Tinkering..

I should be clearing up.

I should be doing exercises.

I should be learning more database theory, writing adverts, making moulds, doing accounts, doing innumerable small odd-jobs to get in a smidge of extra cash.

But I’m not.

I’ve indulged myself this last couple of days and it’s felt good. I’ve been tinkering in the workshop.

Long story short, I’ve been trying to motorise the angle-poise lamp I have the webcam attached to, with a view to getting it hooked up to some machine-vision software for motion-tracking and having it run as cameraman. At least it started there, and now I’m looking at adding microphones, a speaker and tri-colour LEDs to turn it into a sort of intuitive feedback device.

It’s essentially a robot arm though, with 6 degrees of freedom. I’ve never made a robot arm before. I also have no spare money to throw at it, so I’ve been running through my various parts bins.

Collecting “useful” things, and/or taking them apart to see how they’re assembled is something of a compulsion. However actually recombining them feels like something I’ve let atrophy. It’s been frustrating at points, but it’s an enjoyable indulgence. And it feels like it’s starting to get back into gear a bit.

It’s also helpfully letting me see what parts are actually still any use to me.

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.

Twitter Updates for 09-12-2010

• @JezzKitty D'awww <3 in reply to JezzKitty 02:03:31, 2010-12-09
• And now we just wait to see which side the first person to die is on. Nations reality-TV viewers masturbating furiously… #demo2010 17:34:23, 2010-12-09
• Hearing reports of student protesters having broken into National Gallery. Or did doors just break open from pressure of the crush? 18:03:11, 2010-12-09
• Glad the police got that one. "Protester" in fucking BODY ARMOUR and ski-mask, trying to light fire bomb by broken window. 18:48:05, 2010-12-09
• There are innocents on either side of this, but some are being more actively agressive on both sides too. 18:58:16, 2010-12-09
• Lot of these old surplus servos I have also have broken teeth. 19:50:01, 2010-12-09
• More servos with broken teeth. So many broken teeth on my bench it's starting to look like Parliament Square. 20:06:36, 2010-12-09
• Four Hitec HS-101 servos, all failed in the same gear. Can't make a single working one from the lot. 20:34:40, 2010-12-09
• Total of 5 mechanically functional servos. If the electrics work too, hurrah. May be able to rig the broken ones onto other gearboxes. 20:50:16, 2010-12-09

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.

Technical issues

Indoors PC has started throwing up “CPU fan error” messages on boot, and an hour ago suddenly powered off, not reset. I’ve had the side of the case off and the fan’s looked like it’s going, so this is either a transient fan problem or something more serious.

I’m hoping it can be resolved by leaving the side off the case and keeping a close eye on the fan. If that’s all it is, I can jury-rig a repair with an old case-fan and some cable-ties. If it’s more than that, I’m in trouble because the parts are outdated enough that it’ll require a subtantially fresh build on failure.

Mirrored from The blog-hub for Peter "Sci" Turpin.