Robots & Dinosaurs is located in Gerard Lane, Gladesville . We’re open Saturdays from about 11am and some weeknights, but you should check by asking on our mailing list.
ROS Workshop wrapup and pics
Hi All, Gav here.
Last Saturday I ran a workshop in the space on ROS, the Robot Operating System.
We had a great attendance, and lots of good back and forth about how to make a robot and what sort of stuff is possible.
Slides and materials are up here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38462165@N05/sets/72157633235758439/
Here’s the quick and dirty map we made on the day:
And I’d highly recommend getting into ROS if you’re interested in robotics. There are tons of ready made software stacks out there and you can use them with very little change. There’s nothing more frustrating than reinventing the wheel.
Also, there’s been enough interest that we’ve started a new Sydney ROS Users group here:
https://groups.google.com/group/sydney_ros?hl=en
And we’ll be having a monthly get-together in the Robots and Dinosaurs space to discuss things. Next ROS meeting is 27th April at noon.
Feel free to come along and bring your project for show and tell!
RND BBQ special: Water balloon launcher!
In preparation for the up-and-coming RND BBQ, we tested our first water balloon launcher design.
It was super simple, only cost $15 and threw a water water balloon over 50m! with some simple mods it should have fairly repeatable accuracy but that’s for others to figure out, I’m going to test a different design… :)
Now we just need a castle made out of tissue paper…
Happy Hacking!!
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The Flightscythe
Here’s a quick post of a recent project at the space called the Flightscythe.
We modified a cheap ‘bixler’ remote control aircraft. This is readily available, can be driven like a glider or under constant power, and has plenty of room to mount extras like FPV gear or electronics. It’s also very forgiving in crashes, as you can probably tell from the tape at the front.
Testing was a lot of fun, but sadly the airframe succumbed to crashes after a few tries. With a new carbon fibre strut it should be up and running again in the future.
Code and implementation details are available here: https://sites.google.com/site/mechatronicsguy/flightsycthe
Robots and Dinosaurs Holiday-Inspired Rocket Powered Drag Racing Championship
Well last weekend was the RnD Christmas party and the RADHIRPDRC!
We had a good sized and enthusiastic turnout, with some really awesome and original designs. Everyone had 2-3 cars each, some serious, some not-so-serious. The best time of the day was 0.686 seconds with a half dozen cars clocking in below 0.75. Over the 18m track that’s fairly impressive!
First place of the day was given to Scott’s Ground effect sled, which picked up of the ground and glided almost perfectly!
Honourable mentions go to John ‘Madox’ for his 3d-printed monster (at first I thought he had installed booster rockets!), Frank for his beautifully detailed printed sled Rudolph-1, Ada for her deadly ‘Mr Squiggle’ inspired spear and Max for having the most Christmas cheer :)
Some impressive photography by Scott - This is my rather fragile laser-cut sled speeding towards it’s death.
Here is a video compilation of some of the action from Madox and more pictures are on the RnD Flickr group
Of course, being a Christmas party at the end of the day we all had pavlova. Unfortunately quite a few had left by this point and 7 of us had to eat the pavlova that claims it serves 20.
We did OK.
Until next time, Happy Hacking!
Alex’s Robot
We had a new member join us on Saturday, Alex. He’s fifteen, but has already built his own robot:
It’s powerful, capable of roaming around paddocks and the countryside on all terrain tyres, has a speech synthesis engine on board, loads of LED lights to come in handy with debugging, and some powerful headlights for night driving.
We spent a while going through what’s involved with obstacle avoidance, and different strategies for slowing down and dealing with data.
Loads of fun, and fantastic to see workmanship like that. Congrats, Alex!
Rob D’s Project
Hi All, Gav here. Just wanted to share this post from our new member, Rob D. Looks like the start of a fun project.
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Hi All,
Had a great night at the space Saturday night and kicked off a project. Plan is to build a robot with tank tracks. Cut and printed some sprockets which I’m very happy with. I want to use the Pitsco TETRIX tank tracks but I will need to scale up the drive sprocket from 65mm diameter to about 120mm while keeping a consistent tooth profile and also making sure the first and last cut teeth line up. I made a part model in Solidworks and I’ll use a design table to scale up the sprocket to the larger size. Saturday was the first time I’ve worked with a 3D printer and a laser cutter.
Bottom right was the first print. Gav showed me how to scale it to 80% and also to shorten it in the z axis as a test run. Top right is 100%. It’s about 65mm diameter. On the left is the one cut on the laser. The key take-home was that in both cases the tooth profile looks (as far as I can tell) consistent for all teeth. I can see a faint line where the laser started and finished it’s run along the teeth but it’s so minor it looks inconsequential.
Thanks guys for showing me the ropes!
Rob D
Girih Tiles by Max
Another beautiful lasercut project from Max:
I (Gav) started playing around with lasercut Penrose tiles, mathematically very cool since they never repeat, even on an infinite plane. The downside is they are pretty fiddly to use and assemble since you have to follow the ‘rules’ about how they can join.
We then started trying out Girih Tiles, which are used in traditional Islamic architecture. Max made this beautiful layered set by using paper on acrylic as a mask for spraying the paint:
They’re astoundingly fun to play with, and I can see we’ll be making a lot more soon.
You can also see some other lasercut Girih tiles here:
http://itsacleanmachine.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/acrylic-girih-tiles.html
Lasercut Flat Pack Doll’s House
Max just finished a wonderful project for his Niece, Zara:
“This is a castle with 300mm high floors to suit most dolls and doll house furniture. It packs up flat except for the corner braces and you can make as many walls and floors as you like for a larger castle. ”
The design is up on Thingiverse for people that want to make their own:
