robotics

I been distracted lately from writing new articles, so today I'll do a little catching up.  I started a new job AND began mentoring for the Saline Singularity Robotics Programming team for Saline High School, all about the same time. Our six week build cycle ended last Tuesday and now it's time to take a breath.

The last Saturday of the build, I brought my camera in for some fun pictures. It didn't take too much coaxing to get these guys out doors on a beautiful sunny day for some team photos. Michael (on the end, left) is the Team Lead.

This is the programming team, minus 2 guys. And this .... is their best robot pose. Haha!

And finally, the robot. The game released from FRC was themed "SteamPunk" and the game was all about powering and flying an airship. Cool. You have to fill a airship with balls (steam) and put together a rotor. Lastly, the robot has to "fly" by grabbing on to a rope and pulling itself up.

Let's rewind a little. Kickoff began like this. Everyone gathered in the Hornet Hub to socialize and watch the kickoff video from FRC (First Robotics Competition). The room was filled and the excitement was contagious. Then ... the plan was created. Represented here is 4 of the 5 leads for each area.... Business, Electronics, Programming, and Cad. Where the heck is mechanical?

Ah, there he is. The guy standing up on the right.

It's nice being in a school district that has it's own metals lab. The whole thing was designed and built at Saline High School. So the mentors and students got busy designing and making the robot. 

And testing it.

And fixing it.

And testing it some more.

Initially when I was asked to mentor, I thought, "Great!" Sounds like fun!

I said, "I've never built a robot, but it would be fun to try."

I know a little something about coding, and I was excited.

Basically every tool and language was different than what I've used in the past. Some similarities - but new. Great .... (hangs head). Eclipse, Java and Git. Even the scouting app was done with Android studio for the client and a Raspberry Pi web server running Python. Does no one use Microsoft stuff anymore?

So we all learned a lot this past six weeks.  Not only did we program motors and controllers, but we learned about setting up and coding autonomous mode using a vision system and mouse odometry.  We put together systems for making the robot sense where it is and where it needs to go using USB cameras and 6 wired optic mice.

It certainly was the most exhausting and exhilarating time. We met everyday from 5:30-8:30pm, and every Saturday from 10am to 4pm. 

The technology was so interesting and these nerds ..... well they are the best group of guys to work with. Their parents should be so proud of each and every one of them. I know I am - and so is our school district.

Now on to competition! 

Go Saline Singularity 5066!

heat transfer vinyl

I asked for and got a heat transfer press for Christmas, which was an awesome gift from Burke. I had to think real hard about what design I wanted my first shirt to be. I unboxed my new 5 in 1 Zeny Heat Press and got to work. See it here on Amazon.

Burke and I had just finished our first IoT (Internet of Things) project and I was really geeked about that, so my first shirt was all about the Alexa and the Garage Door project.

Once I finally made up my mind what the design should be, I went to Brother's Scan N Cut Canvas. 

Then I created my design.

I cut the vinyl using my Brother Scan N Cut. Any vinyl cutter will work just fine, Cricket or Silhouette. I did test the cut on vinyl, but it ended up not being perfect. You can see my little circle test cut in the picture.

My knife settings were incorrect because I ended up cutting the vinyl and the carrier sheet. I looked everywhere to see how big a deal that was. Should I recut the vinyl? I didn't want to waste what I had done and I really couldn't find any information - so I went for it. I figured my first one would be a throw away anyway.

I heated up my press to 305 degrees fahrenheit and set my timer for 12 seconds. I positioned my design (shiny side up or carrier sheet side up) on my shirt.

I pressed the vinyl for 12 seconds and let it cool down for a minute or two. Then I took my tweezers and peeled off the carrier sheet from each piece. It worked! And .... I didn't have to throw away my first shirt or waste any vinyl!

So far, I really like my new heat press and my cool shirt ..... I'm wearing it to the kick off meeting for First Robotics this weekend. 

Nerds unite!

duct tape dress form

I don't always share on everything I make and I thought really hard about not sharing this cause it doesn't really shed me in a flattering light. Although .... I am a grandma and not 20 anymore, there are a few pounds I'm not proud of. I'm biting the bullet and just doing it. Stupid slow metabolism.

I saw a few posts online about making a duct tape dress form and I really liked the idea. Anyone who has made their own clothes can tell you it's super difficult to alter stuff for yourself.  Making a duct tape double was quite appealing.

