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Have you met my friend Maxwell?

May 11, 2014

I love the manatee. But I’m about to get busy and I want to finish the tutorial before things come crashing down. And Elizabeth has been busy so… in the interest of taking away self-imposed obstacles, I moved forward on the are-you-ok plushie version. Don’t fear, the manatee (or maybe it will be a narwhal) will be back! Just not today.

Friday, I went to Target, looked around in their toy aisle for a suitable stuffed animal to disassemble. Then in their dog toy aisle. I figured the dog toys will have squeakers and my electronics can fit in that area (since, of course, I’d remove the squeaker). I came home with two items.

The octopus is a dog toy. The dog is a human toy. I’m sure this makes sense.

Is it mean to make the other one watch?

The next step was to remove the stuffing, remove the backing from the eyes so light can shine through, then affix the LED and accelerometer.

I’m a little worried about my LED. Either I haven’t been consistent wiring up blue and green or they randomly change on a per-LED basis. (Ok, I am using two varieties of LED so it may be that.) That is wired according to the datasheet. But then when I wire the board, I end up needing to swap the blue and green. Sometimes.

Anyway… that is just to show the wires. The next step is to clip each one (leaving the others with their colors so as not to get confuse). The goal is to clip as short as possible but no shorter. So aim for three snips per since too-short is bad but too long isn’t.

Then hotglue it all together. (CUE: Foreshadowing music.)

I attached the LED with fishing line, trying to keep it centered on the face but a little free floating.

The fishing line is coiled around the LED, maybe a dot of hotglue, then tied at the head, and threaded through at the bottom. With some force, the LED can be shifted up and down but it stays where I leave it. I want the LED to stay where I put it but also float in the stuffing.

Next goal: when you pat the head of the octopus and the accel fires. Happily, the accel has two mounting holes. I used those and more fishing wire through the seams of the head. I also, characteristically, hotglued the metal bits and the cables on to the connector. Think of hotglue as the pauper’s potting substance.

Intelligent people would test all the electronics at this point. You know, before adding stuffing. But, of course, do as I say, not as a I do.

Some stuffing, in the same role as screws in other projects, is expected to be leftover. They overdesign these things anyway.

Now, add batteries! I need to have a way for the user (the elderly neighbor) to change the batteries. And I need to have a way for the caregiver to do the annoying-as-all-getup BlinkUp to send the WiFi SSID and password to the Imp card. And yet we also need to have it all look nice and stay in place.

My only advice is to try it out a few times before making any decisions. There were many ways for it not to work and only one or two that it was possible. Double backed tape (the slightly foam-like stuff) is very useful, for those spots where hotglue isn’t.

Finish the wiring, add hotglue, stick to the double back tape. Stand on battery box on end to show off hotglue, not realizing the sense of vertigo that might lead to.

Really, you have to test him before buttoning him up. Really, really.

Now, add some velcro to the battery compartment. Then to the flap of fabric on the bottom.

Shove it all into the plush body. Nicely of course. Possibly adding a bit more of that stuffing so there aren’t any lumps due to the electronics.

Put him somewhere that you walk by often. Pat him. Mine is a little slow to light but it is such a happy light that it is worth the wait.

Ok.

Now, this all looks pretty good, if I do say so myself.

But you maybe are thinking “well, these are instructions from an expert” but here’s the thing: This is the first time I’ve ever modified a plushie to take electronics.

Sure, I worked at Leapfrog, but they had real fabricators (they had the first 3d printer I ever heard of!). So. If you are thinking this is too hard, go out and buy a $5 dog toy and try it. I was pretty shocked at how not-hard it was.

Or you can do a $4 person toy.

You didn’t think the dog was going to escape unmodified, did you?

This is plain thread, sewing the LED into the inner lining of the plush body (don’t want to see the stitches on the outside). I decided the doggie’s heart should light up. And I’m going to have to use 3 AAs or 4 AAAs to fit into the diminutive body, so it will need its batteries changed more ofent.

Of course, I just put my last accel (and Imp) into Maxwell so it will be a little bit before the fuzzie dog gets the rest of its gear. I should go push the buy button on Sparkfun. I am excited about the high potential for cuteness from the fuzzmonster.

Even without the hardware, now I can continue the tutorial. (Or go outside and play before the heatwave next week.)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged advice, ayok, gadgets, photos | Comments Off on Have you met my friend Maxwell?

Manatee photos

April 23, 2014

I usually say that if I am not blogging about my personal projects, I’m not working on them. That isn’t true this week.

