Merry Christmas from BW Science Labs

Merry Christmas everyone. It sounds like a lot of people have gotten the Vivus the Robot kit for Christmas and are enjoying it.

I'm working on redoing the BW Science Labs website, and will be moving from Blogger to the Wordpress platform to integrate the store and blog. Unfortunately this also involves the less fun search for a good web host, artist, and so on. However, once the site is done it'll be really cool.

Thinking in Multiple Dimensions

I've survived the first day of final exams, 2 down and 4 more to go!

Here's an interesting project called The Lumen, a 3D display that adds depth to 2D images. The neatest part is how they get each little pixel up and down; they use a wires made of "shape memory allow" that expand when heated and shrink when cooled.


[or watch this video here]


Good look to everyone taking final exams!

I have a dream...

As a young, somewhat lost, soon-to-be-engineer I loved watching Bre Petis's weekend project video series on MAKE, where a DIY project would be made into a simple video tutorial so even the most lost engineers could follow. As you might imagine, the day Bre's videos stopped was a sad one.

Bre Petis later had his own show on the history channel called History Hackers, and he is now one of the founders of a company called MakerBot. What does MakerBot do? They make my dream machine.


[or watch this video here]

One day I'd like to get one of these awesome little tabletop factories. I could print out parts for robots, housings for kits, little action figures of me (wait, what?), and just about anything else I can imagine, which is a lot. Unfortunately (or fortunately compared to other rapid prototyping machines) the MakerBot's price range is between $750 and $950 which if I run my numbers in 3 seconds correctly means that it may not pay for its self for a long while. While the BW Science Labs Store is finally pulling its weight (and quite a bit more if I do say so myself) I simply can't invest $1000 in a RPM, least for now.

Ah, the bitter smell of exams

This weekend I began development of the next BW Science Labs kit, a robot that would have far greater functionality and awareness than Vivus. I can't say I've ever had a single flawless prototyping experience. I always seems to destroy one invaluable component or another. This was no exception.

I wound up over applying 1/2 too many volts to the microcontroller, causing it to fry almost instantly. Of course, there was no way for me to know this at the time, I'd used a 6v power supply of other chips that are nearly identical with no issue. So when I couldn't get the chip to interface with my PC to run a test program, I assumed the chip may have been a dud and hooked up my back-up, and wound up frying that one too. I have replacements coming, and should be in by the end of the week. Sadly however, I may have little time to work on BW Science Labs for a few weeks. Rest assured there will still be some posts, but I have exam-prep this week, exams next week (counting up to 1/2 my grade depending on the class), and then break.

Have a good week, now go fry a robot brain.

How to get funding for projects

Here's the situation: You have the most massive idea ever. You just drank 3 red bulls and you're convinced that your laser sunglasses will sell like one of Apple's computers that come out every other day. The problem: you have $3 in your Paypal account after buying some nun chucks and X-Ray vision goggles. So, how do you get funding for prototyping?

1) Get an investor!

Easier said than done, the investor's security blanket is a fat packet of Excel spreadsheets, so you will be expected to have every cost calculated and scrutinized.


What do you mean you're not funding my Star Trek PEZ collection?! They're crucial to marketing. Duh.

Or if you're a student, you could always make a family member an "investor".

Hey dad, I have a really cool EDUCATIONAL idea that is crucial to my future success...

2) Ebay.

It may sound dumb, but ebay is my favorite way to pay for projects. I get to trade that really ugly messenger bag I have for a prototype. I'm serious, I'm actually selling a really ugly messenger bag on ebay, and someone is bidding on it!

I'm not a fan of long get-rich-quick ideas that litter the web like old socks, so I'll stop here. Get an investor, sell some stuff on ebay, and that's all you should need to build your laser sunglasses.

Coming soon: T-Shirts to be Envied

Writing after a break is always tough, I take the "slowly get back into the swing" method.

For the last few weeks I've been exchanging emails with an out of country graphic design firm. I had hired them to make the new BW Science Labs logo. It's been a frustrating last few weeks.

