Plant-Bot

Proof that a college education allows you to do something useful - behold my son's farming 'bot. He had some time off between exams and coming home for Christmas so built a farming bot that monitors water and nutrient levels in the soil and adjusts them automatically.  It also turns on/off the grow lights.

All built with and ardino (sp?) board and some spare parts.

Now if I could only get him to be as industrious finding a job since he graduates in May....

Carnegie-Mellon Robotics Club - Club Rebuild

 Yesterday I was in Pittsburgh for a CMU related board meeting and got to visit my son, who is a senior there.  When I say visit, well he allocated me a few hours to come and pitch in while he and his fellow club members rebuild the Robotics Club.  Sean is the President of the club and its the oldest robotics organization in the USA.

I get a kick out of the kid working on the drone on the workbench despite the construction all around him - progress must be made!

 El Presidente himself, posing for a rare photograph.

The club has a very nice workshop in the back with an amazing array of tools and 3D printers.  However, the most impressive is this WW2 Navy surplus metal lathe that is still going strong.  It's a beast of a machine and very beautiful in it's own way.

Here's a link to the robotics club website.

Take a look at some of their projects, including my favorite "Couchtron" a self driving couch.  In all fairness, it's my son's project, so theres a little bit of bias.  I'm hoping he builds one for me!

Sean's really proud of the rebuild and the club is his techno-geek form of a fraternity.

I wish I could to college again.

First Autonomous Buggy Role at CMU!

My son, Sean, is the President of the Robotics club at Carnegie Mellon University and they just achieved a huge milestone in the world of geekdom - the first autonomous buggy role in CMU history.  What's "buggy"? - its a very specific competition that happens every year on campus that combines cutting edge engineering, physical athletics and a lot of fun.

From the CMU Buggy organization Website:
Buggy (also called Sweepstakes) is a race held annually since 1920 at Carnegie Mellon. Teams of 5 atheletes (the pushers) push an un-motorized vehicle (a buggy) containing a driver around a 0.84 mile course in a relay format where the vehicle serves as the baton. Roughly half of the course is uphill, during which the pushers run and shove the buggy uphill. During the other - downhill - half, drivers are on their own to navigate tight turns at speeds of up to 35mph.

The races are a hoot to watch - you can check them out here

It may sound simple but building a completely autonomous driving system to navigate the course is really hard and people have been trying for years.  Sean and the team have been working really hard over the past few months designing the guidance software and hardware and have been getting up at 4:30am saturday mornings to perform test rolls - 4:30am is unheard of for college students.

Its a good day to be a Geek!

Sean's Summer Job

My son has a great internship at Farr Yacht Design this summer doing programming for them.  It's kind of a dream job for a tech and sailing crazy college student but there is one hitch - it's unpaid.  In order to make a little cash over the summer, Sean has been building quad rotors for people.  He'll clear about $300.00 for each one he builds which I'm sure will go exclusively for books and other educational supplies while at college.

The video above is a one of the first test flights of the basic design.  The landing is a bit abrupt but safe as Sean forgot to recharge the battery from earlier tests.  Some of the earlier flights didn't go so well as he was tuning the program he wrote for flight control.

Here's a picture of the first quad that will be delivered today.  The rotors have been removed for transport.

 To Sean, this is a simple design and he's added mounting rails under the center so people can add go-pro cameras and such.

Sean's thinking about continuing his custom work while in school (I'm not so keen on that) but may do it as a fund raiser for the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Club (he's the treasurer).  

At least he wasn't being lazy this summer.

My Hobby Area

 Over Spring Break my son and I spent a good bit of time cleaning up my "Man Cave" both to make some room for him and his projects (which includes a 3D printer) and to appease my wife who has become concerned that our house is being transformed on an accelerating basis from a standard home to a storage facility for miniatures and their related debris.  Personally, I didn't see anything wrong with that but I'm not the one who calls the shots on these things....