I’m afraid that if I take the time to write everything that is bursting in my head, I won’t get to continue working. So I’m going to just put up some photos. These aren’t build instructions, maybe they are just place holders for all the stuff that should (and some that shouldn’t) be in the ayok build notes.

Choosing an LED has been tough. In that pic there are two RGB LEDs, both the same power but the big one (10mm) has a diffuser. The three little ones are red, yellow, green individual LEDs. They are from LilyPad which means they are built to be sewn into things.

Elizabeth made a manatee prototype, including the diffuse LED as a nose and the smaller three as buttons.

For the nose, the question of how to attach it to the fabric came up. Hot glue seems to be my solution for everything but that does make fabric feel yucky so I cut out a perfboard. Elizabeth then used the holes in that to build a prototype nose.

But before I show you how she put it together, here is the base-model manatee. The pattern came from cationdesigns.

It sits up unaided (thanks to some sand weights in the tail and lower belly). It is soft and utterly adorable.

But less so when you add an LED schnoze. That manatee body doesn’t have any stuffing but, even so, not the look we were going for.

The button style LEDs are kind of boring. And since they don’t color mix we lose a lot of flexibility. (All GPIOs are the Electric Imp are used!)

Using conductive thread seemed neat but the interface between pins and wires is not easy. To get the LEDs to light, I ended up knotting all the plus and all the minus sides.

Of course, the thing the thread likes to do most is make knots so that part was easy. I wasn’t thrilled by the look or the electronics side of those buttons.

Putting the tummy in the empty cavity of the body looked nice but that isn’t exactly realistic, the LED can’t just float around in open (deflated) air.

Elizabeth suggested that since we are using a double layer fabric, we could put it between layers . So I unraveled some of her work and shoved it in a newly opened seam in the back.

With the LED in between the two layers of fabric, t gave a nice glow. We are going to try that some more, to give it a tummy glow. I hope that works. It is better than our fallback plan of making the big diffuse LED into some sort of tophat.

The new manatee model also came with a pocket for electronics so we could make things fit. But before we see that, let’s look at the electronics build.

First a parts list in graphic form. This is also in a SparkFun wishlist.

Next I tried to show how things would get assembled. I don’t think I want to do a step by step assembly. The soldering isn’t too tough… But here is what I took while I built it.

First attach headers!

Next, attach red to ground and black to power. Sigh, that is really what happened in the next pic.

I figured it out two days later when the fuel gauge would not work, not even after I fixed its I2C lines. So, maybe this pic won’t go into the instructions.

I need an extra set of I2C pins and another ground pin. I devised this stupidly complex way to go about it involving another breadboard.

I’m not sure how to explain that you can follow this tutorial even if you solder like a drunken sailor. In high winds. Also, you don’t have to do this because you don’t need all these pins that I thought you might want.

Happily at this point we can go back to the manateee. Which I’ve named Hugh. At least this one is.

He’s got a pocket in his butt. This is what needs to fit.

From another angle…

I have more electronics than will fix, though it isn’t too far off. The problem comes from using up-down headers. With right angle headers, this would have worked better. So do I go back and re-do it with right angles?

Because while I jammed everything in there, it appears that Hugh has some unsightly wires coming from his, um, backside.

Ok, this one I took for twitter because I was getting Hugh’s Electric Imp to work. I found a short with the I2C connection (bad solder joint) and then the fuel gauge ground/power swap.

There are some software oddnesses with running two Impees from one account. It took me awhile to get it running. I’m still not sure how to differentiate between the two units (though I’m pretty sure there is a way).

Having gotten it working, I took some pictures today to help explain the wiring. The power subsystem could all be be stuck together: hot glue!

Actually, I wanted that foamy double stick tape but couldn’t find any. Note that only two sets of wires go out of the frame: I2C SDA (green) and SCL (yellow); power (red) and ground (black).

Those go to the Electric Imp board. Two bundles of wires then come off the Electric Imp board: the LED and the accelerometer. The LED has a red (Imp pin 2), green (Imp 5), and blue wire (Imp 7).

The LED pins are:

the longest is ground (black)
the short one next to that is red
the remaining inside one is green
the last one, outside, opposite red is blue

The accelerometer has power (red), SDA (green) , SCL (yellow), (nothing), Wakeup (violet), and ground. These all go back to the Imp board.

Finally, the un-taped, un-hotglued ball of wires on my desk.

So you can see, progress is being made.

The second set of electronics work. I have enough drawings and pictures to describe how to do the build (if not enough to do the stuffed animal). The code is working though I have some tweaks (multiple users need different names, handle email, and separate test from real code then comment it).