So on New Years Eve, I enlisted Burke to help. This task called for "Extreme Man" at his finest and I definitely needed attention to detail here. He said he would help but I had to wear the duct tape over my mouth. Ha.Ha.

So we started with this. I didn't take a picture of the rolls afterwards, but I can tell you we used all the decorative duct tape and about half the silver. Actually, I should have bottom 3 rolls of the decorative stuff. When we ran out, there were a few spots on the back that needed covering.

I started with a nice snug shirt, which has only recently gotten snug on me. Stupid metabolism. Fat girl in a little shirt (sways arms and sings Tommy Boy melody)...

Starting with the silver duct tape, Burke started at the bottom and outlined the chest area.

And then moved upwards.

Admittedly the chest area was the hardest to do. The trick is making a lot of little relief cuts to get the edges to lay down.

Here's a picture of the back. (embarrassing moan)

Once it was done - we added another layer of the decorative duct tape. In hindsight, I really wish I had bought a different style of duct tape. This style made it look a little like a weird meat suit. It was a form fitting and definitely uncomfortable. The whole thing took about 2 hours and I was so ready to be done.

Once we were done, I marked out my vanishing waistline (or where I thought it was) and then Burke cut it right down the middle in the back to remove it - shirt and all.

I took my existing dress form which I love because it's adjustable.

Then put the new meat suit, I mean .... duct tape dress form and put it right over top of it.

I brought out an older pattern I had and some fabric I bought like 5 years ago. I had made it once already so I knew it was needed more precise altering. I was so amazed at how nice it was having a double me. I was gonna say mini me - both we all know that's a lie.

The arms were a bit weird, but they still worked. Hopefully in a couple of months we'll be making a new one ...... cause damn.

If you're someone who enjoys altering for making their own clothes - I would really recommend making your own duct tape dress form.

alexa and the garage door

Quite some time ago, I had the goal of hooking Alexa up to my garage door without buying an off the shelf IoT product. The purpose was really to understand connecting Alexa and IoT better. So here .... the the result of my quest so far. 

So I started down the path of using a microcontroller and I documented that here. In a nutshell, the main obstacle was security and wifi. So the Netduino I got didn't have wifi and I wasn't looking to wire up ethernet from the garage, nor was it capable of doing security in the standard HTTPS fashion. So I started looking at other microcontrollers. 

Then I fell in love .... with the ESP8266. Unbelievable! Quite possibly the coolest gadget ever. You can read more about the microcontroller here - but basically it has a 32bit RISC CPU and the capabilities for 2.4Ghz wifi.

Pictured here is a HiLetgo New Version NodeMCU LUA WiFi Internet ESP8266 Development board. It cost $9.00. Seriously! $9.00. It's breadboard friendly, has a usb to serial converter and a usb micro controller. I also bought like a 4 pack of the ESP8266 chip itself for about $4.00/piece for future projects.

I flashed the board using this instruction. Pretty straight forward - had no issues, it worked like a charm. 

Then ... using the Arduino IDE, I followed this information to add the ESP8266 as an addon. Again, worked great .... had no issues. Now I can program the ESP8266 using the Arduino IDE. In the Boards Manager, I choose the NodeMCU 1.0. I played around with the Example sketches for the ESP8266 and TA-DA. I had it connecting to my wifi.

O.M.G.

OK, so at this point, I got my ESP8266 Dev board connecting to our wifi.

Next challenge ....how to connect securely to my endpoint?

So the next step was to investigate how to connect to a Amazon endpoint. I've been looking at AWS Iot for some time and quite frankly I was really confused by it. I played with it and deleted stuff and played again.

Eventually I stumbled on MQTT, which is a really lightweight connectivity protocol perfect for IoT. Super lightweight and not as blotted as HTTP. THEN .... I ran into this. Genius!

Seriously, I almost cried. Thank you Fábio Toledo!

Fábio explains it the best by saying, "We cannot use AWS MQTT service directly because of the lack of support for TLS 1.2, we need to use the websocket communication as a transport layer for MQTT through SSL (supported by esp8266)

This way we can change the state of your esp8266 devices in realtime, without using the AWS Restful API and busy-waiting inefficient approach."

It took a little while to work out the kinks, but finally I got it to connect, subscribe, and send messages. I was soooo geeked!

Next, was to set up the Lambda event using AWS, and this article really helped me. So this really tied everything together for me and just really took the confusion out of AWS IoT. I've done Alexa Skills before - so it wasn't long before I was communicating using Alexa, the ESP8266, AWS IoT, and AWS Lambda. I did have some security issues, but once I figured those out ... I was golden.

