So welcome to another Wednesday update, stuff is actually starting to move along again!
Gwiz Update
So due to having too many projects on the go and lack of time, the Gwiz has been sold. I really enjoyed getting the car up and running but I couldn’t warrant the monthly cost (insurance wasn’t that cheap) and I can still do a self-driving project, just at a smaller scale!
Electronics Course
This has stalled a bit which is always bad when doing a course as you start forgetting what you have learned. However once I complete the main printing of the Inmoov robot, this will continue.
Inmoov Robot
So my main focus has been the Inmoov Robot and trying to fix the main lower structure that partially cracked. If this had gone (turns out it was far off) the robot would of fallen off the stand and smashed. That would not be a good day! I have also done some work on the arm which until the servo bicep holder broke, would of been complete
Turned out one of the main base plate was also damaged but this would be a complete rebuild, so I glued it.This was printed in PLA which over time has been brittleThe orange bicep servo holder that snapped
Exercise
So I have started mountain biking quite a bit and have now got a nice (but old) full suspension bike. Today I also ran 3 miles on the treadmill and nearly died lol. I would like to get some fitness back as it helps me mentally with these sorts of projects.
Hello and welcome to another Wednesday update, I know it’s been nearly a month since I did an update, and even that update was a bit thin with content.
The Kitchen aka the excuse
So nothing to do with robotics but the main reason I have done very little in the way of tech. My entire kitchen, dining room, and downstairs bathroom have been replaced including removing a wall which resulted in a lot of work, a lot of mess, and a lot of noise. This basically stopped me from doing anything interesting as after I would finish work on a Wednesday I was cleaning, moving stuff, or helping the builders who were friends of mine. They did an epic job however I think I will be cleaning for a very long time. At the same time, I also had my windows replaced.
Inmoov Robot
So a month on and it’s hard to remember what I was doing, I have made some progress with the Inmoov Robot which is good. I have nearly finished the second arm however one of the main bottom supports (which connects the robot to the chair pole) is now damaged which is not good! This will be quite a lot of work to sort out however if I don’t, the robot is likely to fall over and smash.
Gwiz
Nothing really has happened with this, I still want to see if I can make it drive itself.
Electronics course
I have made a bit of progress on this and passed the second test (barely due to the gap between lessons). I hope to complete this by next week
Hosting for Burf.co
So after some social media feedback to HostPapa, a new member of staff has been trying to help me lower the concurrency issues with my site (Entry Points). I still find this a terrible way to do business (unlimited everything as long as it comes in single-file) as that’s not the way the internet works. I did actually check CPU and Memory usage and it was barely anything!
Welcome to another Wednesday update, again a rare edition that’s actually on Wednesday! A bit less on content this week due to it being my kid’s half term!
GWiz Update
The mission was always to make it to my Partner’s house in Sandhurst, and guess what it did it! No issues at all, max out about 45mph but I think it has more in it!
I have 1 small issue to sort with the GWiz, when breaking the re-gen system causes a burst of over 70v to the controller which causes the car to shut down. It’s a simple setting to change but needs a special cable.
Vex Tank
So on Tuesday, I wanted to start prototyping a simple tank to use as a platform for outside. It took about 2 hours to build and works pretty well until it got to the brick test. I think I am going to make a slightly larger more powerful one. At the same time, I want to test it again on a similar platform with different types of wheels (e.g Omni) which will hopefully give me some evidence on what works best out on the pavements.
ROS Lidar Robot
So I managed to get part of my old VEX ROS lidar robot working, I had missed out on some key bits of information in the readme but managed to get parts of it working. This was a great learning platform for ROS as it was purely built from the ground up by myself. The teleops control worked to control it, the Lidar also worked, the only issue was a lot of Errors were generated
Holiday
On a short holiday with my dad to Welles and Cheddar, I managed to get an Anki Overdrive set from a charity shop, this was awesome in its day and uses AI to drive the cars.
Welcome to another Wednesday update, this one is full of achievements!! Hold on to your pants!!!
The Gwiz in all its glory!
The Gwiz did a hill!
To make sure I can drive the Gwiz to my partners’ house I needed to check it would get up a rather steep hill. It’s not very long but is quite steep. I took a run-up and managed to get to the top of it at just under 30mph.
