Robots and Dinosaurs

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!

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…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCB7l3f8Wvg&feature=youtube_gdata_player

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqBmxmxklY8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Happy Hacking!!

The hottest new place or Robots and Dinosaurs official announcements! 

Subscribe today and be kept up to date on club events, functions and meetings without all the fun of the main list :)

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/rnd-announce

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

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!

Check out this mailing list post for details.

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!

Hi All, Gav here. Just wanted to share this post from our new member, Rob D. Looks like the start of a fun project.

———————————————

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

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 

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:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:28375

The big CNC is starting to work pretty nicely. There’s some backlash issues, and it’s not going to make a perfect jigsaw anytime soon, but good enough for a lot of stuff. 

Cutting the parts carefully. This is a long and noisy process. Basically you’re putting a chunk of wood in there and removing everything that’s not the part you’ve designed:

Test fitting the parts together. Gluing was done with a jig to hold everything flat and screwed in place:

Voila! A completed part for Nick’s Sand Table:

The wood is Merbau, a nice hardwood which is cheap and pretty easy to work with. 

Some specs and info on our wiki here, for people that want to know how to use it:

http://hackerspace.pbworks.com/w/page/49198036/The%20Large%20CNC

Special thanks to Kean, Ada, Nick and everyone that helped get the big CNC running again last night.

The results came out pretty nicely (very rough cut of some text):

Specs and some instructions on the wiki for people that are interested. 

And on SundayI had a crack at making a box to hold a wax tablet to practice cuneiform: 

On Wednesday a few of us went out to view the last transit of Venus for the 21st Century. Venus was passing in front of the sun, and we were determined to catch a glimpse of it!

I was hoping to use this as my ‘Science Tripod’ for the day, with batteries, motorised movement and inverter for charging the laptop, but sadly it had a mechanical failure about an hour before we were due to leave. Grabbing duct tape, we improvised!

Fortunately everyone else came well prepared too:

The night before, when it looked as if the weather in Sydney would be terrible, we’d headed over the Blue Mountains to Bathurst and spent the night. Getting up early we headed to Mt Canobolas, on the grounds that higher was better. When we got to the summit it didn’t look too good. In fact we couldn’t even see the top of the radio tower we’d parked at!

Fortunately moving down the mountain a bit worked well, and we were able to get some good shots of the transit starting. Everyone was eventually able to see the transit with their own eyes, and also get some shots with their cameras. Success! From this point on anything else was a bonus. 

We eventually jumped back in the car and started to head down to Yass, in the hopes that it was clearer out there. It started to get bright in patches on the road, so we got into a routine of pulling over for a few minutes, frantically setting up tripods and cameras, snapping for a bit, then packing everything down and running off to the next patch of sunlight when the clouds moved in. 

We were lucky enough to get a few more good shots in, before the clock told us that Venus was well and truly gone, even if the clouds opened up now. 

Here’s some of our images: 

More images can be found here: 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38462165@N05/sets/72157630036261224/

and Tim made a time-lapse of the day here:

Everyone had a fantastic time, and we’d highly recommend doing something like this in the future. Keep your eyes out for the next major eclipse, Nov 14th 2012 in Carins!

You might have seen an unusual plastic called polycaprolactone, which also goes by the name of Polymorph, Polycap or Plastimake. It’s small white pellets of plastic that will melt in hot water and can be shaped like plasticine. When it cools, it’s rock hard and perfect for engineering applications.

The trouble up till now is that it’s quite hard to get a hold of decent quantities of it in Australia. But it turns out there’s now a local supplier, called Plastimake:

http://www.plastimake.com/

If you’ve used polycaprolatane before, you should check them out. In addition to being local and quite cheap, they’ve spent a lot of time making tutorials on what you can do with it. The roses are my favourite: (Pic shamelessly stolen from their site)

and there are loads more examples here: http://www.plastimake.com/examples

So, we put in an order for a bunch of plastic, and in addition to being very prompt, inside the box a freebie sample of colouring material, and also this drawing:

How awesome is that? 

The image was made by the very talented Alice Caroll, who’s website is here:

http://alicecarroll.net/

Hi Makers and Breakers, 

The space will be open from 5:30pm for some weekday shenanigans.

come along and get yer hack on!

<3 ,
+Pauline Koh 
http://goo.gl/fnHY7

The new space is located in Gerard Lane, Gladesville. We’re located inside the same space as Quick-Fit muffers.

Here it is on Google maps http://g.co/maps/zbfve (Thanks Madox) 

Go through the garage door to the right until you see Daleks!

Being about 50m from Victoria Rd, there are oodles of busses on a regular basis even past midnight, and it’s only 30mins from Central.

http://www.131500.com.au/ for info. (Hepburn Avenue, Gladesville is a good cross-street to use)

Stuff in the space:

Compared to the previous location, the new space is huge and pretty open, but it’s shared between 3 groups of people. Robots and Dinosaurs (RnD), the Sydney Robot Workshop (SRW) and the Beehive. RnD & SRW are both community clubs, and Beehive is a startup business specialising in digital fab. 

Regular Hacking Sessions:

There will be several regular times the space is open:

RnD’s Saturday Hacking from 11am till late every Saturday

Wed night from 5pm onwards, the Sydney Robot Workshop have a regular build session which a lot of the RnD people attend as well

Sunday afternoon from 1pm onwards, hosted by the Sydney Robot Workshop. 

And of course RnD Members can use the equipment (lasercutters, 3D printers, etc.), or just hang out any time the SRW or RnD have opened the space. Feel free to visit any session, but if you’ve got a particular question head to the main event for that group. (E.g. If you want to know about 3D printing, lasercutting & quadcopters, check out Robots and Dinosaurs. For advice on making a Dalek, stormtrooper costume or resin casting, the Sydney Robot Workshop are the experts)

And don’t forget to join the mailing list http://robodino.org/mailing-list to stay informed of the various things happening at the space and what people are working on.