But Elizabeth is getting this set of electronics this weekend so expect another manatee soon (and maybe another set of electronics).

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ayok, lists, photos | 10 Comments »

The Yellowstone scavenger hunt

May 15, 2012

“Oh, look another shatteringly beautiful alpine lake”, C said numbly as we drove through Yellowstone.

The day before, we would have stopped on the freeway for a good picture of a buffalo or bison (they are separate, we had to look it up; North Dakota had buffalo, Yellowstone had bison). By the time we were headed out of the park, we didn’t even slow down to look at whole herds of them as they grazed (aka stood motionless) by the side of the road.

We got a little jaded. Part of it was the same phenomenon we had at the National Art Museum, once I’ve seen a fifty(?) unbelievably beautiful things, I lose the ability to process new incredible things. The appreciation part of my brain gets tired and falls asleep. Then I’m left with the feeling of “why the hell am I here?”

One problem was that we started out tired (hmph). What I most would have appreciated in the natural landscape included quieter birds, a lounge chair and a glass of lemonade.

But no, Yellowstone is not about that. It is about being whacked in the head with incredible beauty, over and over again.

However, while I filled up my camera with photos, none of them are very good, at least not compared to the real thing. So I’ll show you the interesting stuff instead of the lovely. I asked C to share his much better photos with me as he goes through them so there may be more.

So, let’s get started. First, keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times.

To which I say, “Duh!”

Bison are big. I mean, not like “whoa, that horse is kinda big and if I sit on it like you want me to, the earth will be so far I can’t touch and when I fall (and I will), it will hurt. A lot.” Naw, horses are tiny compared to bison. And bison are tiny compared to bull moose. Neither one of them will want to eat me but either one could step on me by accident leaving me bloody and unconscious while they walk away unperturbed.

Ok, so the path around Yellowstone is a loop (ignore the road in the middle, that is for wimps). We came in through the north entrance and headed straight so we were going around the loop clockwise. See the map (much bigger here).

The first thing we came to was Mammoth Hot Springs. Which was a giant hot spring. All the white in the photo is mineral salts.

All of the color comes from thermophiles, those wacky creatures that live in mineral rich boiling water. I figured they were microbes or like red algae. Anyway, this was immense and amazing and we only saw a small part of it, something that was brought home as we drove around the back… it would have been easy to spend the day hiking around the mammoth hot spring, finding neat nooks and crannies.

Shortly thereafter, we saw a bison standing along side the road, maybe twenty feet from the road. It wasn’t moving at all. I mean, really at all. I believed it was fake. We’d just gotten to the park and all, it seemed like a good place for a stuffed bison. I mean, it was posing at the roadside. I can’t be blamed for thinking they faked one to show people the majesty (and huuuugeness) of the bison. Christopher laughed and laughed at my insistence it wasn’t real.

When we went to Lassen years ago, I was surprised by the warm temperatures and the snow (well, glacier). Yellowstone has that too. It is distinctly odd to go from getting hot walking around in tshirt and jeans to slipping and sliding in the snow. Makes for pretty pictures though. I could imagine hiking along here until sunset and getting a fabulous picture.

Oh, but what about those thermophiles? Well, when we saw a hot springs by the side of the road with no one else around, we stopped. We stayed on the stable looking areas but this didn’t have a boardwalk so I was a little wary of placing my feet. Even so, it was C who saw them… worms wiggling through the boiling water! Crazy!

There are some in the first part of that video but it is at the end where a little red worm S-curves its way across the screen.

There were lots and lots of hot springs (an geysers). The main barrier to seeing them was how far we were willing to hike (not being altitude acclimated, the climbing made my heart go pittypat if we went to far). We did stop the car several times to explore, sometimes by ourselves and sometimes at the major marked spots.

We saw the aptly-named-but-not-what-I-was-expecting Porcelain Basin. This area of the part had geysers all over. And hot springs of every color (different minerals means different colors, that bright turquoise in the pic doesn’t really capture the startlingly colored water).

Ok, there was a lot so hiking on that one. I did see a geyser spew water and many of them release steam. Somehow, we started to get really fatigued and not only physically. We’d already felt like we were on a mission. Mission goal: Visit, view, and photograph Yellowstone!

Objectives:

Bison
Snow capped mountains
Close views of snow

Snow with water
Snow with trees

Other large fauna (geese and ducks do not count) (though a bear would clear all of the other objectives)
Waterfall
Mud pot
Steam vent
Geyser, with water spewing
Interesting color pools due to thermopliles
Interesting color pools due to mineral deposits
Lava rocks
Picture of my sweetie

Bonus objective:

Visible thermopiles
Herd of bison by a river
Snow capped mountain reflected in water

Um, did anyone notice where this went off the rails? Where it became a scavenger hunt instead of a deep appreciation for natural beauty? Because we played the game for a little while before C said that crack about another shatteringly beautiful alpine lake which caused me to crack up.