The Gwiz hit 45mph!
Erm, I would not recommend this, it’s rather scary, imagine being in a cardboard box and thinking you may crash into a wall at high speed. It’s very noisy and very bouncy.
The Giwz overtook a skateboarder
Well, he wasn’t going very fast but made me laugh!
The Gwiz did a shopping trip!!!
Yup the car has now done something actually useful, I mean it has cost me hundreds of pounds to get to this point but I can now make it to Morrisons.
I feel that the Gwiz has achieved a lot and only had one issue which I think is an overvoltage issue
VEX Robotics
So I had a bit of spare time during the week and managed to fire up my VEX V5 and VEX IQ robotics kit and get them set up to be useful. My aim is to use VEX EDR or V5 to control the Gwiz.
VEX V5 is pretty cool and even features a camera for tracking objects
ROS and Turtlebot
I also managed to fire up my old ROS (Robotics Operating System) Turlebot robot which is super cool. It has all sorts of sensors like a Kinetic type sensor for camera and depth detection, bumper sensors, and ultrasonics. This is the perfect robot to learn ROS on. It’s powered by a Nvidia TK1 so can do a lot of machine learning.
This is a point cloud of the back of me
MakeBlock CyberPi Go Kit
Electronics Course
And to make the evenings on the sofa even more exciting I have started the electronics course on Udemy that’s is on my to-do list.
Welcome to another Wednesday update and boy has the weather been great the last 5 days. Compared to the usual rain we had for a good few weeks, the weather has been epic!
Gwiz update Stuff has happened, the big thing being that I have now ordered brand new (yes actually new) batteries for it. I have gone with some 100AH deep cycle Hankook DC31. I will be running around 65 volts which does make the Gwiz shift a bit! They should arrive ready for the weekend 🙂
Inmoov Robotic Head update
Well, this has started to look pretty cool now that I have tidied up the internals. I have mounted the amplifier, sound level PCB, and other things. I need to reprint the top part of the skull
I think I have got this to a great place. I do want to add a camera to it but to mount that onto the Pi will be a massive challenge. I also need to fix the Burf.co chat API as it’s dying badly. I would also like the Python script to autostart when the head is turned for all of the speech, TTS and API services.
Burf.co : Goodbye server!
So do not run random Linux scripts on a live server from the internet lol. I completely removed SUDO permissions from my box, 1.2 terabytes of data lost! It was a bad day, I was multitasking badly and paid the price. I managed to rebuild the server rather quickly (2 hours) however the main index data will take ages to get back. I like to see this huge mess up as an opportunity to do something different so watch this space!
Review
Let’s see how I am actually doing against the plan, I had a few lost sessions due to house improvements and covid, but how am I doing against the list
List from February
Math : Learn Algebra and kinematic (Little progress made)
Build/use already built little robot to do maze solving work (Little progress made)
Finish Robotic Diploma (Missed off list but was important)(Done)
Finish Inmoov Robot (Missed off list but is very important) (Progressing)
I find it very odd how I missed the Robotics Diploma and finishing the Inmoov Robot (full size) off the main list as these are actually more important than most of the other things.
So 3 things done, 1 scrapped (it was mentioned in a previous post why), 2 processing well, and 5 academic courses to start. Seeing as it’s 3 months in, I think that is actually good progress.
So another Wednesday update! This time, we have hit unprecedented speeds!
Gwiz Update: 65 volts of pure madness
Yup, I hit 34MPH in this bad boy uphill, I think any faster and I would need to change my pants. It does become apparent that maybe the brakes need upgrading! The next test is to take it out onto normal roads!
Inmoov head update
I have now started moving the electronics into the skull so that it is more self-contained. I personally think it’s looking pretty awesome. Once I have wired in the speakers I will be able to get it to talk and listen to commands.
I bought a cheap old robotic hover this week after the Rodney Brooks podcast that I recommended last week. I found it really interesting to see how it behaved and plotted its paths around my downstairs. It only has basic sensors (no Lidar) but it was really interesting. My son Max also found it rather interesting and spent 30 minutes playing with it.