Last challenge, I really needed help with this .... How to hook up the ESP8266 to the garage door opener remote I purchased?

Heavy sigh .....

Luckily I have an awesome husband who understands electronics a little bit more than me. Together we headed off to Radio Shack and bought this Reed Relay. It was a guess really, what type of relay we actually needed.

I really wanted to use the garage door opener remote because I didn't want to mess with the electronics of the garage door - so if I accidentally fried something - it would be just the remote.

So on New Years Eve, after a dinner and movie - Burke and I sat down and finished off the wiring. This part was all him.

We got power to the breadboard using the ESP8266, and then hooked up the relay. Once we got power to the relay, we hooked up the LED.  I wrote a small program that basically would use turn on the LED. Once I could run the program and light up the LED, we hooked up the button and .....

a few minutes past midnight on New Years eve - 2017, it worked.

This morning, I finished putting it all together ....

Quite possibly the best week off work and New Years a girl could ask for.

I.love.my.life.

doll tent

I picked up this pattern quite some time ago. I always browse the patterns during a big sale at Joanns and buy them all at once - it's so economical that way. I had dolls in mind for my nieces little girls and thought it might make great Christmas gifts.

I bought the oldest an 10" doll a couple of years ago Christmas and thought it would be great for her. Her sister was much younger then and now it's her turn to get the doll. So, one will get a doll (with some clothes) and the other will get the tent.

I used McCalls Craft patterns M7268. I'm pretty sure I paid .99 cents for the pattern.

I challenged myself again to use only materials I already own. I did pretty good, except I did have to buy some dowels (to hold up the tent) and craft board (for the flooring).

I started the pattern before getting all the fabric for my slipcovers and had put it aside for awhile, but with Christmas just around the corner - I brought it out.

It was quite fun to make. The fabric I used were primarily left over from the curtains in my room. So bright and cheery.

I used some vinyl I had bought for making a pattern and used it for the windows.

I thought the shades for the windows were so fun and cute!

It did take me about a day to complete and I used fabric I already had. The whole time I thought about the girls and how fun it would be to play with it. I also thought of myself and my sisters - we would have loved playing with the tent during our many, many hours of doll playtime.

Merry Christmas everyone!

diy oversized chair - part 2

Full disclosure .... I plan to expose all the mistakes I made during the making of the chair. There really isn't a lot of information available on making your own upholstered chair, so there's gonna be mistakes. Quite a few actually. I'm not apposed to meeting a challenge head on - making adjustments as needed and learning as I go.

If you missed Part I of this article, you can find it here.

So my original plan was flawed in several ways. The deck was too high, so we actually broke the poplar out and cut it in half - then we put it back together. I also needed to add boards about an inch above the deck all the way around the chair as the red lines indicate. You'll need those for stapling the foam and fabric.

I had a Robotics meeting at the high school so I had to take off and leave Burke to having the fun of cutting springs and taking pictures. So excuse the messy pictures.

You can buy these springs precut, but in our case - the chair was over sized and pre-

cut springs weren't an option. So I bought a whole roll and cut the pieces ourselves using wire cutters. It worked just fine.

I did research on what type of springs to use and I went with these. They are call sinuous springs or zig zag springs. It was these or coil springs and I went with these for ease of use. They don't need to be tied down.

You get these clips, nail them in.

We spaced them about 3 inches apart.

We used this tool to stretch the spring to each clip.

We cut the springs about an 1 - 1 1/2 inches shorter than the span of the chair.

Make sure you nail everything down really well and file down any rough edges on the springs so they don't cut your fabric.

It really only took a couple of hours and no tying! 

To have the springs all move together when you're up or down, we used these long pieces of wrapped wire and attached them to the springs.

Next we took webbing and added them to the arms to provide reinforcement for the foam padding.

Someone I work with gave me burlap that was left over from his wedding, so I used it to reinforce the deck and outside arms.

Let's breakout the cost so far.

For the springs and webbing, including tools to put these on. $180.00. I have enough now for multiple chairs and the tools I need to put them on.

Mistakes I've made so far:

- miscalculated the height of the chair, so we had to take apart the kick board.

- not installed wood side ways for ease of upholstery.

- spending more on tools I didn't have or having to buy something in bulk because most people don't do this. :)

Total cost so far: $300