Stuff!!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008

Thanks to very kind people, I had a $200 gift certificate at Adafruit and was able to buy stuff!

• Arduino
• 2 ProtoShields
• Arduino bootloader
• Multimeter
• Boarduino
• Motor Shield
• Wave Shield

All of these are going to be extremely helpful @_@ In fact, the old multimeter broke just the other day

What’s a little cool is that the Arduino now has Italy on the back! Someone who had the Arduino at Stanford also had this style, so I guess it’s kind of cool that I had one of the Arduino Dicemilas without the map The motor shield sounds a lot of fun… as does the wave shield! I’m not sure which ones I’ll put together and test first…
Either way, I now have lots of interesting stuff to keep me entertained for a while longer
Thanks Ron & Evelyn!!!
(and I hope I won’t blow any of them up)

Posted in: Other, Projects, Robot.

Sightseeing Around

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

I think I have been stuck in a bubble for a long time judging by how long it has taken me to post this- more pictures from my trip to Stanford It is mainly the Golden Gate Bridge and Capitola Beach. The Golden Gate Bridge is pretty amazing in real… I wonder how much paint it needs per year?! As for Capitola Beach, this was one of our outings for the first Saturday. It was okay, a bit of an ugly beach though. The weather was cold… water was cold… everything was very cold! The ice cream was good though. Oh yeah- I wrecked my camera at Capitola Beach because of the water and the sand. It was pretty sad. But I picked up a better camera at Best Buy, for a really cheap price, so it was pretty cool! There are also some pictures of De Anza drive and… APPLE! Click continue reading for all the pictures

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Posted in: Other, Projects.

Exploring Stanford

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, July 27th, 2008

Stanford has an extremely beautiful campus! It’s full with wildlife- like tiny frogs, geckos and palm trees! It’s also a really giant campus - as I found out after playing The Game. (I’ll blog about The Game later). Apart from enjoying the puns on Bread-First Search (BFS) and Death-First Search (DFS) algorithms, I really enjoyed exploring the campus. Usually I took all of these pictures while going Fountain Hopping, but sometimes I just took them while walking to the class!
Fountain Hopping was an amazing activity. Basically, you find a fountain - and you jump in it! It’s so amazingly fun! One time where we went to the fountain outside of the hospital, we were kicked out. It was pretty awkward!
One of my favourite features of Stanford is the beautiful architecture. You really have to see it in real, but I hope my pictures will better illustrate it! The detail and texture is amazing.
The total GB count of all the photos I took is 9.46! But, I only chose the best and uploaded them, so with all the small versions and thumbnails, it totaled to 2.3GB. There will be way more posts with way more photos! Here are 309 - Hope you enjoy them!! Clicking the image will open it in the lightbox (like normal), but if you click the camera, it will open the high res photos. Please don’t use any of the high res photos without my permission first Thanks!!
Click continue reading for all the pictures

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Posted in: Art, Other, Projects.

Current Robot Projects

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, July 20th, 2008

Yay! I have access to the internet
After being at Stanford, I really realized that I extremely like AI and robotics. So, I have many robot projects going on all at one time. Here’s a list:

• Line following, maze navigating, AI robot
  • Using an Arduino and Processing
  • Started this project at Stanford (they funded it!)
  • 2 DC motors
  • 5 LDRs
  • Chassis is a cardboard and plastic beginners robot kit (bought at the ExplOratorium while at Stanford)
  • I need a gearbox!
• BubbleBoy
  • A robot that has fake emotions determined by the pushes of buttons and the LDR
  • Using Arduino and Processing
  • 2 Servos
  • 1 LDR
  • 2 Push buttons
  • Chassis is the older BubbleBoy - Pinky one I created
  • I need another Arduino - or an RBBB!
• MANOI AT01 -> Arduino
  • Transplanting my humanoid to the Arduino board
  • I need 2 or 3 Pololu micro serial servo boards - they can be controlled via a TXRX line, making it easy for the Arduino to control many servos
  • Will write software to control the servos in Processing (easy GUI!)
• Phoenix
  • Basically, my project for the year. *cough*ISEFhopefully*cough*
  • Uses much of the knowledge I attain from all projects and the Stanford EPGY Summer Institutes AI Program
  • Hospital bedside accompaniment
  • I’m purposefully lacking details here.

Some of the parts I need immediately in order to continue building are expensive though
But hey, there’s always Styrobots in my shop ready to be purchased!!

