AM Anniepoo_: yes
01:41 AM Anniepoo_: not usin commercial rr stuff
01:41 AM Anniepoo_: ewing monorail, and big wood block cars
01:42 AM Anniepoo_: nice thing about monorail - no track maintainence
01:42 AM Anniepoo_: and a switch is just a loose bit of rail and a servo
01:43 AM Anniepoo_: 4 wheel cars - circular, with magnet strip (the 'fridge magnet' stuff?) all around
01:44 AM Anniepoo_: I was into HOn30 - tiny models of tiny trains,
01:44 AM Anniepoo_: think industrial 'push car' trains
01:44 AM Anniepoo_: ran on n gage tracks
01:45 AM Anniepoo_: I could go around 2" radius curve
01:45 AM Anniepoo_: which is only 4 track diameters or something
01:46 AM rue_bed2: yea, N is too small for me
01:46 AM rue_bed2: O is too large
01:46 AM rue_bed2: half O is just fine with me
01:47 AM rue_bed2: I'll have to design for weeks to crank that out
01:47 AM Anniepoo_: magnets under cars so thein a chanely 'float'
01:47 AM rue_bed2: I think i have a bunch of curtin track around
01:47 AM rue_bed2: ah, holddowns
01:48 AM rue_bed2: I wonder how I'm stocked for personal filament
01:50 AM rue_bed2: I know kat would love to join in on that one
01:52 AM Anniepoo_: ok, shower and bed for annie
01:52 AM Anniepoo_: ttyl
04:05 AM To_Aru_Shiroi_Ne is now known as ToAruShiroiNeko
05:18 AM hypodyne: Do you have to identify the screws first.. as in a thousand screws in a bucket?
05:18 AM hypodyne: various
05:19 AM hypodyne: you could weight them.. sort by weight.
05:25 AM deshipu: sort alphabeticaly by color
05:26 AM hypodyne: you would have to take a picture of the screw to determine the color.
05:27 AM deshipu: no, there are color sensors
05:27 AM hypodyne: like a camera?
05:29 AM hypodyne: okay.. lets solve his problem..
05:29 AM deshipu: like a 1-pixel camera
05:30 AM hypodyne: first you would have to get each screw individually. Move it to a place where you can photo it.. Match that photo to a database using machine learning.. once identified move it to a bin.. repeat
05:32 AM deshipu: or just pay a bunch of students
05:33 AM hypodyne: but every time you wanted more screws sorted you would have to pay them again.
05:44 AM deshipu: it would still be probably cheaper
08:13 AM hypodyne: he says he already has the robotic arms
09:31 AM youngiif: does anyone have any experience with RoboClaw?
09:47 AM rue_house: armyofevilrobots, what rpm and feed rate would you use for a 1mm bit in alumuinum?
09:47 AM rue_house: I think I'm getting the cut depth wrong
09:47 AM rue_house: but most of the stuff I can find pertains to cutters MUCH larger
10:01 AM armyofevilrobots: @rue_house As fast as possible and SLOW, but not very deep. I would do < 10 thou per cut.
10:02 AM armyofevilrobots: fast == spindle, slow == feed
10:02 AM armyofevilrobots: I don’t have a ton of experience using that bit in aluminum.
10:07 AM rue_house: yea, the digging seems to show a REALLY shallow cut, but prettymuch as high feed as Ic an do
10:07 AM rue_house: hmm
10:08 AM rue_house: I'm using about .25mm, and feeding at like 3cm/min
10:08 AM rue_house: at about 10k
10:08 AM rue_house: hmmmm
10:09 AM rue_house: it seems that load is 'different' on the tiny bits
10:09 AM rue_house: most of the calculators dont seem valid at 1mm :)
10:09 AM rue_house: been looking for manufacturer tables
10:11 AM rue_house: I think the machine I made can only do up to about 40cm/min
10:12 AM rue_house: the spindle goes to about 12k, if the power supply dosn't catch fire
10:12 AM rue_house: I should put a spindle alarm on it
10:13 AM rue_house: premasked flashing red sign "SPINDLE ON FIRE"
12:53 PM Anniepoo_: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.02640.pdf
12:53 PM Anniepoo_: YOLO - new combined detection and classification algorithm
12:53 PM Anniepoo_: 8cD ver promising!
02:35 PM anniepoo: rue - I concur with army - really insanely high speed
02:35 PM anniepoo: dry
02:35 PM anniepoo: you need more than 10K
02:36 PM anniepoo: try bitsnbits for lots of info on miniature mills
02:38 PM armyofevilrobots: Woo, that’s neat. I had some sliding window stuff on my security cams that was performing poorly. Tempted to test this out as a replacement.
02:38 PM armyofevilrobots: Thx for the link!
02:38 PM armyofevilrobots: I wonder how it will do identifying license plates...
02:39 PM armyofevilrobots: orientation there is a big hassle too though.
05:07 PM Sol is now known as Guest10498
05:07 PM Guest10498 is now known as Solgriffin
06:28 PM joga_ is now known as joga
06:48 PM rue_house: https://blog.keras.io/img/magpie.jpg
06:48 PM rue_house: WTF they cant see th bird!?!?!
06:48 PM rue_house: its right there!
06:55 PM hypodyne: looks like 1/2 hawk in the top corner
06:56 PM hypodyne: and a roosters head in the middle
07:02 PM Tom_itx: hah linux doesn't like a full hdd
07:02 PM rue_house: AT ABOUT 90% IT HIts the root-only reserve
07:03 PM Tom_itx: i got a buss error
07:03 PM Tom_itx: now it only boots to grub rescue
07:03 PM rue_house: that not from a full drive
07:03 PM Tom_itx: bad hdd?
