Only two weeks left to get the Claw up and running ready for Breaker Faire the Maker Faire fund raiser party. I am starting to get worried that I might not get it done in time. I have been having lots of problems this week with getting the motors working with the gantry system. The motors are [...]
This week I have working on the gantry system. The gantry system is used to move the claw around inside the Cube. I was originally planing on attaching the claw to 4 cables running to pulleys in each of the corners of the cube. The cables would be attached to four electric motors. Just like the sky cam that you can [...]
I started working on the third version of the claw this week. In this version I have added a motor, extended the length of the prongs, and started on the electronics. At first I tried using a direct drive electric motor that I found at VHS. I constructed my own shaft coupler out of sheet metal and hotglue. It [...]
This is the second prototype of the claw. I really liked the claw design by Marc Cryan that I found on Instructables.com but I wanted it to have three prongs instead of two. I did this prototype out of cardboard using trial and error to get the right size for each part. I tried doing the math [...]
I have made a bunch of time lapse videos in the past with my Cannon S90 using the CHDK hacked firmware. These videos turn out great and I have very happy with the results. The problem is that I have to leave my expensive camera unattended for hours or days at a time and I am unable to use the camera while it [...]
Now that I got my controller working and the stepper motors moving with a RAMPs board, I decided to get started on The Claw. I knew that I would have to go thought a bunch of iterations of the claw before getting one that I liked so I wanted to start early. I knew I wanted a [...]
COSM is a online data store of sensor data for the internet of things. You can use Cosm to store sensor data (light, temp, heat, etc…) from your internet enabled device (Arduino, Raspberry PI, etc) online and produce pretty graphs of the values as they change. Recently Chipkin Automation Systems (The company I work for) added [...]
A few weeks ago I found this tutorial on make magazine Turning the Raspberry Pi Into an FM Transmitter by Code Club pihack. It uses the hardware on the raspberry pi that is actually meant to generate spread-spectrum clock signals on the GPIO pins to output FM Radio energy. This means that all you need to do [...]
Continuing from my last post on The Giant Claw Game! This week I build the controller for the Giant Claw using the laser cutter, a arcade joystick and a button. The box was cut with VHS’s laser cutter, using a pattern that I created with this laser cutting box making tool. I purchased the joystick and button from a local arcade suppler John’s [...]
This year for the Vancouver Maker Faire I am planning on making a giant Claw Crane game. Normally claw games are found in video arcades and shopping malls and are a glass box where players can control a crane with a joystick and attempt to pick up prizes from the playing area. They are also known as teddy picker, candy crane, [...]
We have been running Raspbberry PI nights at VHS the last few weeks and they have been going really well. Using the Raspberry PI to control a Arduino Raspberry PI + Python + WebIDE + GPIO pins = Blink sketch We are running the Raspberry PIs headless (no keyboard or mouse, using SSH) because VHS [...]
One of my good friends just had a child and I wanted to get them a hand made gift. I decided on making a mobile with VHS’s laser cutter. The first version I designed while at VHS one night. I changed a few things in Version two. I added more rings, designed in holes [...]
The Raspberry PI is good for a lot of things from computer clusters to home automation but its missing a few things such as a real time clock, terminal/barrel power connector, or Analog pins. The Arduino has analog pins that can be read by the USB virtual serial port from the Raspberry PI. In MagPI issue 7, has a great article on [...]
This week I have been playing with the Rapberry PI, Python and the Python GPIO pins library. Software I started by formatting a SD Card with the Raspbian “wheezy” (2012-12-16) image from Raspberry PI’s website. I followed this tutorial on how to set up the Raspberry PI for the first time. I then enabled SSH so I don’t have to attache a monitor, keyboard [...]
This is a place holder for a upcoming post.
This last week I have been investigating the B.C. Liquor Control and Licensing Branch to find out who has been making the new laws that the LCLB has been interducing . B.C. Liquor cracks down on wine fundraisers B.C. to ban clubs’ all-ages events in bid to restrict underage drinking After much searching I was unable to find a [...]
This weekend I have been playing with more Open Data and Maps using TileMill. Specifically I been trying to make a Bathymetric map of the Salish Sea (BC Coastal waters) A bathymetric chart is the submerged equivalent of an above-water topographic map. Bathymetric charts are designed to present accurate, measurable description and visual presentation of the submerged terrain. In an ideal case, [...]
Goals and Resolutions for 2013 (In no particular order) Create a new post for ABlueStar.com (This blog) each week. – Last year I only missed a few weeks and created a total of a ~47 post. Learn Ruby on Rails using Heroku. Currently all my web projects are created with JavaScript and PHP. While there is nothing [...]
About a year ago I found the The Noun Project while looking for some icons for a project and was instantly hooked. They provide a website where you can enter in any “Noun” and get a iconic image. The Noun Project is building a global visual language that everyone can understand. Visually communicating with symbols is incredibly powerful. It’s no [...]
A few of my recent laser cutter projects, have required that I cut some text out of the material. When you cut in to the material using normal font like Arial or Helvetica, the center parts of letters such as “O” and “P” fallout and looks horrible. The inner parts of the font is called “counters“. In typography, [...]