In the meantime, I’m still annotating and pulling all the details out of these books…

• Building Sociable Robots
• Probablistic Robotics
• AI Textbook from Stanford
• AI journal book from Stanford
• The Emotion Machine
• Intro to AI

I’m also compiling a huge blog post of over 1,000 pictures from Stanford
Soon after that, I’ll post pics of these projects

Posted in: MANOI, Other, Programming, Projects, Robot.

Inching closer and closer!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008

The day until I start this awesome adventure is getting closer! I’m flying out on June 22nd morning, and I’ll get there on June 22nd morning! That’s so cool! It’s almost like time warping, except … it isn’t
One of the major things that is bugging me is my camera (right now I have the Canon Powershot SD550). I got it a few years ago, so it’s a bit out of date. The Image Stabilization is old, and it’s not as good as it could be. I really want a new camera! I have my heart set on the Canon Powershot SD1100IS. It uses the DiGIC 3 processor! That means I could have it on a higher ISO level, and it wouldn’t be as grainy as on my camera now. Plus, the faces will be in focus! I can never get faces in focus with my camera now. In fact, to take a good photo I have to take at least 10 shots on continuous mode so that it will be in focus, comparable to a DSLR shot, almost. Furthermore, I think I will only have two 2GB cards. Errg! I don’t know how I’m going to do it. Maybe I’ll optimize my settings so that the images will be web quality, but definitely not stellar quality.

Either way, it’s too late to buy it now thanks to my Dad who didn’t want me to order it (even with my OWN money). All of my photos will be horrible quality and blurred. GRR! I won’t have the TIME to worry about making it a great shot. I just want a better point and shoot camera with a waterproof case for this trip!
Despite all this whining and cheesing, I’m really excited to go! I did order 3 books for the planes there.

Designing Sociable Robots (by Cynthia Breazeal)
The Emotion Machine (by Marvin Minsky)
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (by Philip C. Jackson, Jr.)

I already started reading some of them! Introduction to Artificial Intelligence is very very very mathematical. I like it a lot, except for the parts where I have to re-read chapters But really intriguing. It sort of teaches you a different way to think about AI. As for Designing Sociable Robots, it’s as awesome as I thought it would be! I haven’t exactly started reading The Emotion Machine as I didn’t really adore how it’s written at first glance. It’s sort of like a big FAQ book that can tell a story. However, I look forward to reading it on the planes! It’s probably a really good book, I just didn’t like it at first glance.

I really like Artificial Intelligence Just the thought of designing something that can process thought and learn is really remarkable to me..

On the plane I’m also going to print out a few Project Euler questions and work on it on paper. That site is REALLY addicting! Not to mention, I’ll have my iPod video saturated with videos (maybe I’ll put Chuck on it ;))! I’ll be listening to Robots podcast and the old Talking Robots podcast! Maybe a few Mugglecasts too.
I’m not 100% sure if I will be able to blog while I’m at Stanford. I’m not even sure if I will want to. I can blog anytime when I get home! I’ll probably just write in a journal about what happened each day, and then for 3 weeks I’ll post them up here. It will be kind of like re-living the experience, I guess!

Oh yeah, I’m staying a few extra days! I want to see the JPL very badly.
With all this said, I’d really like to thank everyone that helped, donated, or bought a Styrobot! This dream wouldn’t have been possible without you guys.

Posted in: Other, Projects.

Well, that was an Adventure!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, June 8th, 2008

Wow, what an adventure into the powers of .htaccess’s! I don’t think I’m going to play with those ever ever ever again… What happened was that I installed a plugin called ‘AskApache Protect’. It basically protects all of the files that should be protected, but aren’t, from harm and danger. But, it does this via .htaccess’s. My host helped me out and restored everything … but I still had to fix the .htaccess.

Playing with .htaccess on mac isn’t that great. Infact, I have no clue how to do it still… I used bash. So I used vi on the .htaccess and emptied it all. After that, I had to figure out how to upload the file on ftp in bash. It was surprisingly easy, and it fixed it!

After that, my loginlockdown plugin wasn’t being friendly, so I had to go into phpmyadmin and delete the data in the activated_plugins row in the wp-options table. Quite a big workaround, but it worked!

All in all, I learned a lot It was at a high opportunity cost, BUT how else are you supposed to learn if you don’t fail/mess up once in a while

Posted in: Other, Projects.

A Kaplooza of STUFF!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, May 24th, 2008

This blog post can pretty much fit into every category
There are a few things that I want to talk about in this entry… so here goes!