2 years ago I did splurge a bit and purchased a commercial workbench from American Workbench (their Ben Franklin model) to use as my painting station.  Having a fixed "work" location is very useful and when cleaned up looks very presentable and serves as a great staging location for game nights.

 My game room is dominated by the table, which was built by yours truly and has served me well over the years.  It's a bit beat up for its days as a robotics workbench when my son was in high school but she's still in good working order.  There is a built pair of book shelves which are usually in disarray.  The table top is 4' x 8'.

Currently the wood is unfinished furniture grade pine and my wife would like me to dress it up a bit - perhaps add some decorative framing and cherry stain.  I think that will be an early fall project.

 There's a good bit of storage under the table which is accessed via sliding doors on either side.  Most of the storage is used to hide the lead and plastic mountains from prying eyes....

One thing that needs to be addressed is that there is no rails to hold dice, drinks and reinforcements  along the sides.  I've got a project in the workshop to build some "L" shaped trays the will attach along the sides.  Each tray will be 4 feet long and when attached will form a shelf.  They'll also be able to be flipped over to provide a playing area extension so the total playing surface can be expanded to a 5' x 9' space

 I did build a mini cabinet inside the workbench for miniature trays.  This unit has enough space to hold 2,000 28mm infantry figures (mounted on 20mm square bases.  It's currently filled with a range of stuff including my 15mm Flames of War collections.

My wife allowed my one set of storage cabinets, which I find very useful.  Sadly, they are pretty much filed to the brim and additional storage units are forbidden by executive management.  At some point I'll need to sell some of my stuff to make room for other stuff.  Most likely to go first will be my Romans and Dacian collections which occupy the bottom shelves of the middle two units.  They haven't seen the playing table since the last time I ran a Hail Caesar game at Historicon - which was in 2012!

In terms of future game room projects, In addition to the trays described above, my other "big" gaming project will be to finish a set of sectional terrain units - I started that project last summer and will need to complete it by July'15 in order to put on my planned games at Historicon.

 To be honest, I think both the game room and  table were happier when they were used as a robotics building platform.  All of the boy scouts in this picture are off in college now studying to be some type of engineer from left to right - Virginia Tech (Mining), Carnegie Mellon (Robotics) and GA Tech (Mechanical).  All three got scholarship offers so there was some good from their robotics addiction.

The robotics field has been replaced by a nice card table and the storage cabinets for miniatures - again a bit quieter and less damage prone but not nearly as fun!

3D printed Quad Copter

My son sent me a picture of his custom designed quad copter.  (It's an upside down shot but a shot none-the-less).  He'll be using this as a prototype for teaching a student lead class on quad copter design.  90% of the parts are 3D printed using CAD designs from Sean.  The electronics are all stock items.

The first test flight was "kinda" successful it went up about 4 feet hovered (all good) then flipped over and crashed into the ground (not so good) and hence the picture of the unit is repair.  Sean thinks its a wiring issue but time will tell.

His goal is to have a working unit by the end of November.  The class will be limited to 10-13 students and will start in January - by the end of the semester each student will have their own drone.  I wish we had classes like this when I went to college.  Of course back then the Wright brothers were still messing about with bicycles and just staring into the sky with longing looks.

Sean just found out his project got a grant from the School for $10,000 to fund both the class and making the course online accessible for other colleges and high schools - pretty cool.

On an unrelated note.  I will find myself in the UK for six days (arriving the evening of Nov 15th).  I've got an open calendar for Sunday - any good wargaming sites to visit in London?????

My Son's Latest Project: Quad Copter Autonomous Flight

My son's latest tech project involves programming a Quad Copter to take-off, climb to 20 meters, fly to multiple GPS points and then land - all on it's own without any human control.  We spent most of Fathers Day working on the project (OK I did very little but offer encouragement).  The video is after his 4th test and a few replacement props later (thank goodness they're cheap).  The test was very successful and it was a very fun Father's Day.

