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A Nerdy Derby Thanks

The Track

Well, we somehow survived another Nerdy Derby event, and while it was a little chaotic, those involved definitely had a good time. None of this would have been possible without the help of Frankie and the DCRL at UWM. Be sure to check out Frankie’s most recent post about building the track.

Track Plans

Everyone at Milwaukee Makerspace was surprised at the size of the track. We’ve had the CAD files for more than a year now, and talked about building an “official” track, but we owe Frankie (and his students!) a big THANKS for making it happen. They put a lot of work into it, and we definitely appreciate it.

Last year we just used a plain old Pinewood Derby track, and I must say, this year was way more interesting! We had a lot of kids building cars, and besides the cars looking hilarious and awesome, we learned that cars fell off the track… a lot! (This turned out to be a good thing.)

Derby Car

Kids are pretty darn creative, and they came up with some crazy cars, and many of the cars fell off the track and hit the floor below, and parts flew off. I was joking that this taught them a valuable lesson every member of Milwaukee Makerspace already knows: When something breaks, we fix it. I don’t remember seeing any kid get upset about their car breaking into 10 pieces. They just picked up as many pieces as they could find and headed back to the build table to try again.

So here’s the deal… We’re going to have another race, maybe before the end of 2013, maybe early in 2014, but this time we’re gonna let Frankie choose the date so he will not miss it!

(If you’re interested in sponsoring the Nerdy Derby, get in touch with me. It really is a fun and educational hands-on event for kids… of all ages!)

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Derby Wheels

If you remember Milwaukee’s last Nerdy Derby, we tried to supply lots of pieces for people to build cars with. I ended up laser cutting a bunch of wheels, as well as 3D printing some wheels… take a look at the junk car post from last year.

Well this year I started printing wheels, and then decided that plain old boring wheels just wouldn’t do, so here I present a progression of wheels I’ve designed so far. I’ve only printed about 1/4 of them, but I’ll probably give them all a try before the big Nerdy Derby event at Milwaukee MakerFest on October 19th, 2013.

wheel001
The plain old boring wheel from last year.

wheel002
Speed holes… should use less material, but may not actually print any faster.

wheel003
Indent, for no particular reason.

wheek004
More speed holes, this time done using a proper for loop.

wheel005
Reverse spokes?

wheel006
Howdy partners! It’s a wagon wheel!

wheel007
And a steering wheel!

wheel008
And an Aperture wheel?

wheel009
Wheel wheel wheel wheel wheel…

wheel010
Tri-force wheel?

wheel011
Weird wheel?

wheel012
Starting to do some hull action for more 3D-ish wheels.

I will say this, I am no expert at designing wheels, but it’s been a lot of fun and a great design challenge, and I really do enjoy tinkering with OpenSCAD to create things.

Oh, and then I wanted to do a spiral wheel, and did some searching, and found this great wheel library, so use that if you really just want awesome wheels and don’t care as much about screwing around with code to learn things on your own. (Or, us the Highly-Configurable-Wheel library and learn from it!)

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BarCampMilwaukee8

BarCampMilwaukee8

Yes, we will be doing another BarCamp in Milwaukee, and yes, it will be the first weekend in October, though we’re only doing one day this time, so join us Saturday, October 5th, 2013 at Bucketworks “Summer Camp”, located at 161 W Wisconsin Ave, 2nd Floor, right above TJ Maxx in the Grand Avenue Mall.

Show up around 9am, and we will wrap it up by 9pm. In-between it will be the usual user generated conference wherein we figure everything out the day of the event. Who will be speaking? What will they speak about? We don’t know… but we will figure it all out on the 5th. Think of it as an “idea swap meet” where you share your knowledge and thoughts, and others do the same. You will leave with new things in your head, and maybe even some new friends or partners in crime.

We’re going all retro by doing as little planning as possible, but if you would be so kind as to register at barcampmilwaukee.org we would love that.

Also, bring some lunch money. There is a food court. Hey, it’s not like were asking you to bring your own chair! (Yes, we did that before.) It’s not like were asking you to bring your own utensils! (Yes, we did that too.) Oh, we may be able to provide parking for cheap. Would you pay $5 to park all day for this free event? Let us know on Atrium, or elsewhere, somehow.

