… “scrappy little startup from Soho” has scored itself its third large carrier supporter, with Bug Labs announcing this morning it had formed a “strategic relationship” with Sprint Nextel Corp. as a laboratory equipment partner for the new Sprint M2M Collaboration Center, which opened this week in Burlingame, Calif.
At its developer conference in Santa Clara this morning, Sprint Nextel officially opened its M2M Collaboration Center and named Bug Labs as one of the partners in the program to help empower developers with the hardware tools they need to innovate and meet the needs of the M2M market.
We’re looking for a flexible, talented developer to help write the open-source code that makes our bots buzz and our applications rock. Your primary responsibility will be writing and maintaining the firmware that controls our machines. The job involves writing, testing, and releasing code for multiple boards and cores, as well as merging contributions by talented programmers from all over the world. You’ll also be helping to develop our end-user applications, and working on whatever crazy projects tomorrow brings. One day you might be writing computational geometry algorithms for multicore machines; the next, convincing an AVR core to play 4-part harmony on a stepper motor. There’s a little bit of everything.
Perfect for bread-boarding, free wiring, etc. This spool of solid-core wire is easy to solder to. When bent it keeps its shape pretty well. We like to have a few spools of this stuff around. We suggest picking up wire strippers to match. Wire gauge is 22 AWG which we’ve found is the best all-around gauge, it works best with breadboards and perfboards but also fits in terminal blocks nicely
This year my Halloween project is the Automatic Halloween Candy Dispenser® triggered by TextforTreat®, CallforTreat® (powered by Twilio)and @TweetforTreat® technologies. Of course it can also be triggered from a Big Red push button, but where is the fun in that? When trick-or-treaters show up at my house they can text, call, or tweet a code displayed on an LCD screen to get their Halloween candy. They can also push the Big Red button. Once the candy request is made a few “special” effects are triggered by X10 modules. A low laying fog machine is activated and lights turn on while the candy shoots down from my front deck on the second floor.
The human hand is an amazing machine that can pick up, move and place objects easily, but for a robot, this “gripping” mechanism is a vexing challenge. Opting for simple elegance, researchers from Cornell University, University of Chicago and iRobot have bypassed traditional designs based around the human hand and fingers, and created a versatile gripper using everyday ground coffee and a latex party balloon.
A new day is dawning for robotics. The tools of manufacturing have been democratized and robots have become modular and configurable. It is easier than ever to make your own robots.
This conference will shine a spotlight on this fresh approach to robotics and the roboticists that are building a better tomorrow through automation. The day will be have talks, demonstrations, explanations, and robotic wisdom.
This first inagural Botacon has the theme “Robots for a Better Future.” You are invited to submit your talk about your pet robot project, your innovations in robotic stepper controllers, your sweet software for controlling two robotic arms at once or things you can make with a robot that make the world a better place. If you’ve got a tutorial or some wisdom to share, submit it here as a talk. While the audience will be heavily skewed towards MakerBot Operators, you are invited to submit your talk on anything robot related.
The first part in the three piece suit, The Arm Cannon is Samus’s primary weapon, we are using a PVC base with EVA foam covering it to get the shape right, then we have an orange acrylic disc covering the barrel, with 12 LEDs inside, half red half yellow, the reason for this is we are going have two different beams to choose from, so while wearing the arm cannon you can switch from power beam to plasma beam, and by including an arduino we can either shoot a charge beam shot, or a standard shot. Galactic Federation troopers Joseph and Tony have bean assigned to Basic Structure and Electronics, Trooper Samual is in command of Painting and Texture.
The installation Type Case is a low-resolution display with 125 rectangular pixels of different sizes. These are formed from the reflecting light of digitally controlled LEDs, embedded in each section of a European printers’ type case. Due to the standardized fragmentation of its compartments, the density of visual information is decreased towards the objects’ centre. Viewed close by, it is nearly impossible to recognize more than a flicker – however after moving some distance away, it becomes distinguishable, that the lights and shadows give a representation of the latest headlines.
I love the way it’s got a sort of “near mode” and “far mode” — very clever!
A power supply is a device that supplies power to another device, at a specific voltage level, voltage type and current level. For example, when we talk about a 9VDC @ 500mA power supply can provide as much as 500mA of current and the voltage will be at least 9V DC up to that maximum current level. While it sounds simple, power supplies have a lot of little hang-ups that can be very tricky for the uninitiated. For example, unregulated supplies say they can provide 9V but really may be outputting 15V! The very common 7805 regulator datasheet claims it can regulate up to 1000 mA of current, but when you put a 15V supply on one side, it overheats and shuts down! This tutorial will try to help explain all about power supplies. Read “What is a power supply?” here!
The most common and inexpensive plugpack power supply type you’ll see is the chunky transformer based plug. Whenever you buy some consumer electronics you’ll be getting one of these – read more about Transformer-based AC/DC converters here!
GOOD: What do you think it means to have a “dirty job,” or a job that most people would not want?
MIKE ROWE: Attitudes toward hard work have changed, and not for the better. Many people view dirty jobbers with a mix of pity and derision. Some ignore them altogether. However, one thing is unchanged: People with dirty jobs make civilized life possible for the rest of us. For that reason, I see a willingness to get dirty as a mark of character.
G: Why don’t more people respect dirty jobs?
MR: Once upon a time, we were proud to be dirty. Dirt looked like work, and work was revered. Now, we’ve redefined our notion of what a “good job” looks like. We’ve taken the “dirt” out of the formula, and in the process, marginalized a long list of important professions. Big mistake.
“awesome rossum” is always pushing the boundaries of size and complexity. Since discovering the cortex M3 series he’s been on a serious tear with a bit-banged color NTSC demo that looks like about 1 square cm. 32 bits @ 72 mhz is the bomb! If you want to check out this series of chips, pick up one of our exceptionally well-designed Microbuilder.eu lpc1343 devboards and start on the tutorials.
The hardware design process is fraught with pitfalls, from library component sketchiness, parts availability, erroneous data sheets, underestimates of complexity and long lead times. Designing good hardware on time, on budget and to specifications is like being in a knife fight. Hardware will cut you. I will present my methods for managing blood loss in the hardware design and production arena.
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