One day

Just, one day!
Can you imagine fifty 3D printers working at the same time to produce InMoov in one day.
Builders actively organizing the files to be printed,
Hackers getting the parts ready and preparing the program in one day.
The result should be a World Record Event (according to Ground3D) which will take place on the 25 of may in Utrecht in the Nederlands.
This is an event organised by the Protospace Fablab in Holland.

If you can read dutch this is for you:  LINK.
If you can't read dutch, use the Google translator.

This is very exciting!
I have been contacted by Ground3D which has been printing InMoov parts since a while.
When they first contacted me I wasn't abble to pick up the phone so my wife did. They must have been surprised to get someone who could converse with them in dutch. (She is from Holland)

So the plan is to dispatch all the files on 50 different printers, it is possible that some very long printing parts will be started the previous day. (Just in case) They seem to know a bunch of hackers, which will prepare and assemble the parts once they are printed. Some other hackers will organize all the wiring and programms. We still need to see if they plan on using MRL and Arduinos, but I really hope so because it is part of the force of InMoov.
I will let you know more when I get more info.
I will certainly try to attend this event although it isn't that close by. I wonder why this just doesn't happen here in Paris, it would be so much easier...



In France, there is a blob in Science & Vie junior in the 284 issue.

Apparently, it leaded them to make a full article about robots in the next issue (285). She looks like InMoov's wife..

In the meantime during the nights, I keep on working.
It's been a while that I want to test a finger sensor. J Ha, an Australian InMoov builder, has been busy making some sensors for the hand, his last video is very interesting because he has done a mechanism where the whole servo moves according to the pressure. J Ha also has printed almost the whole robot, so according to him, he will soon let us know how he did this sensor mechanism.
 I had found on the Instructables a very simple and cheap way to create sensors, so cheap that I had to try it.
So I got myself some of that antistatic foam used to protect circuits from shorting.
A board of 40cm X 25cm X 0.5cm cost 3 euros.
I have cut two disks of copper in the diameter of the finger and another disk in the foam.
The copper I had it laying around my workshop, aluminium foil can be used as well.

I ran two very thin wires through the hinges up to the tip of the finger, soldered them to the copper disks, if you use aluminium foil you won't be able to solder it.
Then I sandwiched the foam between the copper disks. Using a two component epoxy glue on the outside of the disks, I managed to glue it all together preserving the spongious effect of the foam.

Writing a script in the Arduino.exe took me a lot of time, that's why I got to bed only at 4 AM. All the scripts I would find on the net were about how to make a servo move when triggering a pressure sensor. But my goal was different, I want the servo to stop moving when the sensor gets a certain amount of pressure, plus I wanted to be able to visualize how reactif was my DIY sensor, to make the servo act in accordance.
Another problem I had with the script was to slow down the servo during it's movements to get relevants values out of the sensor. If the finger goes very fast and hits the objet strongly isn't the same factor is if it encounter the object softly.
The script is still not correct but I got to see what I wanted.
I also used the Oscope in MRL to see what curves it would produce and what was the minimum and maximum values.

The result of the Oscope, here, shows a min value of 0 and a max of 347 which seems pretty good to me.
This was obtained by pressing firmly and releasing the finger tip.
I had never used the Oscope of MRL and it is a fine piece of the software which can be very handy.
Bellow is a little video done at the request of Grog, because this way he can maybe integrate and adapt the script in the InMoov Service with Python.

Now, I have ordered some QTC pills sensors which are ridiculously cheap and will modify the finger tip to improve the pressure impact direction. Users will be able to just remove the finger tips already printed and add that modified finger tip to simply benefit of a pretty effective sensor.

The other night I was for the second time testing the recently rebuilt tracking service in MRL and somehow I got to burn my second Hitec HS805BB. According to Grog I shouldn't test it anymore until something is fixed in the service. I guess I will listen to his advise.
The servo goes beyond it's range for some reason. Expensive tests...30 euros to the trash.
Replacing the RotHead  servo in the head gave an odd and creepy feeling in the worshop the other night...

Easter head!

It's Easter and the bells brought you something cool!

Okay, it took me a while to release my robot's face, but understand me it isn't easy to just give away.
You guys better be very gentle with him because I will have eyes and ears every where.

 

So parts are available on Thingiverse and Cubehero.
I  dispatched them just to protect the Open Source goal of it. I think assembling should be pretty easy to figure out. There is parts that needs to be glued but for the rest it is all assembled with screws, this is mostly for to access the components and mechanism inside the head. 
The eye mechanism is ready but I wait for a little servo to see how it reacts with  stereo movements.

Thanks to Grog, Myrobotlab keeps improving and it seems like the Cortex service is going to be pretty amazing. Added to InMoov service we should get memory. Grog said, "I've been mostly busy trying to make meaningful Memory . Memory in the sense of abstract ideas, objects and relations and a way to visualize them.  It's been challenging but I think I'm finally done with most of the structures and am starting to work on the visualization of memory."

Beside these crazy days of work I just went through, I wanted to find a solution concerning the restriction movements of the HK15298 servos.
 While trying to assemble some junk parts of InMoov to create a simple device for testing a servo connected to one finger, I got an idea.

Hey! but this is what is needed for the beginners, a simple kit which has a finger, a servo, and an Arduino.

The black printed finger is one of the junks I had in my box, very low res print...

This is going to be fun, if you never tried an Arduino and a servo together, we are, Grog, Chris and I, going to make things very simple for you to learn.
First a tuto for to assemble and print this baby InMoov and then a video tuto on how to start MRL in a very simple way to start playing with this.
Grog is going to create a service called InMoov Starter and hopefully it should be pretty easy to make it all happen.

Once you understand how to control this toy, you should be ready, mentaly, to build the complete robot...(Mmmh maybe not, we will see) 

Anyway you can get it here