Welcome
This site is dedicated to the efforts of the robot-ONE team.
Maker Faire was a total blast. More KRAZY people per square
foot than I have ever seen in my life!
However, I did have problems with MyDummy. When I got him unpacked, it was
apparent that he had gotten beat up in transit. A quick trip to
Home Depot for some JB Weld and I figured I was good to go.
But the following day, show time, after a couple of hours of running, a back wheel
started to come off. One of the C clips had gone
missing. One of two that holds the whole back end together. For want
of a fifteen cent part...
Now I know NASA has been in worse situations but after some time searching about,
asking people where I could get... Nothing!
I must have looked rather glum because along comes Bob Martinez, a
local IBM guy, and offers to go get the parts. And I'm thinking...
"Yeah. Sure. The man from IBM is gonna help ME!?"
But much to my surprise and delight he comes back promptly with
exactly what I need! I thank him profusely. And try not to act
like I thought it would never happen.
I'll be taking MyDummy to California next week to see
Maker Faire.
Still doing some last minute fixes so that he will be
a bit more reliable going up and down the isles all day.
I had originally wanted to get the head more animated and
was planning to use the Wow Wee chimp head as the basis
for the transplant. But it doesn't look like there will be time
to get that done before California.
Here is his billing
on the Maker Faire web site.
I took MyDummy to the
TSME picnic and ran him around on some of the
nice open walkways that they have there. Along the way we bump into none other
than Bill Huxhold. Now Bill is a German trained master machinist and one of
the best model maker in the group. Bill takes one look at MyDummy and says:
"Not bad." Then kind of grunts and walks off.
I take this a high praise. And I fully expect that one day soon he will
show up at a monthly meeting with his own animatronic creation built to
German engineering standards!
I haven't been saying too much recently, but I have been busy building a
tricycle boy named MyDummy. I got the idea several years back
when I first saw something similar made by Antoine Trabulsi. The idea stuck with me
and last September I began to build.
I've put some of the building sequence into builders log. It's not really
a log though as I pretty much waited until I was finished before publishing
any of the details. I've been working on it part time for about ten months
and he now is in good enough shape that I can show him off.
As was the case with the one Antoine built, people at first think that
it's a real boy on a tricycle. Then it doesn't look quite right. And
finally they realize it's a mechanical contraption. The "uncanny valley"
strikes again!
I was hoping to get the details a little more life like, but that's
an artistic challenge I have yet to master.
This year, as usual, I went down to the FIRST competition at the
Hershey Center in Toronto. But since I didn't have a team to mentor, I
kind of just wandered about, checked out the bots and had a pleasant talk
with some of my cronies.
The first thing I noticed was that there were a lot fewer teams competing.
And after wondering why, I came up with a few thoughts that I posted to
comp.robotics.misc.
Several other names chimed in with suggestions. But I don't really expect
to see any changes next year.
Over the past few months I have picked up a few Robosapien toys.
I don't usually like to buy something off the shelf like this.
I figure that the learning experience is usually better when you make bots, or anything
else, from scratch.
But in this case it seemed that Robosapien was getting popular enough
that it was worth picking up a few. I had planned on hacking them,
but so far all I have done is buy a couple books.
Well, just add it to my list of hum... too many projects to keep track of!
Stan's auction has come and gone.
Attended by about 60 people on a bright September Saturday morning.
I picked up a few goodies for the shop and so did a lot of other people.
Cleaned out his whole shop. Stan now has a what!?? A garage you can drive a
car into!
:-(
On September 16th, Stan will be selling at auction all of his machine tools.
For more details click on the last index entry above.
After the auction, I'll clear out this entry.
OK. So it's not like I've really been anywhere. But it has
been a while since I've updated this site.
Although things been a bit quite on the robot front, it's not
like NOTHING has been happening.
I'll be adding in some of the new news in the next little while.
Meantime, I have added a suppliers list if you need to
find stuff in and around Toronto.
Some of the information on this list is stale and I am in the process of
updating it.
If you notice anything that isn't right, I would appreciate it
if you would let me know.
One thing that I try to do with this list is to give some
information about what's available at these places and how they treat
small customers. So if you want to share any feedback about a particular place,
I'll be pleased to hear from you. Tanks.
Well, MMD made the trip courtesy of Doug and Dalton. It's got this anti wedge sticker
to prove it. But it STILL didn't fight! Didn't pass inspection.
Turns out that the fail safe didn't work. Well... I thought
that the switch that I got from Team Delta would do the job. But
nope. Often when you kill the transmitter, the bot goes a little
weird. Spastic kind of.
The plan now is to put caps on the motors and buy, or more likely
build, a channel mixer that can monitor the input signals and get all
of the steering on one stick.
Make My Day shall have it's day! One day.
OK. So I'm not really sure if this applies to me or to the
owners of the bots that will be fighting MMD. But I left MMD,
along with a new fast charger, with Ravi Baboolal.
He'll be traveling to the States to compete in Motorama at the end
of the week. Lucky it's him and not me. I'm not sure I would be
able to take the pressure.
