Day: September 27, 2021

MiniPupper

Robot Dogs Hack Chat

September 27, 2021 by 6 Comments

Join us on Wednesday, September 29 at noon Pacific for the Robot Dogs Hack Chat with Afreez Gan!

Thanks to the efforts of a couple of large companies, many devoted hobbyists, and some dystopian science fiction, robot dogs have firmly entered the zeitgeist of our “living in the future” world. The quadrupedal platform, with its agility and low center of gravity, is perfect for navigating in the real world, where the terrain is rarely even and unexpected obstacles are to be expected.

The robot dog has been successful enough that there are commercially available — if prohibitively priced — dogs on the market, doing everything from inspecting factory processes and off-shore oil platforms to dancing for their dinner. All the publicity around robot dogs has fueled a crush of DIY and open-source versions, so that hobbyists can take advantage of what the platform has to offer. And as a result, the design of these dogs has converged somewhat, with elements that provide a common design language for these electromechanical pets.

Afreez Gan has been exploring the robot dog space for a while now, and his MiniPupper is generating some interest. He’ll stop by the Hack Chat to talk about MiniPupper specifically and the quadruped platform in general. We’ll talk about what it takes to build your own robot dog, what you can do with one once you’ve built it, and how these bots can play a part in STEM education. Along the way, we’ll touch on ROS, lidar, machine vision with OpenCV, and pretty much anything involved in the care and feeding of your newest electronic pal.

join-hack-chatOur Hack Chats are live community events in the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This week we’ll be sitting down on Wednesday, September 29 at 12:00 PM Pacific time. If time zones have you tied up, we have a handy time zone converter.

DuoLux Is A Stylish Lamp And You Should Definitely Print Your Own

September 27, 2021 by 7 Comments

Lamps are interesting pieces of homeware. They can be purely functional, but often they become expressions of the true vibrancy of industrial design. The “DuoLux” from [seabirdhh] may not yet have graced the cover of prestigious European design journals, but this folding lamp does have some great style for a 3D-printed design.

The lenses themselves are cut from scrap polycarbonate twin-wall sheet with a linear pattern which does much to add some art-deco flair. They’re placed inside a pair of 3D-printed tubes mounted on a zig-zag arm, with the tubes themselves carrying G4 lamp sockets for use with compact plug-in LED modules. 3D-printed knurled knobs allow the easy adjustment and aiming of the lamp as required. Power is from a 12 V DC adapter as you might expect, and everything is mounted upon a simple round base.

It’s a tidy build, and one that could be improved further by adding a weighted base for more flexibility in aiming the lights. It’s something we’d love to have on our own desk given the clean geometric style and presumably great light output from the LEDs. Alternatively, consider modelling your lamp on Earth’s very own moon itself!

Image of CFS's SPARC reactor

Commonwealth Fusion’s 20 Tesla Magnet: A Bright SPARC Towards Fusion’s Future

September 27, 2021 by 62 Comments

After decades of nuclear fusion power being always ten years away, suddenly we are looking at a handful of endeavours striving to be the first to Q > 1, the moment when a nuclear fusion reactor will produce more power than is required to drive the fusion process in the first place. At this point the Joint European Torus (JET) reactor holds the world record with a Q of 0.67.

At the same time, a large international group is busily constructing the massive ITER tokamak test reactor in France, although it won’t begin fusion experiments until the mid-2030s. The idea is that ITER will provide the data required to construct the first DEMO reactors that might see viable commercial fusion as early as the 2040s, optimistically.

And then there’s Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a fusion energy startup.  Where CFS differs is that they don’t seek to go big, but instead try to make a tokamak system that’s affordable, compact and robust. With their recent demonstration of a 20 Tesla (T) high-temperature superconducting (HTS) rare-earth barium copper oxide (ReBCO) magnet field coil, they made a big leap towards their demonstration reactor: SPARC.

A Story of Tokamaks

CFS didn’t appear out of nowhere. Their roots lie in the nuclear fusion research performed since the 1960s at MIT, when a scientist called Bruno Coppi was working on the Alcator A (Alto Campo Toro being Italian for High Field Torus) tokamak, which saw first plasma in 1972. After a brief period with a B-revision of Alcator, the Alcator C was constructed with a big power supply upgrade. Continue reading “Commonwealth Fusion’s 20 Tesla Magnet: A Bright SPARC Towards Fusion’s Future” →

How Good Are The Head(amame) 3D Printed Headphones?

September 27, 2021 by 25 Comments

3D printing lets the average maker tackle building anything their heart desires, really, and many have taken to using the technology for audio projects. Printable speaker and headphone designs abound. The Head(amame) headphones from [Vector Finesse] are a design that combines 3D printed parts with hi-fi grade components to create a high-end listening experience. [Angus] of Maker’s Muse decided to try printing a set at home and has shared his thoughts on the hardware.

Printing the parts has to be done carefully, with things like the infill settings crucial to the eventual sound quality of the final product. Using a properly equipped slicer like CURA is key to getting the parts printed properly so the finer settings can be appropriately controlled. The recommendation is to print the pieces in PETG, which [Angus] notes can be difficult to work with, and several prints were required to get all the parts made correctly.

Assembly is straightforward enough with kits available with all the fasteners and electronic parts included. Subjectively, [Angus] found the sound quality to be impressive, with plenty of full bass and clearly defined highs. Overall, it’s a positive review in the areas of comfort and sound quality.

Detractors will note that the kit of parts costs over $100 USD alone, and that after hours of work and printing, the user is left with a set of headphones made out of obviously 3D-printed parts. It seems destined to be a product aimed at the 3D printing fanbase. If you want a set of headphones you can customise endlessly in form and color, these are ideal. If you prefer the fit and finish of a consumer-grade product, they may not be for you.

It’s a good look at a design sure to appeal to a wide set of makers out there. We’ve seen 3D printing put to good use in this realm before, too. Video after the break.

Continue reading “How Good Are The Head(amame) 3D Printed Headphones?” →

3D Printed Research Robotics Platform Runs Remotely

September 27, 2021 by 8 Comments

The Open Dynamic Robot Initiative Group is a collaboration between five robotics-oriented research groups, based in three countries, with the aim to build an Open Source robotics platform based around the torque-control method. Leveraging 3D printing, a few custom PCBs, and off-the-shelf parts, there is a low-barrier to entry and much lower cost compared to similar robots.

The eagle-eyed will note that this is only a development platform, and all of the higher level control is off-machine, hosted by a separate PC. What’s interesting here, is just how low-level the robot actually is. The motion hardware is purely a few BLDC motors driven by field-orientated control (FOC) driver units, a wireless controller and some batteries. The FOC method enables very efficient motor commutation, giving excellent efficiency and maximum torque.  A delve into the maths of how this method operates will be an eye opener for the uninitiated. Optical encoders attached to the motors give positional feedback for the control loop.

It is this control loop that’s kinda weird, in that operates over Wi-Fi! Normally one would do all the position, torque and speed sensing locally within the leg unit, with local control loops, as well as running all the limb kinematics and motion planning. This would need some considerable local processing grunt, which can make development more difficult.

This project side-steps this, by first leveraging the ESPNOW protocol, initially aimed at the ESP8266 and friends. By patching Ubuntu Linux, and enabling preemptive multitasking for real-time scheduling, as well as carefully selecting Wi-Fi drivers, it was possible to get raw packets out to robot in about 1 ms, enabling control loop bandwidths of around 1 Khz. And, that, was fast enough to run at least sixteen motors in parallel.

Continue reading “3D Printed Research Robotics Platform Runs Remotely” →