I’ve also got an Arduino, some motor drivers, a 9DOF sensor, and a mess of wires. I’ll probably need at least one more trip to Lee’s for a few more bits and bobs and then I’ll be able to assemble the first test rig.
Would you like to know more? Contact me or comment below.
Rostock’s work just blows me away.
Festo also has beautiful designs.
Do you know of some other inspiring designs? Comment below!
These babies are run from an Arduino which means they can be made to react to their environment. Want to add a clapper? Change the colors based on who is in the room? Show the traffic on your WAN as a decibel meter? Strips can be cut and soldered to make different patterns, or flexed in different directions to wrap around shapes.
$300+S&H. Comes with 5m strip, 12v5a power supply, Arduino UNO, wiring diagram, and software (via download). Custom programming services extra. Contact me and lets light up your life.
Malcolm, a talented local artist and director of the New Forms Festival came to me and asked if I could make a camera gimbal. Can I ever! I struggled with simplifying the old design for several days before deciding I needed to go back and do my homework. Then I remembered this video
The original developers were balancing a robot on a ball. …but notice the first 15 seconds when the robot is upside down and just turning the ball? That’s exactly what I’m looking for, and almost all the parts are off the shelf. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with this
The ball in the center is a glass lamp shade. I’m going to add an X-shaped camera mount inside the globe. The Mecanum wheels can turn the globe any way I choose. I’m going to put a little 9DOF sensor inside so the Arduino can keep track of the ball’s orientation and adjust it accordingly.
Parts have been ordered, delivery is pending, and this thing should start being assembled in the next few days.
Also, I’m working a little bit every week to improve the website. Is it getting better? You tell me.
On the whole I’m feeling very good about today. Here’s a little before and after. Click for a larger version.
The image on the left is the result after 20 minutes of calculating in Java with a “Greedy” TSP solution. Once it finishes generating the lines it saves it all to a gcode file. I wrote this in about two hours with long breaks to think while I pulled weeds and mowed. It’s brutally stupid code that works. It’s not ready for production yet because it doesn’t meet my standards in two important ways:
Here is evidence of a solution from MakerBlock that doesn’t have either of these problems. I haven’t deciphered the python to figure out what they’re doing….yet. I’d like to be able to convert huge pictures in a few clicks with a nice progress bar.
On a less happy note, my Macbook Pro has finally given up the ghost and I can’t afford to replace it. My next development machine will probably be a Mac and I’ll be working a lot more in Java. I’m really falling in love with it’s many (many) time saving features.
Have you got pseudocode for a better TSP solver? Please share in the comments!
A big challenge with the drawbot is that it’s still really hard to use. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just load a picture and click start? Well soon you will.
Here’s the plan:
- load a picture (done)
- make it greyscale (done)
- dither it to a set of points (done)
- connect the dots in a single line aka the traveling salesman problem.
- generate gcode
- send gcode to robot
Here’s a sample of what I’ve got so far:
(Poster by Olly Moss.)
Should I give people the power to change the picture size before starting OR should the picture automatically fit the picture to the drawing area (without stretching)?
I’m finding all kinds of drawbots that I missed the first time around. Let me know if you find any others.
http://www.as220.org/labs/drawbot/
http://www.muralizer.com/blog/
http://www.unanything.com/
Note to self: go back and categorize these, find out if there’s any feature my machine doesn’t have.
Ottersoft also does hypocycloids. I can’t wait! I’ll be customer #1 when they’re ready for sale.
I had it stuck in my head that I needed to use digital pins to read the value of the switches. On Thursday I downloaded the Adafruit Motor Shield EAGLE schematic and layout files and started reading, only to discover that the empty holes on one corner of the board are intended for analog sensors. In about an hour I got the switches and the auto-calibration code written & tested. Victory!
To add the limit switches to your Drawbot, you will need:
Drawbot motors should begin to move the plotter towards the left motor. When the left limit switch is touched it will reverse direction and move until it touches the right limit switch. Now the robot knows exactly how much string has been released and it can move the plotter to the (0,0) position automatically.
