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Friday Night Drawbot v3

Friday Night Drawbot

You may be familiar with our Friday Night Drawbot from back when it was at Version 1. Well, we’re now at Version 3, and there’s been much improvement. With Version 2 we made the body a bit shorter to get a tighter turn radius, and we’ve continued that trend with the latest revision.

Friday Night Drawbot

We’ve also switched to AA rechargeable batteries, so no more disposable 9 volts. This means that we can use our eneloops and since we’ve got a dozen of them, we can run all day and switch them out as needed.

Friday Night Drawbot

We’re also using a Diavolino from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories now, which means we can use a shield, which means we’ve cleaned things up a bit as far as the wiring. The “brains” are also detachable from the rest of the body now. Speaking of the body, we’ve rebuilt that as well, and used hot glue and velcro in place of duct tape and rubber bands, so things are a lot more secure. (Don’t worry, there’s still gaff tape and rubber bands, but it’s much cleaner now.)

Friday Night Drawbot

Keep an eye out for the Friday Night Drawbot at the next event that somehow manages to blend art and technology…. or something like that.

(Oh, I’ll also be adding a bunch more info on the Friday Night Drawbot project page.)

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Going Postal

USPS Fail

After my most recent post office adventure, I’m beginning to wonder if it can be saved.

First of all, I’m a fan of the USPS. I have a PO Box, and I get and send mail pretty often. It works fairly well, and it’s reasonably priced. Its just sort of there and it works. Mostly.

One of the BarCamp Sponsors is located in Germany, and they asked if we could send them some shirts. I said “Heck Yes!” not thinking it would be that big of a deal, and it wasn’t, except for Mr. Cranky Postal Worker.

I managed to leave work on Wednesday around 4pm, had to make a few stops, and realized I could make it to the post office before they closed. I got there around 4:55 and at the time I was still not sure what time they closed. (More on that later.)

There were two people in front of me, and two employees working, but only one working at the counter. Both of the people in front of me had to fill out forms. I stepped up to the desk and was told I also had to fill out a form. By now it was 5pm, so one employee rushed over to the door to lock it so no one else could come in. (Oh, there was also some confusion with another customer about their hours, since they recently changed them to close at 5pm instead of 5:30pm.)

The two people in front of me finished up, and the employee who locked the door had to go let them out as I got up to the counter again. I gave them my form and my package, they asked a few questions, and I paid for shipping my item.

At this point, we’re about 98% done with this whole transaction, and Mr. Cranky says “You know, you should come earlier next time” and I was stunned for a second, and didn’t manage to say “You know, you should go to Hell!” but instead said “Well, by the time I got out of work and drove here, it was almost 5pm” and his reply was again, that I should come earlier. #wtf

Come earlier?!? So… what if there had been 10 people in front of me instead of two? Would it have mattered if I got there 15 minutes earlier? Or, I dunno, what if both employees has been helping people instead of one? Keep in mind, the post office was open when I got there. If they don’t want people coming in at 4:55pm, then they should close at 4:55pm. Find me a business owner who will tell a paying customer (as they are paying for something) that next time they decide to spend money in their store, they should come earlier.

I’ve been told I’m more pissed off about this than I should be. To be fair, this guy has probably worked there for 20, or 30, or, well, maybe 50 years. That’s why he’s Mr. Cranky.

But I can’t help thinking, that’s no way to run a business. And maybe that’s the problem, they aren’t running the USPS like a business.

Update – 14 Years Later…

Note: I think I was being a dick in this post… The USPS is a Service. It’s in the name! United States Postal Service. It should not be run “like a business”. it should be run like a service to the US.

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DrawCamp (and Machines!)

DrawCamp

On Sunday, October 23rd, 2011 I’ll be at DrawCamp talking about Machines that Draw (and other mechanical/technology-based things.)

I know that DrawCamp should be about pencils and pens and paper and such… or should it?

Drawbot (new code!)

I’ll be bringing the Egg-Bot, as well as the Friday Night Drawbot (if I can reassemble it before then) as well as a bunch of slides and a talk on robotic drawing devices.

I might also bring the Wacom tablet, as I tend to use that for my drawings more than anything else nowadays. (Oh, and I’m sure someone else will cover iPad apps for drawing.)

(Note: as of my writing this there’s still 19 spots available. So if you want to experience DrawCamp, sign up now!)