This Saturday was the first ever Maker Faire in Australia. Maker faires in the US have been absoultely huge, with hackerspaces, builders, makers and tinkerers of all types coming together, so we’ve been chomping at the bit for something similar in Australia.  

http://makerfairemelbourne.wordpress.com/

The place was absolutely packed!

There was a good representation of makers in Australia. The Robots and Dinosaurs (Sydney) and Creative Community (Melbourne) hackerspaces had booths set up and representatives from Artifactory (Perth) and Make Hack Void (Canberra) were running workshops. It was a load of fun talking with people all day about what they can make and what interests them. 

There was an impressive array of things to see. Like giant LED cubes (details here)

Rubik’s Cube solving robots:

There were heaps of workshops going through the day for people to learn electronics skills, soldering and more:

The kids had a great time making cardboard mazes and houses out of scrap cardboard:

There was an impressive collection of circuit bent synths and repurposed objects:

Science was present:

As well as all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff like DNA copying machines, felted dolls, advice on wood framing, laser cutting & 3D printing galore, steampunk sewing, and much more. 

There’s some more photos up here for the curious:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38462165@N05/sets/72157628870842515/

Big thanks to Paul, Amon, Andy and all the organisers and volunteers that helped make the day go amazingly smoothly. And congratulations to CCHS for getting their new hackerspace location!

This Saturday was an absolutely packed day at the space!

Photos don’t describe the sensation of 20+ people crowded in the main room, eagerly chatting, bouncing ideas off each other and hacking away on their projects. 

We were also visited by Daniel, Brett and Jenna from the Perth Artifactory. They’ve got an amazing community and huge hackerspace over in Perth, and they’re currently travelling all around Australia to various hackerspaces in preparation for the Maker Faire and Linux Conf in Melbourne.

Brett built a TV-b-gone and managed to fit it into the handle of a sonic screwdriver:

I had a crack at some fluid-filled coasters. Here’s the rough prototype, but the design is looking encouraging:

Tim did some prototyping on his Lasercut RC car. It’s certainly fast. In fact it was fast and torquey enough to break its own wheel off the axle! 

You might have seen the Hackerspace Passport concept recently. Mitch Altman, inveterate hacker and noisebridge organiser came up with the idea, and it’s taken off like wildfire. 

Make sure you get your hackerspace passport stamped next time you’re in the space! If you don’t have a passport you can:

• Get your notebook stamped instead! 

• Download the PDF here and print your own

• Buy a passport from Seeedstudio here for less than $3

Next time you’re going travelling, you might want to check the list of hackerspaces to see if there’s a place you can drop in and see what they’re up to. It’s getting harder and harder to find a city where there isn’t one now!

Members from RnD have visited hackerspaces all around America, Japan, China, Europe and also been visited by people from all over the world in return. 

It’s actually quite easy to make your own stamp, if you have access to a lasercutter. And it turns out common lino (easily obtainable at a craft shop) works like a treat with raster engraving.

Here’s the lino being laser engraved and cut: (Note: it’s important to check your rubber material doesn’t contain PVC or chlorine before lasering. Use the ‘copper stick in a blowtorch test’ for this!’)

The Big CNC:

A while ago Scott McDaid kindly donated to the space a large ‘Joe’s CNC’ he built. It’s a beautiful machine and has had many hours of work put into its construction. 

The work envelope of the machine is huge, 600x1200 at least and it’s capable of milling wood, plastic and some metals. 

We’ve just gotten it set up in the garage and got the cabling sorted out. Need to add some e-stops and things, but it looks pretty good so far!

Big thanks to Ada and Pauline for the setup. 

Here’s a vid of the machine in operation. It’s cutting a depth-mapped version of our logo. Sadly we only had 6mm tools, so it’s a little like drawing with a crayon. But you can see the concept:

Testing the large CNC from Gavin Smith on Vimeo.

Here’s a project done by Luke Emrose this Saturday on the space’s CNC. It looks pretty cool and was made entirely with free tools!

Here’s some wiki info if you want to make a board yourself:

http://hackerspace.pbworks.com/w/page/48330990/Designing%20PCBs

http://hackerspace.pbworks.com/w/page/48331055/Cutting%20PCBs

Without further ado, I’ll hand it over to Luke:

Hi there!

Sorry for the big e-mail, but I was excited….

Thanks to some outstanding help from Gav and talsit and a few others at the space this evening, I used the CNC machine for the first time ever ;-)

Even better, probably just through sheer luck, it was very successful too!

Here is the PCB that I made:

The eagle layout and circuit diagram ( which I successfully proved “should work” using the free LTSpice circuit simulator - found from bits and pieces I’ve found online about the API 2520 discrete operational amplifier ):

First the copper etching stage:

Then the holes are drilled for the parts:

Then the board is milled out to it’s final shape:

Here are some “pose” shots ;-):

For those of you still reading, this is a discrete operational amplifier ( DOA ) board, which I designed out of necessity, because the “real-thing” ( an API 2520 DOA ) was too expensive for me ( my board is an alternative for the little square board in this pic ):

Also the “real-thing” is made from a double-sided board.

I wanted a cheaper and simpler alternative so I crammed the entire thing onto a single sided board that was designed to be easy and simple to CNC:

I’m going to use it as one of 8 DOA’s I am building to go into 4 channels of custom-designed compression for my home-studio.

The finished unit/s might somewhat resemble ( I hope ) 4 of these:

but I’m not sure yet, as I am still designing it….

However, thanks to the space, I’m off to a good start.

Next step is soldering the bits on the little board and turning it on and hoping it ACTUALLY WORKS!

cheers!