It’s all so… undefined. Exciting, isn’t it!?!?

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Miltalkee (The Talking Robot)

Miltalkee

Wow, somehow it’s been months since I first mentioned my entry in the Great Robot Showdown, and it’s been another (or a few more) since I promised a write-up on said robot… so here it is.

Proposal

For the Flying Car Milwaukee 2013 event there were a number of competitions held, one of which was the “Great Robot Showdown” which tasks people to “create an energetic, entertaining robot that actually does what it’s designed to do.” And noted that the robots would be “unleashed at the Flying Car Gala to delight and entertain the crowd.”

How could I resist? I had already shown things like the Friday Night Drawbot and the Arc-O-Matic at previous events in Milwaukee, so I figured I needed something new, something specifically for this event.

Miltalkee

I wrote up a proposal describing what I planned to build, included a quick sketch, and some links to previous projects, and mailed it in. About a week later Dana and I were putting a bid on a house, and I got a call. I checked my voicemail later and found out I was selected, which was awesome, but it also meant I had about 30 days to build the robot, move everything I own, and also take part in a gallery night I had committed to. Fun!

Miltalkee

It was time to get to work! My plan was to cut all the pieces of the robot from 3mm Baltic Birch plywood. That stuff is great to work with if you’ve got a laser cutter handy, and we happen to have one at Milwaukee Makerspace! There was a lot of cutting to do. Basically the robot consists of 8 “boxes” of various sizes to comprise the body, head, legs, feet, and arms. After cutting and assembling everything (with glue and strategically placed magnets) the pieces were painted with grey primer, and then with metallic silver paint. All sprayed in my home-built spray booth.

Miltalkee

I ended up spending the majority of my time doing the physical build, all the time thinking the programming would be the easy part. I was (mostly) right. Since I was using a Raspberry Pi I was in my comfort zone. A bit of sudo apt-get for the right packages, some Perl, a text file, and we had a talking robot. I ended up abandoning the idea of a screen or LCD display of any kind due to time constraints, but it’s an idea for the future.

Miltalkee

There is a hole in the center of Miltalkee’s chest where a speaker goes. It’s a powered speaker, using 3 AAA batteries, which works well in a semi-quiet room, but in a large room filled with people and music, it’s not exactly loud. (I should thank Dori Zori for turning down the music a bit!) If I ever want Miltalkee to be extra loud, I can always run the output to an external amp I guess.

One of the neat things about Miltalkee is the construction. The faceplate and chestplate are interchangeable, and if I get ambitious in the future, I can swap them out for new ones. This should make upgrading to a screen fairly easily.

There’s a bunch of technical stuff I’ve not included in this post, mainly because I’ve already rambled too much. In future posts I’ll talk about the Raspberry Pi, the code, and a few other construction secrets.

Miltalkee

Enjoy!

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Documented Projects

Projects

I like to think that there are 3 stages that a project can exist in:

  1. In-Progress
  2. Completed
  3. Abandoned

In-Progress might mean you are in the planning stages, or you’ve completed it, but are revisiting it, perhaps improving it. Some projects never move out of the In-Progress stage, and that’s fine, for multiple reasons.

Completed usually means “it’s done!” (but could mean it’s a project you don’t actively work on anymore.) Maybe there’s little things here and there, maintenance issues, if you will, but for the most part, it’s considered done. You might even just call a project Completed if you get frustrated and don’t want to take it any further.

Abandoned is an interesting one. You might think that some projects get abandoned before they even get started, but since I consider the planning part of a project In-Progress, I would suggest that every project exists as long as you are thinking about.

Thinking about a project is a good idea, but if you take it further, you might talk about it, and hey, you might even write about it.

In any stage of a project, you can document it. You can write about it, and take photos of it, and even shoot some video. (You may also publish this documentation, which is a good thing to do!) Documentation allows us to look back and learn about what we did. It allows others to look at what we did and learn from it, and maybe improve upon it, take it further, solve the problems we couldn’t. Even if you had an idea, started a project, and abandoned it, there is great value in documenting it. Others can learn… learn what went right, what went wrong, and maybe decide to try solving the problems you could not.

Documenting (and publishing) information about your project has another value: inspiration. You can inspire yourself (and others) when you look at what you’ve done.

So please, document your projects… the world needs more inspiration.

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