Friday Night MANOI – replaced by BUBBLE BOY!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, March 28th, 2008

That’s right! My usual Friday night MANOI was replaced by Friday night BUBBLE BOY! Pinky was renamed to Bubble Boy as, not only is it more bubblicious, but it also reminds us of Seinfeld. (Nope, the answer is MOOPS!) (<--- Seinfeld joke)

Trying to get it all to work out was pretty a pretty intense thought process. At least, it seemed that way relative to a Friday. Relative to a Monday morning, the thought process could be described as easy. The way Bubble Boy (lol) will rock back and forth, and from side to side is that there will be two servos embedded into the side of the bottom ball. On the servo horns will be string, which will be attached to a paperclip. From there, the paperclip plugs easily into the cross on the top ball.

The reason why I chose paperclips rather than anything else is because it allows more movement. For example, if the top ball moves to the left, the back and forth ones will not constrain this movement. Pretty neat, eh! I'll probably strengthen the cross tomorrow, after I replace the elastic string I used.

This brings me to another point. There isn't much string around, so the first thing I saw, I grabbed. Elasticy string. I thought it would probably work out, but it didn't. Tomorrow I'll replace it with bunchels of thread, or yarn - depending on what mood I am in. (Yarn is bigger - thread is smaller).

These photos show the progress of the process.

During the weekend, keep an eye out for:
- Blog post about Autism & Robots & Robbie
- Blog post (hopefully) about a working Bubble Boy
- YouTube video (hopefully) about Bubble Boy
- Blog post about a very fun Physics lab

Happy Friday night BUBBLE BOY!

Posted in: Projects, Robot.

Colouring Pinky

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

Today (March 22) I painted Pinky

Lucky for me – it was the EXACT colour I envisioned!

I also made the bottom part better, so it wouldn’t topple over that easy.

Enjoy the pics!

Hooray!

Posted in: Projects, Robot.

The Commencement of Pinky

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, March 21st, 2008

I bought some pink paint, and two styrofoam balls this afternoon. (I also bought two beanie babys, but that’s besides the point). So, it is the commencement of Pinky! Wahahahahaha…

Basically what I did today was familiarized myself with how to program the servos with the Arduino more, and I made the two styrofoam balls interlock. This was done buy cutting an ‘x’ into both. On the bottom one, the x was concave. On the top one, the x was convex. They have some ability to move side to side and front to back. Tomorrow that functionality will improve after I trim it up a bit.

Hooray for virtual logbooks! ^_^

Posted in: Projects, Robot.

Bristlebot

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, March 20th, 2008

Yay! I made a Bristlebot today, and updated the smilies for this blog. Much cuter, no? ^_^

It was pretty fun. My soldering has gone waaaaaay downhill though. Hopefully I’ll get more practice in soon. Arduino and ArtBot contest entries are due in the end of April, so I better get moving. My plan is to make a new Robbie, incidentally called Pinky. I’ll somehow find a small microphone and speaker, and embed it in a physical pink snowman.

The coolest part about the ArtBot contest is that, if I am accepted, I’ll be able to go to Ireland on my birthday. I’m Irish, so that’s quite a huge ordeal! <:D

-> Oh, I received my comments today. And a crumpled certificate. Nice. Well, the comments were all positive, even the two in French.

I checked to see what the science fairs in Mass are like – they have a panel of professional judges. So I need not worry for the future!

Posted in: Projects, Robot.