This Quad Copter can carry a payload of a little over a pound and will eventually mount a sony go-pro camera on a gimbal mount.  His project is to build a prototype of a security bot that can be triggered to launch via a cell phone call and fly a preset route (around our house), transmit video of the house and then return to it's landing pad - all on it's own.

I'm hoping to use it to get some tracking shots of a big game - with the quad copter flying over a table shooing my mini's in action

Robotics Season Ends

 My robotics team competed in the FTC East Super-Regional in York, PA.  It's a three day competition during which we had a blast but just fell short of earning a spot in the World Championships.  I'm very proud of the team and am both looking forwarded to a month or two off from robotics and then getting right back into it!

 Here's a shot of our booth,  Our team number if 3113 and name is "Some Disassembly Required".  72 teams were competing from 12 Northeastern States (VA on up the US east coast).  One of my favorite activities is walking through the pits seeing how creative each team can be in it's robot build.

 The East Super Regional was the most competitive robotics event I've ever been too.  I was asked to be one of the referee's, which is a lot of fun, but kept me extremely busy.  This years games involved picking up 2.5 inch cubes and placing them in baskets on a swing arm (extra points if the arm is balanced!).  During the end game robots earned 50 points if they can left themselves off the floor on the central bar and remain hanging.  Several matches features all four robots being lifted - amazing stuff built by high schoolers.

Coaching robotics is time consuming but it's also very rewarding.  For me, this year was very different as it was the first year that my son wasn't on the team as he's gone off to college.  I realized how much I relied on hime to keep things going.  Sean kept texting me from college (Carnegie-Mellon) to see how the team was doing, so I think he misses it too.  He's thinking about mentoring a team in the Pittsburgh area as part of a college project next year.  This year's team will loose one senior to graduation but I've got a great core of young but very committed scouts coming up - some even shaved the team number into their scalps - that's dedication!  I really am looking forward to next year.

If any of you have an engineering or technical bent, you should consider getting involved / mentoring a team.  You can find out more from the FIRST robotics website.  I should warn you, it's a bit addictive!  FIRST has a great phrase to describe the experience - "It's the hardest fun you'll ever have"

Robotics Team Wins Inspire Award

The First Tech Challenge robotics team I coach (Team 3113 "Some Disassembly Required") just won the Inspire Award at the MD State Championship today.  The Inspire Award is the highest award an FTC can earn so it's a big deal.

Winning gives the team a berth in the East regional tournament and if they do well their they may get another invitation to the World Championships (like last year).

The 'bot itself isn't in the picture - it sustained a good bit a damage during the finals matches and is down for some significant rebuilds.  We do have our 3D printer (from Robo 3D) in the picture which the team uses to make specialized parts.  We got the printer as part of a payment for building a custom robot for robo 3d to use at trade shows to drive the printer around - we made enough money off the project to fund most of the team this year.

Here's a picture of the robot the team built for Robo 3D

We've got 5 weeks to get the robot back up and running before the East regionals - which are in York, PA!

Nerf Sentry Gun

This a picture of the NERF sentry gun that my son and two of his friends built in this years robotics hack-a-thon at Carnegie Mellon.  The event was sponsored by Boeing and the teams had a 24 hour period to build their concepts.  Sean's team was the only all freshman team and they built an automated Nerf Sentry gun that can pivot 360 degrees and uses a sonar device to find and lock a target.  Once the device was calibrated it doesn't miss a shot.

It works really well and is now on guard duty in his dorm.

As for the competition, Sean,s team didn't win but received an honorable mention which is a pretty big accomplishment and was a lot of fun to do.

I didn't get to do stuff like this when I was in college!

Now I need to get him back working on the Bolt Action dice spitter out bot!

Historicon 2013 Prep Part II

 As with all cons where I am a GM the last few days are filled with frantic preparations.  First up. here are some shots of the finished ironclad that will be featured in my games on Friday and Saturday.  Mike did an outstanding job and now it's my responsibility to get this 31 inch monster to the con in one piece.

 Actually in two pieces as the top and side come off to allow for some action in the interior!