07:03 PM rue_house: hardware problem...
07:04 PM Tom_itx: i was installing xilinx and running a latency test
07:04 PM Tom_itx: it got mad at me
07:04 PM rue_house: can you tell grub to just do the boot?
07:04 PM Tom_itx: i don't know how
07:04 PM rue_house: say help
07:05 PM Tom_itx: unknown command
07:05 PM rue_house: bugger, "smart" my ass
07:06 PM Tom_itx: i'll put the ssd back in it
07:07 PM Tom_itx: ls shows (hd0) (hd0,msdos5) (hd0,msdos1)
07:07 PM rue_house: er, its just got two dos partitions?
07:08 PM rue_house: say hd0
07:08 PM Tom_itx: unknown command
07:08 PM rue_house: guh, I hate grub
07:08 PM rue_house: try googling grub help and see if you can figure out the syntax
07:09 PM rue_house: there is a way to tell it to boot one of the things
07:09 PM rue_house: you didn't put multiple OS's on that drive did you?
07:10 PM Tom_itx: not this time
07:10 PM Tom_itx: it's been used
07:10 PM rue_house: I have to go reterminate a 50 pair telephone cable, I'll catch ya later
07:11 PM Tom_itx: k
09:49 PM rue_shop3: I dont have any of that I beam curtin rod, gate it all to ma
09:52 PM rue_shop3: extensible framework
09:52 PM rue_shop3: nonhomogenous
10:03 PM Tom_itx: rue_shop3,
10:03 PM Tom_itx: any way to recover data from an unmountable drive?
10:03 PM rue_shop3: ugh
10:03 PM rue_shop3: seriously?
10:03 PM Tom_itx: yup
10:04 PM Tom_itx: booted from another hdd and tried to mount it
10:04 PM rue_shop3: do you know if it was the drive of the motherbaord?
10:04 PM Tom_itx: not the mb
10:04 PM rue_shop3: how do you know
10:04 PM Tom_itx: because i put another hdd on it and its fine
10:04 PM Tom_itx: and i can't mount it even from another port
10:04 PM rue_shop3: a mb can have an intermittent failure that corrupts data transfers to the drive
10:04 PM rue_shop3: breaking the filesystem
10:05 PM rue_shop3: what does SMART say about the drive?
10:05 PM rue_shop3: is it a magnet of ssd?
10:05 PM Tom_itx: i don't know about smart
10:05 PM rue_shop3: magnetic or ssd?
10:05 PM Tom_itx: hdd not ssd
10:06 PM rue_shop3: k, do you have a linux system you can plug it into and boot the other system ?
10:06 PM rue_shop3: I cant help you from mircosoft
10:06 PM Tom_itx: this was all linux
10:06 PM rue_shop3: ok, can you get it into a linux machine so we can run programs against it?
10:06 PM rue_shop3: the filesystem on linux is ext3fs, hard to kill
10:07 PM rue_shop3: if the drive is ready we can prolly recover things
10:07 PM Tom_itx: lemme plug it back in
10:07 PM Tom_itx: booting wheezy
10:08 PM Tom_itx: there's really only one directory i want
10:08 PM rue_shop3: ********************* when its on a system, work out the drive identity of it, run smartctl -a /dev/sd* where sd* is the drive identity, look at the row called 'reallocated sector count' it should be 0
10:08 PM Tom_itx: root?
10:08 PM rue_shop3: all root yes
10:08 PM Tom_itx: hang on
10:09 PM Tom_itx: root passwd not set yet
10:09 PM rue_shop3: just do sudo bash
10:09 PM rue_shop3: just do sudo bash
10:09 PM Tom_itx: k
10:10 PM Tom_itx: lemme get an irc client on it so it's easier
10:14 PM Tom_itx: ok
10:16 PM Tom_itx: how do i get the drive identity
10:16 PM rue_shop3: dmesg|less
10:17 PM rue_shop3: it'll say everything about the drive during the boot, manuf, serial, etc
10:17 PM rue_shop3: if its even responding
10:17 PM rue_shop3: which it must be if grub worked
10:18 PM Tom_L: anything else to narrow it down a bit
10:19 PM rue_shop3: scroll thru, you can see it detecting the drives when it boots
10:20 PM rue_shop3: if you type / you can search
10:20 PM rue_shop3: sda is probably your main drive
10:21 PM Tom_L: 1.948986] sdb: sdb1 sdb2 < sdb5 >
10:21 PM rue_shop3: sounds right
10:21 PM rue_shop3: so smartctl -a /dev/sdb
10:21 PM Tom_L: 1.911241] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 625142448 512-byte logical blocks: (320 GB/298 GiB)
10:21 PM Tom_L: that's it
10:21 PM rue_shop3: k
10:21 PM Tom_L: how do i exit
10:21 PM rue_shop3: smartctl -a /dev/sdb | less
10:22 PM Tom_L: :
10:22 PM rue_shop3: q
10:22 PM rue_shop3: was it less?
10:22 PM rue_shop3: or vi?
10:22 PM rue_shop3: less is just q
10:22 PM Tom_L: less seemed to work
10:22 PM rue_shop3: just press q to quit less
10:23 PM Tom_L: bash: smartctl: command not found
10:23 PM rue_shop3: apt-get install smartmontools
10:23 PM Tom_L: done
10:24 PM Tom_L: let's go to garf
11:37 PM rue_shop3: anniepoo,
11:38 PM rue_shop3: this is taking on a number of tron-isms