1. Styrobots - I’ve had 2 Styrobots up on Etsy since May 17th! They’re only $20, and the money goes towards my Robotics Fund, which will go towards my Stanford EPGY AI Program tuition, or to books and parts. They are irresistibly cute, so if you can, please buy one! I’ll be adding more this weekend, assuming homework doesn’t attack me (there is a good chance that it will and may)
2. Rube Goldberg Project - I have been working with my friend to build this immense Rube Goldberg project! The purpose was to light a candle. Here are some pictures of it…
   

   t="97" alt="Project at school" class="imageframe" />

   There was a problem though, whenever I tried capturing it on my camera, the candle would not light. However, when the camera was off, it would light! When we brought it to school, it didn’t light. It felt like an immense waste of time, considering we had so much and we couldn’t even fulfill the objective. I liked building it, but I didn’t like setting it up. Hopefully this knowledge will be useful, someday!

3. 507 Mechanical Movements - This book looks very interesting, I should buy it after I buy Cynthia Breazeal’s book ‘Designing Sociable Robots’
4. Remember that Paper Cylon contest that I made a robot for? Turns out it’s only for US Residents. Lame! Haha, at least I tried though.
5. Homework. There’s a lot of it! It’s reducing my rate of productivity. (Go figure)

Posted in: News, Other, Other News, Projects.

Laryngitis

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, May 8th, 2008

I have laryngitis, eek!

However, the good news is that when the $500 deposit for Stanford was paid… the tuition went down to $3700.

It is still quite a bit of money, though! Heheh, but at least a good chunk is gone…
w00t

Posted in: Other, Projects.

Where Am I?

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, April 21st, 2008

Why were there no blog posts for a week? EEEEEK!

I was studying….working…programming! ^^

I’ll skip the terribly boring stuff and get to the point(s)
- Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday - track practice
- Spent Friday in Ottawa ^^
- Half of Saturday I soldered stuff
- Sunday I programmed in a GUI & went biking in mud with a friend
- Monday I am watching the Habs Homework I’ll do after
There was an extremely good day at school last week… we get to make a Rube Goldberg machine for Physics!! This is SO cool it’s unbelievable to have this opportunity. I’m still in awe, and verrry excited to start working with the wood with our team! Sure… our team may go overboard for a simple simple machine combination contraption … but when will the chance of building a Rube Goldberg machine come around again?
What I am working on now is getting my LCD to display a custom screen that I drew out on paper. What the problem appears to be is that it can’t handle many characters… I have 3 custom characters… I FINALLY got the 3rd line to work, so now I have to figure out the 4th line. It’s really annoying. I’ll figure out, somehow, how to cut down the amount of info/characters that has to be displayed.

Additionally, I’m working on making a SQLite database interface for conversation links and language models. Once I get it working, I’ll be linking it up with Robbie. You can then imagine all the possibilities with regards to the different language models that will be downloadable! I’m thinking a gigantor mental math mini-game one…
My fingers on my right hand are insane… thumb- raw’ish from soldering. index- has something wrong with it as I can’t lift it middle- a chunk of skin is missing because I unplugged my magsafe the wrong way… ring- my grad ring is ALWAYS falling off pinky- sprained a bit, from … I have no clue
That’s all for now. I like how next year’s FIRST robotics is going to be completely different, with the new WPI programmer software and all! 802.11n will be great for ANNs too. I hope I am lucky enough to take part in FIRST next year!

Posted in: Other, Projects.

$50 from Scott Kaine

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, April 7th, 2008

After a most generous donation of $10 from uC Hobby, I was absolutely astonished when I had yet another email from PayPal, with a $50 donation!

This $50 donation is from Scott Kaine. Check out his blog, it’s pretty spifftastic! I’m at a loss for words. Thank you so much Scott! It truly means a lot to me. Thank you thank you thank you thank you multiplied by 1 zillion!

Not exactly sure what I will spend it on just yet. Perhaps a Wii Nunchuck controller, and a Motor Shield so I can use my 2 DC motors and make a different type of Segway! I’m thinking something like a skateboard, with a big surface area and big tires so I can balance. For some reason, the idea of a big stick in front just doesn’t cut it for me. (I want to be a RoboSk8r!) I don’t have much mass, so I think I could get away with using big wheels with a gear ratio for lots of power, and some speed, in a wooden chassis. I would use metal, but I have no clue where I could get some. Or I could use plastic from Ponoko! That way it will be pink. Or lime green! The possibilities are only limited to infinity - 1.

Posted in: News, Other, Projects, Robot News, Tech News.