Will I be seeing you there? I hope so. I’m bringing the Drawbot, I’m bringing the CanDos, I’m bringing EL wire, and I’m looking to talk to you about everything robotic.
CanDo is a gentle introduction to robotics for anyone who’s just starting out with electronics or programming. It assembles in about 20 minutes and requires no soldering or wire stripping. Kits are $100.
Some arduino starter kits will teach you to turn on a light or move a motor and then expect you to figure out the rest by yourself. CanDo gives a bit more direction and a greater feeling of accomplishment, because when you will build your own robot. For those who still want to go even further, we offer this challenge: Can you improve on the CanDo to solve a maze?
Each CanDo comes with all the parts you need to build your robot. Just add a 9v battery and you’re ready to go!
Read the assembly instructions and things to try on the Wiki
I just want to take a moment and give recognition to everyone who’s been commenting, private messaging, and even skypeing and facebook stalking me. I love talking robots with you and your advice about making this site better has been enormously helpful. Thank you!
Seattle Mini Maker Faire was fantastic! I talked to over 2000 people, most of whom asked the same question: “How does it work? Magnets?”
Maybe at the next fair I should use colored string so people grok it. I stayed overnight at the famous Green Tortoise across from Pike’s Place Market and met all kids of interesting people.
For instance, I’ve been admiring this Delta robot (called ‘Rostock’) for a while now. Turns out I’ve known the creator for years, and he’s even couchsurfed with me! What a tiny, tiny world.
Have you ever seen the gear heart? Emmett redid it with the Colbert head, just for fun. He had a good time teasing me about how gently I treated his ABS creations.
finally, here is a gallery of other things that were drawn at the Seattle Maker Faire, mostly on Sunday.
Optimization is the name of the game when attempting to solve the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP). I’ve figured out most of what Lin/Kernighan is saying and then implemented it to run as fast as I can get it to go. Here’s the progress since the last picture I posted.
Here’s one of the Seattle skyline for the Seattle Maker Fair
It helps if you back up and squint. No really, it’s like pointilism paintings. Ever heard of the Group of Seven? Like that.
Here’s the results of the Drawbot working on the above image done by the TSP solver last night.
It ran for three hours and then failed when the laptop went into sleep mode while I was at the VHS. The mess in the top left is because I tried to draw the picture twice – once it failed when the stepper motor got warm and caused the bobbin to slip off the shaft. In a future version of the drawbot I’d like to try bicycle chain and sprockets instead of bobbins and thread.
Got any suggestions for pictures I should draw? Post ’em below!
