George Boyce
Working with Internet technologies since 1977. Now with NASA Goddard supporting the NASCOM mission communications network.
Homepage: http://linuxarchitect.org/
Yahoo Messenger: LinuxArchitect
Jabber/GTalk: george.r.boyce@gmail.com
AIM: LinuxArchitect
Posts by George Boyce
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-24
Jan 24th
- Working on a Lego kickerbot to demonstrate the shooter mechanism of our bigger FRC robot. http://bit.ly/4zao1E #
- Posting to our FRC team yahoo group, trying to get kids thinking about design and programming issues. #
- Working on homework. Class ends tonight, next class starts tomorrow. #
Powered by Twitter Tools
Why I hate Microsoft this week
Jan 22nd
I hate Microsoft because no matter how hard I try, Windows makes me look stupid. This Wednesday I was over at ERHS helping Team 53 get their FRC robotics development environment set up. This involved resetting the network addresses on a wireless router, where the driver station will be connected, and the wireless bridge that sits on the robot itself. To troubleshoot the setup, I wanted to alternate between using my laptop on wireless and directly connected to the router or robot.
Windows 7 would not let me configure the same IP address on both my wireless and my ethernet interface, even though I disabled the wireless adapter.
Shut up. What if I'm in the lab connected to a dozen test networks, and I want to quickly switch between them, and I want the same host address each time. Give me a break. If I do something stupid, and try to enable two interfaces at the same time, then go ahead and break my network. Don't even bother telling me; I'll know why.
Ok, so tonight I'm at home, on my normal wireless network, and I plug in a crossover cable to the camera I'm testing for the robot. A nice little private network with just two devices, my laptop and the camera. Boom. my wireless connection stops routing to the Internet. EXCUSE ME?!? What the heck is the problem here?!?
And that is why I hate Microsoft this week.
Twitter Updates for 2010-01-19
Jan 19th
- Working on a Lego kickerbot to demonstrate the shooter mechanism of our bigger FRC robot. http://bit.ly/4zao1E #
- Posting to our FRC team yahoo group, trying to get kids thinking about design and programming issues. #
- Working on homework. Class ends tonight, next class starts tomorrow. #
Powered by Twitter Tools
Twitter Updates for 2010-01-18
Jan 18th
- Working on a Lego kickerbot to demonstrate the shooter mechanism of our bigger FRC robot. http://bit.ly/4zao1E #
- Posting to our FRC team yahoo group, trying to get kids thinking about design and programming issues. #
- Working on homework. Class ends tonight, next class starts tomorrow. #
Powered by Twitter Tools
Working on homework. Class end…
Jan 18th
Working on homework. Class ends tonight, next class starts tomorrow.
Posting to our FRC team yahoo …
Jan 18th
Posting to our FRC team yahoo group, trying to get kids thinking about design and programming issues.
Working on a Lego kickerbot to…
Jan 18th
Working on a Lego kickerbot to demonstrate the shooter mechanism of our bigger FRC robot. http://bit.ly/4zao1E
KickerBot Design
Jan 18th
KickerBot v1
Here is my partially complete robot designed to kick a small ball using rubber bands as the energy source, powered by a rear mounted winch. At our Saturday FRC team meeting, we watched a video of a ball kicking mechanism. I believed it used a rack and pinion device to cock the leg back which then, lacking a lock and trigger device, kicked automatically. I don’t have the lego pieces for rack and pinion (sigh), but a winch should work, using a rubber band to return the winch to the start position.
This is my first design from scratch. I had built the ShooterBot which uses a front mounted piston to shoot small balls out of a magazine rack. The magazine is a plastic piece designed to require a certain amount of force to release the ball through the front hole. The arm of the “piston” is actually stationary, the motor/servo moves the entire ball magazine across the length of the piston arm. I’m sure there is a better technial name for that.
This guy has a “leg” hanging just below the front edge of the NXT brick. As the winch pulls back on the leg, rubber bands (not shown) are stretched. As the leg rotates up, the cocking mechanism (not built yet) will eventually lose grip of the leg and the bands will shoot the leg forward. A different band will then pull the cocking mechanism back into place as the winch unwinds.
This design is currently top heavy and unstable; the frame needs more work. But I didn’t want to build anything else until I got the cocking mechanism completed. But I might move on to building something else now that I see that I can use a motor as a simple winch. I’m more (much more) of an idea guy than a mechanical engineer. I also have a terrible time finishing projects. Hmmm.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-17
Jan 17th
- Learning how to use LabVIEW for robotics, working on class homework, watching football. Just accidently saw who won last night. Dang. #
- Drinking Jameson (12 yo), Go Irish! Still watching football. #
- Oh, and playing poker rather than working on homework (class or house). I feel a little guilty. #
- Done with class homework. No more hockey or football to watch. No reason to be awake. #
- Back to working on my little LEGO robot… thinking about adding a camera… #
Powered by Twitter Tools
Google before breakfast, build a vacuum pump by dinner
Jan 15th
Vacuum pump parts
For our FRC robot, which is playing a soccer-like game, we need a way to possess the soccer ball while maneuvering on the field and over the mid-field bumps. We can’t pick the ball up off the field, and we can only continuously touch the rear 3 inches. We can also touch most of the ball (if we are very close to it) for 2 seconds at a time, every 2 seconds; in theory that is to kick the ball but I suppose we could design top or side grabbers.
The first design the team had was to use a vacuum. We were excited about that when we were thinking of a car or shop vac, but when we realized we had to *build* the vacuum… well, how do you do that?!? The first idea was to reverse a fan, which might work. But my morning Google search turned up this plan to build a vacuum pump. It is always better to have two options, and I think either might work.