Adventures in 3D Modelling – Dinosaur Head & Tiny Box w/Sculpted Tree

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, January 29th, 2013

Over the holidays I spent some of my braincation learning more about Blender. The part that I’m most interested in is making things textured, so that they feel really cool. Autodesk Inventor is good for dimensional models, but not so much the artistic detail side.

Here’s the first attempt at making something, it’s a dinosaur head!

It’s on Thingiverse too, check it out.

One of the tricky parts that I was trying to figure out was how many polys would be necessary to create a nice model?

Here are many polys:

Here are not so many polys:

@drandolph was able to take the model and spruce it up a bit, like make it have a flat bottom to be printed, and also lower the poly count. He printed it on his awesome modified Replicator.

I didn’t know he was going to print it that big, the dinosaur head is giant! Can you imagine that sitting on a shelf somewhere? Pretty funny!

I’m not sure how long it took for him to print it, but thanks again for printing it David!

Also, @i_bioloid took a look at it too, this is how long it would have taken him to print it.

Playing around in Blender was fun. This time, I wanted to see if I could take a model from Inventor (like the RoboBrrd models), and then sculpt something onto it. The long-term idea here is that I would be able to eventually have sculpted ‘feathers’ on RoboBrrd’s pieces.

Here is the Tiny Box with a Sculpted Tree on it:

Here’s how I made it:
- Used Autodesk Inventor Fusion for the model of the tiny box (with some nice fillets on the edges too)
- Exported it as stl
- Imported stl into Blender
- Rotated the object around so that it is sitting with the flat part on the bottom
- Turned into Edit mode, selected the faces on one of the sides
- Subdivided the faces all the way to 10, then subdivided some more to around 3
- Went into Sculpt mode and sculpted on the tree

It’s a pretty cool way to add some customization to a model. I just really hope that it will turn out well when printed! It is also on Thingiverse, check it out.

Really looking forward to 3D Printing! Ordered a Makerbot Replicator 1 last week thanks to all of the RoboBrrd Indiegogo Backers!

Will get a laser cutter eventually, there would have been some pretty serious problems with ventilation and exhaust if we did get it right now. (If you’re wondering, no: there are no windows, vents, outside facing walls, etc. Yes: it is weird.) There is the option of an air purifier, but then I have to get a smaller laser cutter because it would cost so much. Also, they are out of stock until end of February, which is a really long time.

Might as well get started on something now, otherwise I would be running around in circles. This is the whole beauty of rapid prototyping. Hopefully none of the backers will be too upset. I think the 3D Printer will be good for making robots!

The Indiegogo pressies are nearing complete. There’s still some more things to do, and I don’t want to jinx it with an incomplete post! More news later!

Posted in: 3D.

RoboBrrd Indiegogo campaign funded! 151%!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Last night was the final countdown for the RoboBrrd Indiegogo campaign, we surpassed our stretch goal!

Big thanks to all the new and old friends of RoboBrrd, for backing the project and/or spreading the word!

We will be keeping everyone in the loop as to what is happening, and we will be posting pics and vids of the behind the scenes action on twitter/facebook/g+, so you can follow RoboBrrd!

If you have any questions about RoboBrrd feel free to ask them!

It is extremely exciting to be able to get RoboBrrd in the hands of even more people now. I can’t wait to see what people will be making with them!

YIPEE WOOT WOOT CHIRP CHIRP BEEP BLOOP WHIRR SQUAWK!

Thanks again!

Posted in: Fun, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!).

4 hours – RoboBrrd on Indiegogo!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, December 5th, 2012

It’s getting close to the final time, so exciting! Still trying to meet our stretch goal ($15,494), hope we can make it!

Thanks everyone for the support so far, it has been a blast! Time to spend the last few hours in crazy anticipation

Posted in: Fun, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!).

Pikachu Fun (New York City!)

