Now Launching: The BW Science Labs Store

Today, after a great deal of work, a storefront for BW Science Labs has finally been created. The BW Science Labs Store currently has one product, the Vivus the Robot kit.

When I was prototyping possible kits, the question I asked myself was this: What kit do I wish I had when I was starting electronics? With the Vivus the Robot kit, I believe I've found the perfect solution, a robot that's great for beginners yet still advanced enough to provide a good educational and fun experience.



The store is in an early stage no doubt, but I hope to add more products to it soon.

Liam Nesson + Astrophysics = ??

Today I noticed the release of a new mini-documentary on Hulu, narrated by none other than Liam Neeson. Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity is a great little movie that provides a good basic introduction to black holes so the non-astrophysicist can understand the core concepts. I was happy to see that the producers included some information on wormholes and white holes as well, two important ideas that are sometimes overlooked. Its always interesting to me to see something on Einstein and his theories. His perception of spacetime (yes, one word) is incredible to say the least.

Seeing this documentary was perfectly timed for me, as I've just gotten around to finally reading Death by Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is also a Nova host from time to time. If you find this interesting, check out Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, the very book that sparked my interest in physics. What I really like about astrophysics is how little is really understood, and the universe is just waiting to be discovered.

DIY Navigation Robot

Seeing that this is the 100th post on BW Science labs I thought that merited a really cool post. BW Science Labs now has a mascot named Vivus the GoBot.

Vivus the GoBot has been under development for a long time. I chose to use the picaxe axe023 microcontroller board because it was low cost and small. The geared motors I used were very frustrating to assemble as it was made of lots of tiny pieces with little instruction on assembly. However, they had a good gear ratio and were very low cost considering the alternatives (pricing $15 for one little motor should be a crime!). I would have liked to use different bumper switches, but the Omerons were the only ones I could buy and were cheap, they actually ended up working really well. I used a 6v power supply which was heavy, but also great because I ended up not needing to solder in a voltage regulator. I would have liked to add two more wheels, but refrained from doing so because of the cost ($4.95 for 2 wheels?!). I used two tongue depressors as a chassis as they ended up being nearly the perfect size. I tried to accomplish this project without soldering because I don't have good ventilation and my respirator broke. However, this paid off big time as I would easily reconfigure wires in 1/3 of the time it would have taken me if I had soldered the joints.

Anyone who has ever attempted to build a robot from scratch know the challenges it presents, often time resulting in failure if one tiny thing goes wrong like using a different transistor than you should or accidently giving your bot one volt too many (Both of these mistakes I have made during other attempts). This is by far my best robot, and its nice to know that its possible after failing so many times.

By far the hardest part was coding Vivus. The picaxe microcontroller runs on BASIC code, which was created in the late 60's. I spent at least 4 hours testing tons of code bit by bit to get it to finally work.

And of course, every cool robot needs its own cool movie.



Or watch Vivus the GoBot DIY Robot directly on YouTube.

Orion Programming: A new Division of BW Science Labs

BW Science Labs has had a lot of behind-the-scenes work done lately, an while the actual blog may have seemed desolate and un-updated, much work was being done. One of many of these projects is Orion Programming, a new division of BW Science Labs. Orion will be my portal for all of the software I write, since this blog is currently incapable of hosting files and embedding Flash projects.

The Orion Programming site was built primarily in preporation for my first Flash and ActionScript 3 game ever, which will hopefully be released sometime this week. I haven't built a web-based game since my early days as a young(er) programmer using MIT's Scratch, and while its artwork is ugly at best, I'm very happy with the 700-800 lines of code that have gone into this project.

Going slightly off topic, I am also working on a new robot whose aim is to be as low cost while still advanced as possible. Right now it doesn't look like much, but when it does I'll write up more about it.

It's good to be back in the normal flow of BWSL projects, as always let me know your thoughts and ideas via commenting on this post or pinging me via email.