That's what I get for outsourcing, I guess. In the end I gave up trying to get the designer to do what I had asked, after about 5 or so attempts. I'm still happy with the final product, though I was shooting for something more like MIT's logo.

Once I get the high-res image sent to me I'll begin ordering T-Shirts, its about time we are able to wear our pride.

Happy Thanksgiving from BW Science Labs

Ah, Thanksgiving, the time when families are thankful for one another and turkeys are wishing they had opposable thumbs to escape their cages. For those of you outside of the US, Thanksgiving is when Americans celebrate obesity each other and what we are thankful for.

Come to think of it I should have made a roboturkey or something to celebrate, maybe next year.

Theoretical Thursday: Software- The end, or the beginning?

A couple years ago I met a college student who was creating an autonomous Unmanned Ariel Vehicle. The little plane would fly over a field and scan the ground using color sensors. Black lines drawn in the field told the plane not to fly past them, grey lines were landing strips, and so on. He told me not to waste my time with software, and that hardware was the future of innovation. He explained that soon our computers would have "hardware updates" instead of software updates where the computer would reconfigure a computer's transistors to better fit the needs of the computer. Soon, he claimed, this new hardware would be everywhere. That was three years ago.

I agree that there is a future for hardware, however we still have a long way to go coding-wise with what we've currently got. For instance, the UAV I mentioned above has some things that code needs to fix. When the plane is flying over a green field, wouldn't the sunlight reflect off of the grass and get picked up by the color sensor as a different color? I don't know of any color sensors that can correct this, though it is possible to fix through coding.

Another example, Artificial Intelligence. Let's face it, our AI coding needs work, making robots and software "smart" is one of the hardest things to do, because the coder has to teach the program to learn. There is far too much logic to code to be done in one fellow swoop (in fact, one such software company did try to code every piece of logic a child has, like water is wet, fire is hot, and so on. Many of their coders quit, one claimed that they were "working day and night to create a shadow of what we originally promised".). I won't be satisfied with our AI until we've got a working HAL 9000, complete with the drive to take us over.


AI is something I really want to work on, as there's still a lot of progress to make. I'm sure I'll be happy I chose to go into AI programming until the day I ask my computer:
Me: "Open the bay doors!"
Computer: "I'm afraid I can't do that, Brennon."

Monday Status: Sparkfun vs. SPARC and New BW Science Labs Development

Yesterday I was rushed to say the least, so I didn't manage to get out a Sunday Status, however today I do have a Monday Status.

Global

I order my electronics components from all over, but one place in particular that I could not be without is Sparkfun. Also, having met some of the Sparkfun employees at the Maker Fair '09 its nice ordering from a small, friendly company with a face. Unfortunately, starting early this week, Sparkfun is being sued by SPARC International, a large company owned by Sun Microsystems that sells servers. Apparently, SPARC's legal department decided that Sparkfun sounded too much like SPARC, so legal warfare has begun. If Sun (SPARC) spent more of its time and money developing new technologies and less of it bullying smaller businesses, they would probably not be dying such a slow and painful death.

Micro

As I said its been a busy week. I've had a little time to look into Unity, but not much. So far so good.

Sunday Status: Flash 10.1's Mobile Debut and Some BWSL News

Global

At MAX 2009 Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch shows Flash 10.1 on a bunch of mobile devices.



Micro

I've spent the weekend working on the next BW Science Labs Store kits, including prototyping a mini UV LED kit and designing a line following robot.

I've also been able to work a bit more on my AS3 game, though not much. Apparently, the phrase, "4 day weekend" loosely translates into teacher as "4 times more homework".

SFXR- Free sound effects for Flash games!

Here's the thing, I love programming. I love the whole process of writing code and building a functional program by speaking a language the computer will understand. However, I really do not like painstakingly drawing art one little image at a time. On top of that, I have no idea how to generate sound effects for any of my programs. While I still have to brave out the whole art thing, at least I've solved the sound effects issue. A software engineer named Thomas Pettersson created a program called SFXR, which generates sound effects really easily.

