Year: 2020

Makelangelo

Testing the Bleeding Edge of the Makelangelo App

2020-07-02 Dan

As I and other devs write new features into the Makelangelo App, we push our shared code to Github where it is automatically compiled, tested, and packaged in Nightly Builds. These nightly builds have unconfirmed bug fixes, delicate new features, and that new code smell. This is so we can get and implement your feedback as quickly as possible. We recommend you try the nightly build before reporting a bug to our issues list.

The builds aren’t actually nightly – they happen any time a new copy of the code is pushed to Github. This way we have the tightest turnaround and best acceleration in class.

There are never more than 3 nightly builds. You’ll probably want to unpack this on top of an existing copy of the latest official release because the fix file will replace the one in your install.

Big shout out to https://github.com/WebFreak001/deploy-nightly/ and IRC#github for their help making this work. You rock!

News Robot Arm

An ISO compliant Sixi hand

2020-06-29 Dan

A good designer and leader knows when to say “no”. In today’s example… I have tried several times with the help of Instagram friends and my own employees to build a gripper that we can use with the Sixi robot. I decided, finally, to say No. We’re in the robot arm business, not the gripper business. If that’s true then how will Sixi hold grippers made by other people?

“ISO 9409-1:2004 defines the main dimensions, designation and marking for a circular plate as mechanical interface. It is intended to ensure the exchangeability and to keep the orientation of hand-mounted end effectors.”

https://www.iso.org/standard/36578.html
Here now is a link to a technical drawing of our new hand.

DIN-EN-ISO-9409-1-50-4-M6-Drawing-v3Download

Are you looking for a challenge? How about making a gripper that works with our STL model of the hand? Then it should work with all commercial robot arms that match the standard, too.

Here’s a link to the DIN EN ISO 9409-1-50-4-M6 STL file.

Art Tutorials

Masked and Weighted Truchet Tiles in Processing

2020-06-14 Dan

I first saw this effect used with an image of Alan Turing and the word CODE superimposed. It was many months before several disparate ideas came together and I finally rediscovered how to generate these kinds of pictures. Here now I’ll show you how I built up the Processing code to do the same.

(more…)
Robot Arm Tutorials

How to make your robot arm talk to Robot Overlord

2020-06-09 Dan

Robot Overlord already simulates and drives robot arms. If you are building a new robot arm, it only makes sense to work with Robot Overlord and get the job done faster. Here’s a few tips to get you going faster.

The medium is the message

Robot Overlord can open a serial connection at your chosen baud rate 8-N-1 style. All Robot Overlord commands are less than 64 bytes long and all of them end with a new line (\n) character.

The syntax

Rather than write a long post that might get out date, here’s a link to the Robot Overlord Wiki page with the current syntax and formatting rules.

https://github.com/MarginallyClever/Robot-Overlord-App/wiki/GCODE

Note that this list isn’t the canonical list, either – the real deal is in the firmware for the Sixi robot, as that is the robot we currently write to support. In the future and this is out of date, let me know!

Of course talking to the app isn’t enough. You’ll also want to add a model of your arm to Robot Overlord so that the kinematics are correct.

As always we have helpful forums where you can get help with your robot project.