Once it became a game, it was clear the appreciation part of my brain had turned off.

The plan (oh, the plan) was to spend the night near Yellowstone and have a whole 24 hours to enjoy the park. There is a that loop to drive around and then a path to wend south to the Grand Tetons.

We did a quarter of the loop and left to get food and rest. Maybe if we hadn’t been so tired, we might have been so transported that we needed to see more, to get rest and food and go back and see more. Maybe it if wasn’t so close to home and the end of our trip.

But, it is a driving park. While there are lots and lots of places to stop and hike, most people drive through, stopping occasionally. I’ve actually done enough driving, thank you. C didn’t even realize until we approached home that we hadn’t followed the plan, he though he’d just driven fast.

If I had to do it all over again, I think the way to enjoy Yellowstone is to camp and hike. To only see one site a day, maybe two. Not five or more as we did. And not the thirty or more you can go see if you do drive the loop. Normally when I say mind-numbing, usually I mean tedious and boring. But now I have found other ways to numb my mind. I don’t know if that is a good thing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cross country, lists, photos | Comments Off on The Yellowstone scavenger hunt

It is a choice

April 30, 2012

We are driving through NYC but we made the conscious choice not to stop. Like the art yesterday, New York
City deserves more than a driveby visit.

Still, as C drive across the GW bridge, I was madly snapping photos of the skyline in the distance, hoping to get a good one. Sigh, here’s one of the better shots…

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cross country, photos | 2 Comments »

Missed picture

April 24, 2012

I have shared some pictures here but I’m still trying to figure out the balance between words and photos. I don’t want to bore you with vacation slides, droning on and on. And since C showed me how to balance my pics for better exposure, they should be getting better.

Some of the pictures I’m taking for later, to illustrate ideas I know I’ll want to express. Like the dandelion in the forest outside Flagstaff. There is some idea there about weeds and belonging. Eventually, I’ll sort out my thoughts on that but they are thoughts that were brewing before and will be interesting later; it isn’t part of this adventure other than it happened on the trip.

Sometimes the pictures I didn’t manage to capture are the most interesting. When I miss those pictures, it is more of a loss than the lovely, here-I-was-and-it-was-pretty shots. A thousand words aren’t enough to capture the goal ethos of these non-vacation photos.

One photo that I foolishly thought I’d get another chance at keeps haunting me.

We were headed into Barstow. Earlier, we’d driven though California’s breadbasket, seeing the poetry inspiring vineyards, acres of almond trees and the never ending fields of crops. It makes me more of a even more of a locavore to see all that food, even in April when the plants are just waking up.

Then we’d hit the desert after Bakersfield, all that open space. It was the tan, dry desert with not much alive, just an occasional yucca tree and not-quite-brown shrub in the distance. It was the sort of place you could look at and know you wouldn’t survive an afternoon in. I like the clean, rawness of it but it is clearly vicious. The admonishment to carry a gallon of water per person seems like too low of a bar, particularly as the air wavers from the heat, clocking in at more than 100F.

I thought when I saw the bright green, Irish green, it was an odd mirage. But the house near it was not shimmering. They were growing something leafy and low growing in a neatly plowed field. Whatever it was, it looked ripe. The rows were visible but the plants were nearly touching. It looked lush. It made me crave a crisp salad and ripe tomatoes.

California has a lot of water issues, there just isn’t enough of it. Throughout the central corridor, there are billboard decrying the new laws and the rise in food prices they will cause. The propaganda repeats about every mile so clearly it is an issue someone cares a lot about.

So how can the Barstowians be growing leafy greens in the desert? This isn’t the edge of the desert but the full-on scary desert.

I should have taken the picture of the ragged edge of the wild dry sand with scrub brush and the neat, green farm.

I want the image where the home of the rattlesnakes meet a blithe humanity adapting their surroundings to their comfort. I want other wonder what the rest of the story is: is this some wonder crop that grows without water, poised to feed a new world? Or are these humans truly unaware that actions have consequences? I could have used that image to show a lot of things. But I missed it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cross country, photos, writing | Comments Off on Missed picture

Journey vs. Destination

Posts Tagged ‘photos’

Have you met my friend Maxwell?

Manatee photos

The Yellowstone scavenger hunt

It is a choice

Missed picture

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