This guy made a recording of himself acting interested in a product, and played it on a loop to see how long a telemarketer would play along with the recording. Here’s the MP3:
http://creativebastard.com/archives/2006/08/168/
I laughed.
August 30, 2006
August 27, 2006
Stepper motors may be required.
I’ve been reading up on DC motors, and after this refresher on how DC motors work, I realized that my painter-bot would probably burn out motors at low speed.
I might give it a shot with some of these DC gear motors to see if they heat up or smell funny at really low speeds, or have problems with frequently starting/stopping, or with backlash in the gearbox.
Bottom line is- I just might need to do stepper motors. I really didn’t feel like doing PWM for this project, but I guess it would make it that much easier to interface with a PC.
Painter-bot
I recently bought a book about the current state of the art in robotics (written in 2000), and it’s given me some newfound inspiration to get to work on the joystick controlled plotter I’ve been plotting for a while.
Robo Sapiens is the name of the book. There are tons of colorful photos, so it’s a good coffee table book.
I am presently considering the OPA2544 to control a pair of DC motors. My idea is to use this as a buffer to convert the analog outputs of a joystick to move a marker along X and Y axes. It contains two operational amplifiers, and can handle 2 amps output at +/- 35v supply. It doesn’t exactly look stable at low frequency, though, so if anybody has any input on where I can find something better I would appreciate suggestions. I don’t have a mechanical platform yet, but my goal is to use motors that require +/- 5V to +/- 12V, and no more than 0.5 amps.
August 5, 2006
Nerd alert- input mod for a boombox!
A while after Kendra and I moved in to Berkeley, we bought a $15 boom box at the Salvation Army. It has a working CD player and radio, but it wasn’t designed to have an input jack. This was not a problem at first, since we mainly used it for the radio and kept it in the bathroom.
Since we moved to El Cerrito, the boombox is in the kitchen. I like to listen to music while I clean (to distract me- I never need distractions while I’m cooking), but I don’t really keep up to date on what a good radio station is, and commercials are useless.
So, here it is:
The switch is a dpdt sub-mini from Radio Shack, and it intercepts the input to the amplifier from the receiver. Here’s a closeup:
Throw the switch one way and the radio plays, the other way plays the input. All of the original functions on the boombox are unchanged, except the volume and built-in EQ. Auxiliary input level controls the output volume, so the knob on my mp3 player controls volume in that mode. Hey, it works!
August 4, 2006
Testing
I am testing the non-WYSIWYG editor that Mike recommended. I don’t miss seeing hyperlinks or images in the post I’m editing. If I really need to make a post beautiful, I’ll write some HTML.
Thanks, Mike, for the comment. I didn’t notice that the fancy editor was on by default, or that it could be turned off.
August 2, 2006
Updated Wordpad
Not that anybody cares, but I just updated Wordpad from 2.0.0 (i think) to 2.0.4. The main difference I see is that when I make hyperlinks in the post editor, they work. Maybe it will prompt me to post a bit more often.