 The command deck has a ship's wheel and chart desk complete with top secret plans.  A request for any Union players in either game - please don't enlarge the photo, you may get an unfair advantage for the map contents.

The guns are all large bore Dalhgrens or Columbiads and were a lot of fun to both find and put together.

Lastly, here an in-process shot of the Bolt-Action Dice-Bot my son is building for Judson of the WWPD Bolt Action podcast.  When completed, this bot will be able to drive around the battle field, avoid terrain and minis and pick out random order dice or dump large amounts of regular dice for shooting etc.  Sean had another, paying project, take a bit more time so we may not get the programming done in time for Historicon but it will be ready for Fall-In for sure - no more nasty dice bags or socks for Mr Judson!

Yet More Robotics: A Second Team Invited to Worlds!

Yes I realize this is supposed to be a miniatures blog, but this is the high point of the FIRST robotics season and a lot is going on.  The big news is that my son's FRC robotics team (4067 - the frisbee shooter from the last post) has also now received an at-large invitation to compete in the Robotics World Championships.  That means he'll be leading teams in two different categories (FRC and FTC) to compete at Worlds.  This is a rather rare occurrence and we're al a bit overwhelmed with prep for for next weeks competitions.  Worlds are held in St Louis this year and run from April 23-27th.

An at-large bid is similar to being one of the last teams added the NCAA college basketball tournament.  We didn't win a regional event to qualify but performed well enough to impress the judges and earn a spot which is really exciting as this is just the second year we've competed at the FRC level.

So between now and April 28th there will be no miniature painting or gaming as I'll be coaching two teams at Worlds and,more importantly, focusing on the logistics of transporting two robots and a few thousand pounds of tools/equipment to and back from St Louis.  It's all very exciting but a bit daunting at the same time.

The event will be broadcast over the Web on NASA TV - just go to the NASA Robotics Alliance web site and look up the Robotic Alliance.  Our teams are:

FTC Team # 3113 "Some Disassembly Required"

FRC Team # 4067 "River Hill Hawks"

FRC Robot Video - Match play

Above is a video taken from a camera mounted on my son's FRC robot during last weekends FRC event - the Cheasapeake Regional/  The robot scored an event high score and the team added the point count and dings when a frisbee scores to help the viewer keep track.

This year's game involved an ultimate frisbee concept and we built a "sniper-bot" that would shoot the full length of the field.  There are three robots per side on the field and each weighs in at 120 lbs so these are fairly large pieces of equipment.  You'll notice both a buzzing sound and a bit of a camera shake when the shooter powers up - it's built from two spinning wheels (one at 6,000 rpm and the other at 12,500 rpm which are used to shoot the frisbee's through a rail system.  We can vary the speed of the second wheel to impact spin and arc.

Robotics is a lot of fun!

Robotics Update FRC: Washington DC Regional

 My son's other robotics team, FRC team 4067, had a 3 day competition in DC this weekend.  His FTC team has qualified for the World Championship and we're now focus on his FRC team to see if we can there also.  The first shot is a picture of the drive team queueing for a match and my son has his back to the camera.

 The next shot is a picture of the field and shows the team setting up the robot.  There are 6 robots on the field (3 per side) and the game is a version of "ultimate Frisbee" where the 'bots shoot frisbees into the goal (see the blue outlined areas) and then can gain extra points by climbing the red and blue towers.  These robots can weigh up to 120 pounds, so they're significant pieces of equipment.

 This is a shot of the pit while the team is doing some emergency repairs in between matches.  Our shooter system was loosing power so the team had to rebuild it in less than 30 minutes - they were still tightening bolts as the bot was being placed on the field.

Here's a shot of the team.  One of our sponsors is Sony, so we donned Sony T-Shirts for the team picture (which I took).  The team did well for the event and had 4 wins and 4 losses, which is very respectable for a second year team.  Our next events are in two weeks for the this team and in 4 weeks for Sean's FTC team at Worlds.