The program lets you fiddle around with the dials to create the sound you want, or better yet you can keep hitting the "random" button until you hear something you like.



As you can see, I resort to clicking the "explosion" button a million times until I'm satisfied. While it would be nice to know what "Phaser offset" (Star Trek reference of some sort?!) means, I'm completely content with my "random" button.

Click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click

Sunday Status: MIT's New Toy and BW Science Labs Goes Global

Global

Those of you who know me, know how much I love MIT. Hey, who doesn't? The first Rapid Prototyping machines came from them, along with the first robots to learn like a human child, and having an on-campus nuclear reactor is pretty darn cool too. MIT unveiled their newest toy this week, a robot that can autonomously navigate through and map 3D terrain using lasers. Now this is the kind of work I want to be doing when I'm in college.


[or watch this video on MIT Tech TV]

Micro

This has been a fantastic week for BW Science Labs. The BW Science Labs Store visitor increase is up 1,884% this month, and BW Science Labs is up 99%. I've spent the weekend managing the flood of orders for the Vivus the Robot kit, and while I don't particularly enjoy being on the "service" end of "customer service" things are going pretty well.

This week, BW Science Labs was featured on Boing Boing Media and MAKE Magazine's blog.

I managed to make an LED explode (it was actually pretty cool) while prototyping the BWSL Store's next kit. I'll be sure to write more on it when I have something working.

Woot! Woot! I Won the Digital Open Competition!

This is usually the time where I'd post a Theoretical Thursday on my thoughts and ideas, however today something awesome happened that merits overwriting theories.

I won Sun Microsystems's and IFTF's international youth competition, the Digital Open. I won a laptop, a video camera, and a bunch of other cool things. The Boing Boing Media team came to my house and interviewed me about the win, and made a pretty cool video.


[or watch this video on YouTube]

Here's what they quoted me on in their post on my win:

"The BW Science Labs Store is an idea I've had for a while now, but it has taken a lot of work to get it up and running. There is currently 1 kit available, the Vivus the Robot kit. I"ve seen a lot of those really low-quality $20 robots where you clap your hands and they twitch, and I've seen $400 robots with a great deal of functionality. I wanted to make something in between, and that's exactly what Vivus is. During prototyping I wanted to make a "real robot", one that was autonomous and could truly act on its own, while trying to keep the cost down as well. "

A very special thanks to the folks at Sun Microsystems, Institute for the Future, and Digital Open for making this possible.

In Honor of Nerd Day: Some Crazy Math Problems.

Today was Nerd day at my school. For many, this day promotes new possibilities in wild apparel, and for others it presents no change. However, to honor the spirit of Nerd day, I thought I'd post some problems from this year's National Mathematics competition. I originally had a packet of problems from my school's math club (a.k.a. the Neighborhood), but of course I lost that packet after about a day. For those of you who do these things for fun, happy nerding. The rest of us can at least imagine what it would be like to solve these. Hey, imagination is more important than knowledge... right?





If you are cackling at your monitor right now, let us know, I'm curious to see how a mathematical mind would solve these.


Nerd warfare: more casualties than you might imagine.



The credit for these problems and image goes to UNL: where nerds plot our destruction.

Teaching yourself ActionScript: Books I recommend

I've been using Flash and ActionScript (never forgetting JAVA, PYTHON, and all my other favorite languages of course) since late this summer, and I've been surprised as to how quickly I've learned it. It's a great feeling, knowing that you can achieve something without having to have someone hold your hand all the way through. Fortunately, ActionScript is a lot like JAVA, so having some experience there made AS3 a lot less difficult to learn(I actually find AS3 more convenient than JAVA). There are three books that gave me the Flash know-how:

1) ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University by Gary Rosenzweig:

Good reference book, though this would not be the book I recommend for a completely new programmer. Most of the book is just a collection of tutorials, making it a bit harder for the new guy to grasp all of the core concepts 1st. However, there is some great depth to this book and it touches on some fantastically deep topics like 3D racing, mapping, and so on.



