Trainoverlord on the test track.

This weeks post is of projects that have come threw the space or live in the space that move, fly, or simply put have motors and are really neat.  Click more for the 9 photos of Trainoverlord, a Quadrocopter, Line following robot, and a sick 6 legged robot I am calling Mr.Roboto.

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Lemon Muffins

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Assembly in Progress.

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Here we see the box for the tasty Raspberry Pi on the left, and on the right the ever advancing brain for Train Overlord.

Second laser pass to finish cutting the acrylic plastic.

Close up look at the laser in action.

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Last week one of Hack Labs members finished some much needed repairs to his stilts. The stilts specifically needed a spacer/pivot, to be built to repair the joint. Not everyone made it down stairs to watch him try out the fruits of his labour so here is a GIF to show what many missed.

Build Photos of the replacement joint.

Every week for as many as I can I hope to post a collection of Images that depict what the space is all about. It may not be 10 photos each week it maybe more it may be less, but each photo is part of hack labs story.

Here is HackLab as I have glimpsed it this week.

       

1 - Community Service: The growing pile of E-Waste that community members have brought in for others to pick threw before being picked up by E-Waste disposal.

2 - Exploration: In a basement of a building in the market is a treasure trove of discovery to be found.

3 - Collaboration: Hard work and dedication to a project, can create wonderful things. The two individuals in this photo are working on a Quadrocopter .

4 - Craftsmanship: Taking time to ensure everything is correct.

5 - Creativity: Measuring carefully to realize an idea.

6 - Solutions: Problem solving is something I encounter often in the space, people come in with ideas and collaboration happens. It is not often I get to witness a solution executed so quickly. This instants part of the Ultimaker needed trouble shooting and a custom part was fabricated and installed.

7 - Lasers: Always a cool thing, and in this case a laser cutter hard at work cutting out a Façade for a project.

8 - Curiosity: Getting ready to examine a EPROM with a USB Microscope.

9 - Fascination: Exploring the depths of a EPROM with the USB Microscope.

10 - Easter Eggs: Looking for those little surprises or unexpected discovery's. In this case we found the company's logo amongst the circuitry.

I care to introduce myself, my name is Adam Evenden. Over the last few weeks I have slowly been moving into my new role as the Photo Journalist in Residence, at the HackLab.

Tuesday have been a magical time at the HackLab for me over the last 2 years that I have spent visiting the Lab. Having met many interesting individuals, heard many great ideas, seen many grand projects, and have always been excited to come back. I foresee meeting many new members in the future who I have not had the previous pleasure of meeting, and the enjoyment I have experienced in the lab so far extending into my new role as the Photo Journalist in Residence.

Over the recent years the lab I have had the opportunity to witness many entertaining moments at the hack lab, as well as triumphant progress within projects. I would like to share within my first post some of the moments I have captured at the hack lab over the last few weeks as the Photo Journalist in Residence, as well as some moments that I have captured while visiting Iceland’s hacker space Hakkavélin.

Our robot has a frickin’ laser beam attached to it.

On April 8-9, hacklab.to members held a hackathon to build a lab robot. At the end of that day we christened our project Train Overlord.

The robot’s brain is an Arduino with an that lets it move bi-directionally on its track and raise and lower its winch basket. That–plus some IR end sensors that tell Train Overlord when it has reached the end of its track–was where we were at the end of the hackathon.

Oh, how Train Overlord has grown.

In the two weeks since the creation of Train Overlord, we have made some significant improvements and added lots of cool features.

The first problem we saw was that Train Overlord moved much too slowly for our tastes. After a trip to Creatron, we acquired a few parts and got to work on building a new engine.

The new engine gives a bigger electric motor and solid drivetrain than before. The previous setup was just a rubber wheel which used friction to move the train’s wheel. The new engine is essentially a gearmotor kit with a pair of train wheels axles mounted to it. One set of train wheels and axle roll freely (these are standard off-the-shelf wheels), while the other axle is mounted to our gearmotor and and has custom wheels that were printed with the lab’s MakerBot. Printing these custom wheels gave us the proper inner-diameter hole for mounting them to the gearmotor’s axle, and a larger outside diameter for a higher top speed.

The second problem was that the only way we could talk to Train Overlord was to connect its Arduino brain to a computer and upload new code. “This is nonsense,” we thought. “We’re living in the future and should be able to do this wirelessly. We dug around in our bins of parts for an XBee shield, a couple of XBee modules, and an XBee explorer to connect it to a Linux box that acts as a controller. XBee modules use the Zigbee technology to pass serial data over RF, which is a flexible and relatively low-tech solution to the issue. We then whipped up some Arduino code to accept simple one-letter commands, and a basic Ajax-ified web interface that you can use to build and execute a queue of these commands. More recently, we added an iPhone interface–either using an app Abtin wrote to communicate with Processing over Bluetooth, or another Ajax web app to send commands (go forward; go back; raise winch; lower winch; stop) to the robot.

Using the servo technology we learned about in this past Monday’s Arduino servo workshop, we constructed a pan and tilt laser mechanism. Our test program moves the robot back and forth, and then draws an infinity symbol with the laser. That’s right: Train Overlord now has a laser targeting mechanism. WIN.

Finally, we’ve made several improvements that help us collaborate on the project, including a public git repository and extensive documentation on Hacklab’s internal wiki.

Train Overlord is very much still in the development phase, but over the next few weeks and months we should have interesting and exciting stuff to share with the world.