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iPod Ouch

iPod Ouch

Remember when the iPod Touch 4G came out? My daughter sure does… it was about a month after her birthday… the birthday where she got an iPod Touch. The 4G had a camera, so she was a bit disappointed. I told her this was her first (harsh) lesson of the Apple World. A newer, better, faster, and shinier model will always be right around the corner.

Fast forward one year… She loves her iPod Touch. Sure, it doesn’t have a camera, but that’s fine. One day she tells me (while very upset) the the screen has a crack in it. I know she’s careful with it, and she claims she didn’t do anything that would have damaged it, but she does live in a house with many “rambunctious” siblings. I trust her, and tell her we’ll take it to the Apple Store and see what the options are. (It’s still usable, but the crack is pretty annoying.)

At the Apple Store, a kind and helpful employee says that since we do have AppleCare, we can use our “get out of jail free” card, and they’ll actually just swap the iPod for another one, at no charge. After a big, big thanks from us, and a warning to “be careful!” from the employee, we’re on our way. I figure it was the least they could do for the thousands of dollars I’ve spent with Apple over the years. (Oh, the original iPod was engraved with her name, so a tiny loss there.)

Fast forward to the release of iOS 5. I’m all set to update the iPod Touch, and it seems stuck at version 4, not wanting to update. It seems odd… I know we bought it right before the launch of the 4G model. I check the model number, see on Apple’s web site that it’s a 3G, and try again. No dice. I then dig through Apple’s Support Forums, where there are some notes about confusion between 2G and 3G and mislabeled model numbers. At this point, my daughter reminds me that we got a replacement, and we then start to believe that we were given a replacement model that was older/different than the original model we brought in. #damn

So at this point, were not even sure which model we originally had. After digging through my orders on Apple’s web site, I finally determine that we originally had a PC086LL/A, which is indeed a 2G iPod Touch. So no mistake on Apple’s part there… it’s all on us.

So what’s left? Not much. I just explain to her that even though you buy a piece of hardware from Apple, you can’t expect to run the newest software on it 16 months later. Of course it still works, and does all the stuff it did before iOS 5 came out, and that’s just fine right? We get so tempted by the new shiny stuff though… the stuff the tech sites hype up and convince you that you need.

That said, I still use the iPod I got back in 2005. It still does everything I need an iPod to do. It doesn’t run any apps, it just plays audio. But I fear those times are gone… and we’re stuck in a world of constantly wanting new hardware to keep up with the new software.

Ouch indeed.

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Key Kitty Klone

Key Kitty

Recently I came across a link that someone shared for this story about the “Key Kitty” which is a cute little kitty shaped keychain that is also a weapon. With all the debate about weapons on Thingiverse, I thought I’d try an experiment.

So here’s what I did… using nothing more than the two photos above, I decided to try to clone the design, and create my own with a 3D printer.

Key Kitty Template

I took the photo of the pink Key Kitty above and created a greyscale version of it, and then imported it into Inkscape. I then traced around it to create a SVG file that approximated the outline. Now, the Key Kitty is a pretty simple object, it’s basically a two dimensional object with some height to it, so the process was fairly easy.

Key Kitty Test

At this point I printed out the SVG file at actual size to see how it would fit on my fingers. It didn’t have to exactly match the original, but it did have to fit right.

OpenSCAD Kitty

Once I tested the paper prototype and decided it was the correct size, I exported the design to a DXF file and imported it into OpenSCAD and extruded it.

Key Kitty STL

Finally, here’s the STL file of our Key Kitty Klone, ready to be printed. It will just fit on the platform of the MakerBot Cupcake. (And because someone asked, no… I had no plan to make it into an LED flashlight as well. I was just interested in copying the basic shape.)

So wait, where is the actual print? Well, the night I tried printing it was the night of many woes, and I had two failed attempts at printing it, and with a two hour print time estimate, I ended up not leaving the makerspace with a real printed object. I’m also not 100% sure I should share the files. I mean, there’s the whole issue of the legality of cloning products, and I’m not really sure I want to be a test case on this one.

But I figured I couldn’t end this post without a bit more research. I found references to keykittytv.com, but there’s no web site, and it looks like the domain expired back in August 2011. I did find this great Key Kitty video from 2010 though. There’s also a Facebook page and Twitter account, both of which have had no updates for 10 months. For all I know, the company behind this product went bankrupt and closed up shop. Of course this just brings up more questions about cloning it. In the end though, I could just make some changes and call it the Key Bat or Key Bunny, or whatever… all it needs are some eye-holes for your fingers, and some pointed ears.

So here’s my question to you… What do you think about the cloning of existing products?

Print your own! Grab the files from Printables.com