2) Game design with Flash by Rex van der Spuy:

This is the 2nd Flash book I read, and I really wish it was the first. It is perfect for beginners, and the first 5 chapters laid out the basics of ActionScript really nicely. The rest of the book was still a good read, and touched on topics that other books missed like using trigonometry to find the angle of an object and use it to fire bullets, missiles, or glowing smiley faces.



3) Creating a Web Site with Flash CS4 by David Morris:

A good primer with Flash, this book is a fun, short, and easy read that a ferret could understand*. However, this book lacks the code power needed to run a truly good Flash site. For instance, Morris shows the reader how to make a form by dragging text boxes out from the side bar** and place them on the design. However, he ends the section abruptly saying, "To function properly and transfer data as intended, a form requires advanced ActionScript programming and connection to a database- complexity that is beyond the scope of this book." (122) Which is a really fancy way of saying, "I have no idea how to do this, but I can teach you how to draw a text box!"

Regardless, this book is sufficient for the beginning Flash designer, and I still got a lot out of it.






Footnotes:


*: Why hire people to build Flash sites anyway? Timone and Pumba will do it for half the cost.
**: Hey, don't laugh. Clicking and dragging is an art.

Robotic Cars: Taking over the world (right after they can move 20 ft without crashing)

Today, while driving home from school, I saw a car with some sort of spinning sensor on the top. I recognized the design from a NOVA episode I saw in 2007 about the yearly robot car races. From what I remember, the rotating block on top most likely uses sonar to rapidly send out sonar pings as the module rotates. The sonar waves bounce off of objects and return to the sensor. The elapsed time since the ping was sent out is calculated and determines the distance of the object. And of course, there is an on-board computer that gets the car from point A to point B.

The NOVA episode was quite entertaining as most cars had extreme difficulty moving around stacks of hay, much less driving on the open road. Kudos to the engineers who finally got one of these things to work.

I assume this isn't just a Halloween prank because it appeared that no one was touching a steering wheel (cruise control?). The sensor on top is pretty high-end. There were two extremely nerdy looking guys* in the front seats and only Target advertises for Halloween this early in the month.

And of course I was able to snap a couple pics of it before we passed them.**


It's only a matter of time before it becomes self-aware... and enslaves us all.


This is one of the big pluses to living in the Bay Area. Only in San Francisco will you see a robot driving people home.




Footnotes:



*: I mean this in the kindest of regards, meaning they're Not Even Remotely Dorky.
*: The robots may take our freedom, but they'll never take our highway!

The Marshmallow Test

Today I stumbled upon this fantastic video of a psychology experiment called The Marshmallow Test, where kids had to decide if they would eat a marshmallow immediately or wait for a few minutes. In return for waiting, the kids would get a second marshmallow along with the first.

This experiment has several applications to the real world like the stock market and religion, but rather than go into it now let's just enjoy the video.



[or watch the Marshmallow Test on Youtube]

I found it interesting how kids would deviously pick off small pieces of the marshmallow after being told not to, and then lying about it to the woman afterwards. A book was published a little while ago (can't remember the title now unfortunately) where the author asked kids under age 10 questions like "what is marriage?" and "What is love?". The author's rational was that kids under age 10 could not lie. Apparently the author never thought to temp the all-knowing toddlers with a marshmallow.

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.

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.

Farewell for now...

I know, I know, the one thing people wanted more of from BW Science Labs was more articles, but well hey, we all need vacation some time.
In a few hours I will be on a bus to camp, and no, NOT science camp as everyone assumes (well, for a good reason I suppose). I am in fact going to a tech-free 1 month camp.

However, when I return some awesome projects will be unveiled.

Have a good summer and try to do at least 1 awesome thing!

Until we meet again,

Your fellow creator Brennon