Funny though. Even he didn't seem to be so cock sure of himself this
time! :-)
Truth be told, I really wanted to have a look at one of Hall Trains
robotic creations. From what I hear, he's built a small mechanical
T. Rex!
But as luck would have it, Hall didn't show up. So I spent a little
time checking out the CNC gantry that Steve made. Nice job. And cuts out all
those cute little plastic shapes with almost no effort.
When:
Saturday February 5th. 10 AM to 4 PM
Setup at 9:00 AM
Where:
Wholebotics,
1444c Dupont Street. Unit 20,
Toronto M6P 4H3
Cost:
Free. Gratis and without charge.
What to sell:
Just about anything mechanical or electronic. Prefer robot
related. That should cover enough territory. :-) Think Active Surplus,
Princess Auto.
Who's invited:
Anyone who wants to buy or sell stuff. Tire kickers and
extreme nerds also welcome!
Who's running it:
I am. Get back to me if you want to come and sell your
stuff. I don't know how popular this will be so the "rules of
engagement" may change suddenly.
Other:
Wholebotics is up a flight of stairs. You're probably best not to bring
anything that's too heavy.
How to
tips
that I found on the net
Any questions email me:
doc(at)sympatico.ca
Or if you insist on calling by phone:
DOC: 519 942-4815
Carl: 416 669-2687 (Wholebotics)
So I'm busily at work re-rolling some of the battery packs that
were used in the original robot. And for anybody who is spying for
the competition, what I'm doing is increasing the voltage from
12 to 14.4. Should give us just a little boost in the power
category.
There are officially 26 bots in this class (30 pound featherweight) and
if you want to look at the line up check the Motorama 2005
web site.
Whatever happens, our perfect record of no wins, no losses and
no ties will change!
It is with some sadness that I note the passing of Bruce MacMillan.
I just read the "Lives Lived" column in the Thursday Globe & Mail.
He died on September 8, 04.
Bruce, as some of you may know, was the guy behind the Canada First
robotic games.
Fair to say that I didn't always agree with Bruce on matters technical.
And I often took exception to the way he ran Canada First.
But it was probably directly due to him that I became involved with
robotics.
So I hope you don't mind if I say "Thanks Bruce".
Cause I never did say it when he was alive.
Well. It turned out that getting there was half the fun.
Couldn't find the campus. Then I couldn't find the building. Then I couldn't find
a parking lot. Then I couldn't find a space in the lot....
Anyway, I was greeted very cordially when I finally did get there.
And introduced to the, hum... probably two engineering alumni in a
large room.
There were several spots where students were busily competing in the
follow the line contest.
But fair to say I was a bit disappointed. They were ALL using LEGO!
Now I don't "mind" LEGO, and I am always amazed at how much you can do
with it. But I consider it sort of the low end of the spectrum and I would have
thought that a university with the kind of resources that Waterloo has available could
do a lot more.
Like insist that students actually build something and not just snap pieces together.
So I had a quick look around then left.
I know that there is an aerial robotics group at Waterloo so it can't be ALL
LEGO! While you can build a lot with LEGO, I am not aware of any
contraptions that can actually fly! :-)oooo
I've added a section describing the robot building courses that I give, as well as a builders log where I will be keeping track of my progress making a wedge. A wedge? The HORROR! Well. Wait a minute. I will be adding... a surprise. :-) There's also a "for sale" section where I describe some of the junk.. er, I mean good quality tools and equipment that I am trying to clear out of my basement.
Things go pretty well after that except that we have the gear ratio set to run
FAST and we don't really have good control. And the arms deploy nicely after we get
enough grease on the cams. Our team, 1295, finishes in 29th place (out of 75 entries) in the preliminaries
and that's good enough to make the finals. But after two wins in the finals, we are out
of the running. Oh well. Next year. Here's a picture of
the beast.
There's a pic of the cover on the Servo Magazine website and here's the original. Not really a robot, but just the thing to fire the imagination of any youngster. I was a bit disappointed though, since the editor didn't give me credit for the picture.
The challenge that FIRST set out for the teams was pretty complicated with about
5 different tasks that required engineering trade offs. Our team figured that you
could build a machine that was good at one or two, but not all 5. OK guys. Six weeks
and counting.
But the real show stealer was something I call Super Spider. It's an air activated walker designed to carry a human. I was just blown away. Everybody's there with these bots that weigh a couple of pounds and just outside the door there's someone with a 250 pound walker. I got to talking with the builder and he's a young fellow by the name of John Paul Richer.
For a further look, check out the site he's started called
The Super Spider.
I usually put it on blocks to spin up the weapon. Then remove the
weapon and let people drive it around a bit.
Originally called Bushakalamazoid, there is an old pic
here. Since then, it has
been refitted somewhat. There is usually more at the RSGC
robotics site but the site doesn't seem to
be working now. Where is that web guy Justin Ho when you need him? Oh yeah! I think
he just graduated this year.