More Perry Confederates

 I've completed my fourth 24 figure Confederate Unit (Perry 28mm plastics).   That give me 5 regiments completed (4 regular infantry and 1 Zouave) out of a planned 10 regiments so I have a bit more painting to get done.

 I still need to add a flag and may pick a bunch at Cold Wars this weekend.

 In addition to infantry, there's also been some artillery added to the mix with 2 completed Perry Napoleonic guns and crews.  These are Perry metals and what can I say the figures are superb and deserve a much better paint job than I can manage!

I really like the poses of the crew to the right - running out the guns.   As for the Union forces to oppose the confederates, I've chosen to cheat a bit and outsource the bulk of the painting to MMPS.  MMPS did a great job on some Peninsular / War of 1812 Brits for me and I recommend there services highly.

Since this blog is becoming as much a Robotics blog as a miniature one, here's a picture of my son (right) right as he was learning that his team (3113 "Some Disassembly Required" had earned a spot in the World Championship.  The picture was taken by the coach of another team.

The team has been very focused as they prepare for Worlds, which are held in St Louis, MO from April 24-27.  I doubt there will be a lot of progress on my planned Historicon game until May.

Robotics Team Invited to Compete in the World Championship

Saturday was the Maryland State Championship and my son's team (3113) earned a berth to compete in the World Championship next April in St. Louis - it's a pretty big deal in the robotic's world and very exciting for my son and his team (as well as the coach - me!).  This will be our second trip there and we're very much looking forward to the event.

My middle school team also competed in the Championship and did very well, placing 7th out of 32 teams.  They were the youngest team in terms of age and competed against all High School age competitors so not a bad showing at all.

With two teams competing, I didn't get a chance to take any pictures so I'll add some later once i get some copies.

The only bad news is there will be limited time for modeling between now and Worlds, so my standings in the Analog Hobbies painting challenge will continue to decline.  I did mange to finish another confederate infantry regiment this morning.

Robotic's Team Wins

 My robotics team won another event this past Saturday.  As I've babbled on before, I coach several robotics team and the one that was competing was team 4976, which is made up of middle school aged scouts from my son's Boy Scout Troop.  They're competing is a High School lever competition so it pretty tough for them.  Well until last saturday because they won.  The first picture shows the team (on the right) with their alliance mate after winning the Marriotts Ridge Qualifier.   Doing so has given them an invitation to the Maryland state championship.  My other team (3113, which my son captains) has already qualified so I'll have two teams in the state championship in three weeks.

 Here's a shot of the drive team, their all 12 or 13 years old and showed great poise in a tough competition.

The last photo is a shot of the alliance after the last match.  Saturday was a great day and I think the best quote came from one of my scouts who was asked by a someone from another team in a bit of a mocking way "What do you guys hope to do here?"  His reply with out missing a beat "Kick High-Schooler Butt!"

They did a great job and now we have a three week dash to get ready for states!

Robotics, robotics, robotics....

 Not a lot of painting is going on right now over here in the Lair.  It's all robotics with my son being on two different teams and me being a coach.  It's rather hectic and will be until April.

Pictured is Sean's FTC team (3113) which is made up of scots from his Boy Scout troop.

 This years competition involves playing a form of tick-tack-toe.  The robot needs to take the rings from the dispenser (on the right) and place them on the scoring rack (on the left).  The higher the level, the higher the points and there are bonuses for getting three in a row.  There are extra points for raising your alliance partner robot off the mat - we use a scissor bridge concept.

Oh yeah, this is all done while an opponents robot is ramming you while playing defense - it's great fun.

The team is fund raising right now and have set up an Indie Go-Go site.  Take a look if your interested:

http://www.indiegogo.com/Team3113/x/1869900

First Win of the 2012-2013 FTC Robotic's Season

Well the first qualifier of the FTC 2012-2013 robotics season was held yesterday (12/15) in Leonardtown, Maryland.  Where is Leonardtown? - far in the south of Maryland's Western shore - it's right next to "nowhere" on the map, you can't miss it.  More importantly it's a 2.5 hours from my house - you try waking up 9 teenagers to leave at 4:30am!  Actually it's a very nice place - just hard to get to when driving tired teenagers.