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

This year I had some time to do some visiting around NYC. Cities aren’t exactly my cup of tea for sight seeing, but there were three things to do:
1) visit the Pokemon store
2) visit Adafruit HQ
3) visit the Makerbot retail store

The Adafruit HQ visit will be in a separate post following this one (it was awesome!).

So reaching the Pokemon store using my Android phone was kind of stupid. At first the maps directed me to the Pokemon offices, which are in a big office building. Finally I found the Nintendo store, and pulling open the Pokeball shaped door-handles into a small world of Pokemon!

They have a Pikachu statue there! It was spectacular to see Pikachu in real life!

Most of the robo-creatures that I’m building now have been inspired in some part by Pokemon. If you remember what Professor Oak said at the beginning of Pokemon Red & Blue, he described how Pokemon are their own creature. This is exactly how I view robots, that they will be able to have their own thinking going on inside of them, and also become our friends!

Hey look! It’s R.O.B.!

I’m not sure where I was going when I took this, but it’s so cool to be at Nikola Tesla corner!

After Adafruit I checked out the Makerbot retail store. It is most definitely a retail store, even with an Arduino shirt on they kind of treated me like… I didn’t know what 3d printing was… yeah. The conversation was sort of rehearsed answers from them. Basically it wasn’t as casual as an Apple store, my expectations going in would be that it would be really laid back, not pushing you to buy something you don’t even have the money for. You know, just try out the machines and see how they work, like Apple.

The front window demo was kind of scary in the way that if I accidentally tripped and fell onto it, the whole thing would probably break. It is quite the contraption and it would stink to see it broken!

On the flipside, it is pretty cool to have a retail store for 3d printers on the Earth! I have no idea how they are paying for it and for the staff, but I hope it will get a lot of visitors who don’t even know about 3d printing coming in and checking it out.

RoboBrrd would fit inside the build area of a Replicator 2.

So it’s kind of interesting to see how far they have come, to the point where they can start to get even more people interested in 3d printing. I tried to ask for a Replicator 1 for free, but no dice this time

Here, Seagull RoboBrrd is being repaired to interact via shaking. A big thank you to Andrew (ignoblegnome on LetsMakeRobots) and his family for letting RoboBrrd and I stay there. If it wasn’t for that, well we wouldn’t be able to have a place to stay! I helped a small bit with packaging up the robot kits for their awesome lessons for Maker Faire.

All in all, sight seeing around NYC was pretty cool. If I ever get the chance to go back, I definitely want to check out the big green park there. It would be really cool to do a social robotics experiment in a city setting as well…

Posted in: Fun.

RoboBrrd & Apps for Arduino at SecondConf!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, September 19th, 2012

We’re going to SecondConf! SecondConf is a developers conference for iOS and Mac. It’s sort of like WWDC, but there will be less people there, more discussions, and lots of learning of course!

We were invited to give a talk last year, but thanks to a cold on the end of Maker Faire we had to post-pone it to this year. And we were actually invited back this year to give a talk! Sweet!

If you’re going to SecondConf, our talk is Sunday at 11:00AM!

You will not want to miss it, because it will be about robots and electronics and how to create a blended reality by combining it with software!

The talk is about 40 minutes long. During the talk we will discuss:

Apps for Arduino
- “If hardware is the heart of a project, then software is its soul”
- Matatino and Wijourno frameworks
- Why lack of feature creep is its best feature
- Community, open source
- And more!

RoboBrrd
- “Do-it-yourself educational robotic pet”
- Educational aspects
- Fun hardware
- And more!

The talk will also include some demos of how everything works and such!

From what I’ve heard, the talks will be recorded and archived, so it will be online in the future.

Check it out! Dr. Wave is also going to be there! Remember when RoboBrrd visited Pixar while we were at Evil Mad Science? It’s always really interesting to learn more about Pixar, movies, software, and just so many things.

Bob Kressin, who is the presenter right after me then lunch, is also doing a presentation on Bluetooth Low Energy. This will also be really cool, since we are going to work together to get RoboBrrd working with BLE on Friday! I’m totally psyched for this!

