robots

Hackerbot: Now Open Source & for sale!

A few months ago I was tipped off about an exciting beta release of a developer-friendly robot base called the Hackerbot. It's essentially a high-quality robo-vacuum base with some built-in sensors and a variable amount of additional hardware ( see the product lineup ) that serves as a platform for

blender

Tabletop Robot Challenge - Phase I

Challenges are such a cool way to compel people to learn. The inherent part of any challenge that really drives the outcomes is the fact that there is a deadline. Between our tendencies to procrastinate, oversimplify, under-budget, continuously refine and otherwise "let perfect be the enemy of done"

ESP8266

PS2 Controller for ROS2 projects

Connecting a PS2 controller wirelessly to your ROS project has never been easier!

Graph Data Workspace Project

I wanted to fire up a little application to reinforce my understanding of both graph data and JSONSchema. It seemed like a worthwhile idea. Providing type definitions for nodes and edges seemed to make sense, since certain relationships (edges) only make sense between certain types of parties ( nodes ). I realized

ESP8266

Frosty 2.0

Frosty the front-yard Christmas decoration has been upgraded from 1980's fiber-optic technology ( which was admittedly, very high-tech at the time ), to what the new millennium has provided: bright-ass LEDs. Here is Frosty in his original condition. That broom seems to get broken even before you take it out

Anki Decks data recovery

At one point I was really jazzed about creating my own Anki decks to try to help me memorize things. I really like the platform and the no-frills aesthetics. Recently I wanted to get back into it except I had two compounding problems: 1. My AnkiWeb account data was deleted

cucumbers

HydroCucs 2024

The cucs are doing better than any prior year, but still not convincing me that hydroponics is worth the effort.

garden

Hydroponic Cucumbers - the saga continues

I'm well into HydroCucs 2024, so this is going to be somewhat of a slideshow and a summary of a lot of things that went wrong. My wife really likes cucumbers but I've never succeeded in growing them in the garden. Somewhere I heard that it

Propagating my Apricot Tree into an orchard

I have a an Apricot tree living on my property that was once part of an orchard - one of many that used to exist here in the Santa Clara Valley. It's very old but doing pretty well considering everything that has changed around it. Even if this

garden

Wu-Tang for my Tomatoes

A crazy idea that was easier than I expected

docker

Post-processing pipeline for kid's soccer photos

Imagine that you break out the DSLR to snap some action shots of your child in one of their first real soccer games. There are some good shots among all of the stuff that you failed to manually focus at 300mm despite your background as a 1st Camera Assistant. However,

3D printing

Improved Balancing Robot

Yes, there was an original balancing robot. I was curious about PID controllers. I lifted some generic balancing robot code for an Arduino and with a little adaptation and some cheap components I was able to build and tune something that would balance. It was adorable but had a lot

Escaping from Evernote

Finally leaving Evernote and taking my data with me - even if it's a ton of work!

electronics

PRL: Integrated Test Fire #1

The hardware and software have come together, off the bench, for the first time! Initial tests of the launcher were fully-manual, and then later tested with a 12V battery use to power opening the valve. This test was the culmination of a lot of other things coming together and proved

ESP8266

PRL: Circuit Design

As part of the Pneumatic Rocket Launcher project I needed to design a small circuit that would trigger the sprinkler solenoid which opens the valve for a launch. This solenoid is labeled as 24V ( and apparently that rating is for an AC voltage ) but my internet research and careless experimenting

I'm not a game developer, but Unity is really easy to learn

Late last year, with all the talk of the metaverse in the air I started getting curious about 3D visualizations and whether my skill set was anywhere within striking distance of the subject.  I have intermediate 3D modeling skills and can otherwise hack together anything with open source software so

ESP32

ESP32-CAM ride-along crash course

I've read about these for a long time and finally picked up some to tinker with.  It's a next-gen 8266 with a camera, so how hard can this be? The first thing I notice is that I bought boards with no onboard UART, meaning that powering

raspberry pi

The Best! Open-Source Development Environment for Raspberry Pi Projects

When getting started doing projects on small devices like Raspberry Pi's (and smaller), it can be hard to establish a comfortable workflow during development.  I mean comfortable literally - ergonomically, as a human - as well as being able to utilize familiar, modern development tools. Having to be

2-Factor All The Things! (with node-2fa)

In addition to a strong password, using 2-factor authentication (2FA) should be considered mandatory when doing non-trivial things on the internet.  That means when personal data, privacy, storage, social networks, money, reputation, or home automation products come into play - basically all the time.   In the uphill battle to keep

ESP8266

Getting SPIFFS

Using the ESP8266 to host a micro-application is one of it's most appealing uses. In addition to the EEPROM ( electrically erasable programmable read-only memory ) where a very limited amount of data can be stored, there is another special allocation for "actual files" called SPIFFS ( I won&

3D printing

My First 3D Prints

When I first completed building my 3D printer I was ready to lean face-first into the learning curve.  I quickly jotted down this list for myself which I thought would represent incremental challenges in 3D printing. From the most basic to the point where I'm currently stuck, here

3D printing

3D Printing Workflow demystified!

The major steps of a basic 3D printing workflow, explained from conception to print.

mDNS is cool as hell

TLDR:  Setup mDNS on a wifi-connected device to establish a human-friendly hostname on your local network for convenience. IP addresses are great but they've never really had the warm and fuzzy feeling conveyed by an actual hostname when you connect to something. Especially in a browser ( for some

ESP8266

Getting Started with the ESP8266-01

This is so far the smallest wifi-connected thing I've programmed. Looking back more than 2 years now, this post will document my 'first contact' with the ESP family of hardware. I have since come a long way, but these first few encounters were what got me

docker

Run Docker on your Raspberry Pi

TLDR: You'll need to use ARM-compatible base images