Anyway, as you might suspect from the first photo and header the day ended very well for my son's team as they were part of the winning alliance and, thus, are now qualified to move on to the Maryland state championship.  Our event didn't start out that well as something happened to the Robot's electrical system and we lost all the servo's and had to perform a re-wire in an hour (it takes 3 to do).  Our bot wasn't fully functional for the event but the drive team played great defense - we used our mass to push other 'bots around.  My son, who is the driver, was very excited and said (with some immodesty) "today we were the Ray Lewis of the robot world!"  It was a very exciting / frustrating / exhausting day.

I was just too busy to take any pictures but will add some picture when I get copies of the ones some of the parents of team members took.

On the way back, the team has decided to scrap the 4 point articulated arm design as the wiring and movement controls are just to complex to fabricate a dependable mechanism in a home based shop.  We'll be adopting either a telescoping platform or a swing arm with a chain drive to lift the ring grabber.  We were very lucky to win yesterday and don't want to rely on that luck in the future.  Our next match is Jan 19th and is a qualifier for the Pennsylvania state championship.  After that we have two more Maryland qualifiers, which we now don't really need to compete in but will do so to get more practice with the bot.

Competitive robotics is a very intensive activity, especially when you're coaching high schoolers.  Below is a list of the "to-do's" we had on the 'bot as of Thursday night.  My only goal for today is to assemble and prime some plastic Perry miniatures for my next miniature project: 28mm ACW.

FTC Robotics 2012-2013 Season

 Not much in miniature modeling is going on in the Lair right now, as my son's robotics team is feverishly preparing for their initial competition on Dec 15th.  The first few pictures show the 'bot in it's starting position.  Per the rules, all robots must initially start a match fitting with an 18 inch cube. We've got 1/4 inch clearance on the sides and 1/16 clearance on the top.

 Here's the other side - you can see the brain!  The robots in the First Tech Challenge use the Lego NXT as a processor.  It's surprisingly robust and the boys have redone the operating system to run Robot C.  We are trying a new drive train this year - 4WD chain-linked drive wheels.  Chains are less finicky than gears can be and should help with our pushing power - in this competition robots do get to push each other around.

 The third picture shows our arm partially extended.  The game involved picking up plastic rings from a dispenser and placing on a central goal that has 3x3 grid of rungs to play "tic-tack-toe"  The rung heights are 20, 40 and 60 inches.  Our arm when fully extend easily reached the highest rung level.  The arm has four points of movement: A shoulder joint (where it attaches to the bot), an elbow, a wrist and a finger joint - the servo driven grabbers.  From an engineering point of view an arm with that many articulation points is very complex, especially because the motor power needs to be varied based on the load and position of the arms - that whole "leverage" thing comes into play.

 Here's a shot of the gearing system for the shoulder.  It's very robust and also does a great job chewing up wires that are not tied down properly.  Hmmm maybe just like the wire in the upper left of the picture....

 The game involves four 'bots on the field (2 red bots vs 2 blue bots).  There are 24 scoring rings for each side which are held in dispensers as pictured.  The robots job are to take up to 2 rings at a time from the dispenser and...

Place them on the rungs.  Teams get points for each level (5 for each low rung, 10 for the middle and 15 for the high rungs).  There is a 30 point bonus for getting three in a row.  Other ways to score include placing a ring in autonomous mode and lifting your partner robot off the ground.

For that last part, we've built a folding ramp (think scissor bridge) that will allow our partner robot to drive up and park on top.  At least in theory it should...

Here's a picture of the team - it was Travis's birthday so we had a little celebration.  You would be amazed at how effective a motivator food is for teenaged boys - who knew?
My son, Sean, is on the far left of the picture.