I wrote all over the world…

…and ended up in Mongolia. Total distance: 23957.9 mi.

As a side note, it would be really sweet to play a google maps connect the dots. You send someone a bunch of coordinates, and then they use “distance measurement tool” to create the picture. Even better if you make the picture by following actual roads. There has to be an algorithm that could find the best fit path if you give it a word.

I thought of a Joke.

Wikipedia thinks I am Gumby.

Feed the Machine

Here is a video from the robot show of my robot (mostly) working.

Murphy’s law kicked in so that the BB bounced out every time there was a camera around.

Thanks to Maren for the video.

Here is the code behind the machine:

‘—————————————————
‘ Feed the Machine. (bjr 10-dec-07)
‘—————————————————

‘constants
LED con 0 ‘ready light at pin 0
‘eye LED pin 8
vert con 3 ‘vertical motion pin 3
horiz con 2 ‘horizontal motion pin 2
‘direction of vert relay ‘pin 3
‘direction of horiz relay
‘pin 4
release con 7 ‘release motor is pin 7
‘variables
i var byte ‘general variable

powerup:
‘turn pins for sensors into inputs
input 1 ’start button

watchdog:
high LED ‘ LED on
for i = 1 to 10
pause 25 ‘ delay a bit.
if in1 = 0 then action ‘ check for button press
next
low LED ‘ LED off
for i = 1 to 20
pause 25 ‘ delay
if in1 = 0 then action ‘ check for button press
next
goto watchdog ‘ and repeat

action:
low LED ‘ready LED off
high 8 ‘eye LED on
high vert
pause 20000 ‘moves to right height
low vert
pause 1000
high 4 ‘turns on relay for horiz
pause 20
check:
high horiz
pause 5
low horiz
if in6=1 then check ‘moves over slowly
low horiz ’switch hit
pause 20
low 4
pause 2000
high release ‘dispenses BB
pause 5
low release
pause 2000
low 8 ‘eye LED turns off
for i=1 to 45 ‘moves back to original spot
high horiz
pause 5
low horiz
pause 30
next
pause 1000
high 5 ‘vertical relay on
pause 20
high vert
pause 19900 ‘moves to start position
low vert
pause 20
low 5
goto watchdog ‘begin again

Also, here is a reflection I wrote on the process, if you want to know how it went. Copied and pasted from an assignment I turned in.

Reflection on a Robot

1.
My machine moved a small BB vertically and then horizontally and then deposited it in a track that led to the mouth of a cartoon machine, thus the name of the robot was “Feed the Machine”. In an effort to come up with an original idea, I brainstormed a few ideas, bounced them off of classmates, and found all but one of my ideas were similar to those of my peers. So, naturally, I decided to proceed with most unique in all the projects. The idea for my robot started out as a cannon that scanned a grid of lights and fired a BB at the lights that were lit by sensing with a light sensor. I liked the idea for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it employed a cannon, but it also made good use of sensors and was relatively complex and thus, interesting. Over time, the whole idea was sculpted by hardware limitations, scaled by time constraints, and morphed into what you see now. I had my idea, but the material available was what truly formed the construction of the beast. I originally intended a solenoid to serve as the cannon, but the solenoid I purchased was far too weak for my purposes and I had to change it to more of a “drop the BB in the track” kind of cannon. Also, I had to ditch the idea of a moving sensor, because the accuracy the sensors required was more than my motors could handle, so I used a micro switch instead. I also did not have time to construct a reload mechanism to reload my “drop the BB in the track” mechanism so I dropped the multiple lights to just one light. Basically, I wanted to have my robot work consistently, even if that meant scaling back the complexity.
I did not find the fabrication process difficult. All that required was sitting down with my trusty felt tip marker and sketching out ideas that came to mind. Then all it took was weeding out the plausible ones.
2.
I am most proud of the consistency of my robot, the perfect amount of runniness. In all the trials in the robot show, it only failed once, and then it was nothing catastrophic. I accomplished my goal of a reliable robot.

Concept Drawings

If the picture is unclear, this is the maze.

“Make it do something interesting.”

The culmination of the intro to mechanical engineering class I am taking this year is a robot show, where everyone in the class designs and constructs a robot that “does something interesting” for at least 45 seconds.

Over the next few weeks, I will post the progress of my robot, from the brainstorm sketches to its (hopeful) completion and performance in the Robot Show.

Autonomous Vehicles

Here is a short presentation I gave to my MechE class. I then took a video of myself giving it and posted it along with the slides I used to zentation.

Here it is.

Unfortunately, wordpress does not let me embed the presentation directly to this blog.

Any feedback is welcome. Criticism can only help me.  (I already know how many “ums” I used.)

Super Real Heroes: Spiderpainter

I was on top of a ladder painting one day, and I had to climb down to move the ladder. Climbing down, I thought, “If I was Spiderman, I wouldn’t need ladders.”That made me think, what if super heroes had real jobs? I made this graphic of what Spiderman as a painter would look like. For you Mac users, if you are wondering, I used a program called Seashore.

What are some other super real heroes you can think of? Bonus points for cool names. (Personally, I am not too fond of “Spiderpainter”)

On prisons, plumbing and robots.

No, I don’t see a correlation. Their only relevance to each other is I happened upon them in a short time span, and was interested by them all. Actually, prisons are really interesting, particularly escape attempts. For some reason,  even though they were in prison for a legitimate reason, I still root for them to get out. Here is a site (really hard to navigate but intriguing) of  Alcatraz escape stories.   I have had some plumbing learning experiences too. The parsonage’s drain was clogged, and I was somehow able to unclog it, and I learned about back flow preventers. With a little less success, I took apart our kitchen faucet. It is now being fixed; not by me. I had so much fun. Stanford set up a road test, with obstacles such as parked cars, curbs, and intersections with street signs. A robot just completed the test.

Check the story out here. I don’t know if I am ready to have robots run more of my life than they already do, but it is going to happen. And our parents thought banning cell phones and computers was hard. Imagine, “BUT DA-aDD, Carter and Ramsey both have their own robot slaves! Our family is soo 2001″ The next 20 years are going to be epic.

Update: Because Life happens to all of us.

Place of Hire: Minnesota Craftsmen painting, full time, having a great time.

Place myself in a week: Buffalo. I am going to be a counselor, and will be gone 11 days.

Update on my face

 

Another [Generic first post]

New host, same promises. To refresh:

I promise…

…to only post when I want;

…to never start a post with “So I am sorry I haven’t posted in a while…”;

…to use grammar correctly;

…to never use this many …’s again;

…to keep my posts short and interesting, unless I need one to be long and boring;

…to enjoy this. (While I sincerely hope you do too, dear friends and family, that is only in my power only so far. Refer to above promise.)

I suppose while I am at it, I should briefly explain the title. Sammy Snickerpi was and is a fictional boy that my dad used in the stories he told my brother and me when we were at the age when getting tucked in for bed was a part of going to bed. Sammy’s life sometimes had a moral, was sometimes entertaining, and his stories never came as often as I would have liked. A lot like my blog.

Signed,

Ben

PS this is also in the about page