Category: News

News Robot Arm

Robot Arm Study 5 in Robot Overlord, Tool mounting design

2017-11-17 Dan

I’ve got Study 5 working in Robot Overlord.  The STL files are heavy in detail so the load time is long, but it works.  Forward and Inverse kinematics as good as any other arm in the system (which already includes the 7bot, MANTIS, and others).  I still don’t have enough time to rip apart the inner workings and rebuild it with a record & play back mechanism.  That would be very nice…

Also here is the hole pattern if you want to design a tool that fits on the wrist of the robot.  I would love to see someone design an Automatic Tool Changer (ATC) so the robot could put down one tool, pick up another, and use any tool it is currently holding.

News

Robot Overlord: THOR added

2017-08-09 Dan

As I just wrote on the THOR project page, Robot Overlord now supports inverse and forward kinematics for the THOR robot.  One by one they all fall under my dominion!  MwahahahHAHAHAHAHhahahaha…..aha…

News

Jigsolve: Solenoid release valve added; Kickstarter help, please?

2017-08-03 Dan

Second challenge, the pump is not letting go just like my ex even though I run it in reverse.  I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong there, it’s probably a software mistake.

Fixed!  The pump can’t run in reverse, so I bought a normally-closed solenoid air valve from STCValve.com.

The first time we tried to fire the solenoid was directly from the AMS1 shield motor connection #3, which killed the Arduino.  It no longer gives a USB device descriptor.  The solenoid says it runs at 12v1.67a and the AMS1 shield says it can handle peak 2a, so not sure what happened.

The AMS1 shield has a servo connection on pins 9 and 10.  Rather than using it for PWM, we send the pin 10 signal to a breakout relay which fires the solenoid for ~1000ms and lets enough air into the system to release the piece being held.

So now we can testably lift, move, rotate, and drop pieces from Twitch.  I’d say we’re ready to give this a go.  Now for the really challenging part: building a successful kickstarter campaign.  Help?

News

Jigsolve: Twitch streaming test #1

2017-07-25 Dan

The Jigsolve now talks on IRC through chat.twitch.tv.  Hooray!

I’m struggling to get the raspberry pi camera to stream to Twitch.  Once that’s done hardware integration will be complete.  Everything from there will be marketing and software tweaking (like flood protection).

News

Jigsolve: Twitch streaming is live!

2017-07-25 Dan

https://www.twitch.tv/jigsolve/

Congratulations to Instagram user DavoDD_ for being the first person to drive the Jigsolve robot through Twitch.

Special thanks to Twitch Developers Canary and BarryCarlyon for help with broadcasting software setup.

Apparently the solution is to stream the pi cam to the LAN, watch the feed with VLC, and then use OBS to screen scrape the image and send it to Twitch.  The lag is awful – 2 seconds or more! – but it works.  Maybe Twitch Dev or raspi experts can tell me how to shorten that delay.  please please pretty please

Second challenge, the pump is not letting go just like my ex even though I run it in reverse.  I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong there, it’s probably a software mistake.