Mega thank you for SecondConf for the opportunity and accommodations! It’s going to be great. Looking forward to meeting everyone!

Posted in: apps4arduino, Fun, iPhone, Programming, Projects.

Special Edition Robot Party! LMRv4!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, June 15th, 2012

There is a special edition Robot Party this Saturday! We will be broadcasting the Lets Make Robots v4 fundraiser celebration! Anyone who has donated can be entered to win 5 prizes from Adafruit. The drawing will be done on air, so it will be really fun!

Here is the time that it will be broadcasted:
Saturday June 16th @
• 5AM PDT (UTC-7) (Vancouver, San Francisco)
• 8AM EDT (UTC-4) (Toronto, New York)
• 1PM PST (UTC+1) (Britain)
• 5:30PM IST (UTC+5.5) (Mumbai)
• 9PM JST (UTC+9) (Tokyo)
• 10PM EST (UTC+10) (Sydney)

Countdown:

We’re really looking forward to getting the chance to meet robot builders who haven’t been on the Robot Party before!

To join the hangout, leave a comment saying that you will want to be in the Robot Party on my G+ page. This way I can add you to my circles, and when the hangout begins you can press the ‘Join Hangout’ button. Please bring a robot to show if you are planning to join the hangout!

You can still watch the hangout stream if you don’t want to be in the hangout! The stream will be live on the Robot Party page, where you can tune in and watch it! With Google+ Hangouts on Air, the recording is automatically saved and uploaded, so if you can’t make it, you can watch the recording!

This is similar to the previous special edition LMR fundraiser Robot Party celebration, where NilsB showed us his awesome chaos bot and picked the winners!

Last night’s Robot Party was a blast, thank you to everyone who showed off their cool projects and robots!

Hope to see everyone at this special edition Robot Party!

Posted in: Robot Party.

Lil RoboBrrd – A RoboBrrd with littleBits inside!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, June 5th, 2012

RoboBrrd has always been using the Arduino as a main controller for its interactivity. Really young kids still enjoy RoboBrrd, but they aren’t quite at the level of using an Arduino yet. Putting some littleBits into a RoboBrrd would seem like such a natural fit, so I gave it a test run at one of their workshops on Sunday at Maker Faire Bay Area 2012!

If you haven’t heard of littleBits, they are electrical components that attach together with magnets. They are coloured so that kids can easily coordinate the input->output process. Playing with them is really addicting, since you can focus on what you want to make and what your end goal is.

This project is posted up on the littleBits community site. Go and check it out! Anyone can make this with a little creativity. You can follow the steps on the RoboBrrd Instructable to create your own chassis out of popsicle sticks!

The night before I was creating the Plasma RoboBrrd. Lasers YAY! (Thanks Evil Mad Science!) Here’s what the final Plasma RoboBrrd looked like:

Playing with the bits was a lot of FUN! I originally had the idea to use two bump switches with an AND gate to turn on some motors, but… since the bits were played with over a gabajillion times that weekend, some of the magnets were weakened. They’re improving it for next version! Instead I went with a really fun light sensor idea:

It happened by chance that the bits fit inside the RoboBrrd quite well!

And they also make for a pretty ‘headband’ on top of RoboBrrd too!

Also, if you’re wondering why it didn’t have wings, it originally did, but I lost one when skipping around with it. Couldn’t find it anywhere.

The bits that were used were…
• Power
• Light sensor
• Branch
• 2x Wire
• 2x Long LED

I really enjoyed making the RoboBrrd work with littleBits! Now whenever you put your hand close enough to ‘pet’ the RoboBrrd, its eyes light up! In the end I gave them plasma RoboBrrd on the condition that it will remain on this shelf. Hopefully it will become good friends with the lil pig next to it! ^_^

It will be cool to see if the RoboBrrd will still be on the shelf at Maker Faire New York!

Maybe there will be more lilBots that use littleBits in the future?

Go check it out on the community site! lil RoboBrrd

Posted in: Maker Faire, RoboBrrd (thx Adafruit!).