Posted by: @robo-pi

I'm shopping for potato soup online as we speak

I don't know what the weather is like in your neck of the woods, but in England now is the time to plant the first early potato crop for digging up in June.   With all your tractors you could plough up enough for a few rows of potato plants.   My very favourite food is a baked potato, and baked at full pelt with the hottest oven to get a real crispy skin.  I hope the baked ones give similar protection to the soup 🤔 

Posted by: @byron

With all your tractors you could plough up enough for a few rows of potato plants

At one point in time I had a self-sufficient homestead here.  White Rock chickens for eggs, and three bee hives for honey.  Along with a huge garden.  That was many years ago.  Back in the 70's actually.   I ended up moving back to the city for a while to work in R&D.   When I moved back to my rural paradise I never go back into the gardening.  In part because the fences were in grave disarray.  In fact, I actually try to garden for a while, but without a protective fence that proved to be futile here.   Too many hungry wild animals.   The same thing for the chicken coop.  In fact, it was so bad I tore it down and burnt it  up.  So it is no more.

I sure wish I had both the chickens and the garden now!

Actually I am starting up a garden this year.  I'm building small cages 8 feet long by about 4' wide to put over the beds instead of a fence around the whole garden.  Mainly because I can't afford to buy fencing materials.  I spend all my money on robot projects instead. 🤣 

But yeah, I'm going to try to do some gardening this year and see how it goes.  

Posted by: @robo-pi

But yeah, I'm going to try to do some gardening this year and see how it goes.

Those cages you mention should do the trick, especially if you could spare a few logs to have some raised beds.  I dont know about you but I dont like to bend down too far. 🤨 .  Woodworking, dronebots, house renovation and gardening just not enough time for it all.  The wife does most of the gardening to be fair, but I am tasked with getting out my tractor to create a small area for growing comfrey bocking 14 to use as a green fertiliser for the crops and I really should have done that before now.   That, with rotted  leaf mould, should be all the fertiliser you need so I hope you collect a bunch of leaves last Autumn.   The farmer opposite lets out a few fields where horses are grazed and I get a bountiful supply their manure  too, but thats not really so necessary.   Thats all my gardening tips 😎 ,  so a better tip for this forum would be to suggest you get weaving with a scarecrow bot ASAP.

Posted by: @byron

Thats all my gardening tips 😎 ,  so a better tip for this forum would be to suggest you get weaving with a scarecrow bot ASAP.

I used to have a scarecrow bot.   It sat in the corner of the garden on chair holding a shotgun,  It didn't do much.  Just moved a little bit on occasion.  It seemed to work fairly well actually.   The other trick to it is to put on an old ragged T-shirt when working in the garden.  When the T-shit is wet with sweat take it off and lay it on the lap of the scarecrow.   That way the deer will smell the human scent too. 😊 

Posted by: @robo-pi

I used to have a scarecrow bot.   It sat in the corner of the garden on chair holding a shotgun,  It didn't do much.

Ha, that reminds me of a chap in the local village who put a dummy automaton man with a fishing rod by his pond to frighten the birds, especially any heron, who might be tempted to make a meal of his fish.  It did not move much, just raised its fishing rod and arms and moved its head from time to time.  It worked for all of a few day before the birds ignored it entirely.   You need something altogether more lively like making it do a hokey cokey when movement is detected.   I don't know about scaring the wild life, but the thoughts of a sweaty old fellow without a tea shirt will keep any kids from scrumping  your spuds 😲

Posted by: @casey

Seems you could have just  3D  printed the whole body? 

It's too big for my printer to print the whole thing. As it is I'm having to print the risers in sections of 4 to raise it up a mere 3 inches. And it takes 19 hours per piece. I'm printing a lot, but not nearly the whole thing

I got the right arm put together

It doesn't look horrible.

(Yes, I'm gonna paint it)

I kinda wanted to somehow reuse the original fingers. Nothing is set in stone tho. I might still be able to redo it if I figure out how. I do have a kind of an idea

And I got some rudimentary movement out of the head !

Yay

I don't know if I can get that light on his head to flash. It's just a power/activity light. Maybe I could add another one

It is a cool looking robot but of course most of us don't have one to hack 🙁
Maybe the only thing I would do is have the sonar in the chest or forehead as I find the funny looking eyes less than appealing for aesthetic reasons. I think a household robot should look friendly or even cute not like something from the Borg intent on assimilating you.
I assume you have looked at the other omni robot hacks online?
For me a robot is only a robot to the extent it is autonomous.
Your project has almost inspired me to blow the dust off my early efforts when this forum first started and build a similar design out of wood or plastic 🙂

@casey

Well, the eyes are sort of stock. The only think I did was to swap out the orange lenses for the camera and sonar

I'm not sure what I'm doing with the chest yet, as when I remove the tape deck and other stuff, there's gonna be a big hole in his chest, and I plan to put the Lidar on top of his head, kinda like a hat

Maybe I could print something to put under his head to act as a chin and put some LEDs in it to make a kind of mouth thingy

I've got one of these matrix shields in stock... never played with it tho

And hey, I finally finished printing the last quarter of his first level of riser... it fits perfectly !

I just started on the second level. I figure a total of 4 levels should bring him up about a foot taller

Posted by: @casey

almost inspired me to blow the dust off my early efforts

Do it. If you're in the same boat as the rest of us, you've probably got nothing better to do. And hacking is sure a lot more fun than binge watching some stupid tv show (unless it's Dr Who, that would be okay, unless it's the latest Doctor, she's too preachy)

The hard part of robotics is in the programming as the hardware is simply a matter of how much you can afford to spend. Programming is my main interest and I confess all I have been doing in my spare time since the above post.

With the eyes I guess we all have our own idea of what is aesthetically pleasing. Vision has been an interest of mine for a long time and I would want to see how far I could go with it before implementing other sensors. The exceptions are touch, force feedback and pressure sensors which are so essential in handling objects. You only have to touch part of an object with your fingers to recognize what it is and what is its orientation. With the simple hardware of the omnibot I think ROS is very much an over kill except maybe as a learning tool for anyone wanting to make a career in robotics in the commercial arena.

So far you little project looks good and I will follow with interest.  There doesn't seem to be much progress in robot building elsewhere on the forum.

@casey

Posted by: @casey

There doesn't seem to be much progress in robot building elsewhere on the forum.

Don't forget, @duce-robot has got a major project in progress 

Posted by: @casey

The hard part of robotics is in the programming as the hardware is simply a matter of how much you can afford to spend.

I both agree and disagree with that. The programming is proving to be more than I can handle, but, as far as spending, for all I've put into this thing, I could have bought one that already works and is already programmed. If it was just a question of money, I'd have saved up and bought one

Building it seemed easier, (at the time that I came up with the idea), it seemed a simple thing to just swap out the original radio control for a Jetson and use some kind of cell phone app to control it, but, since I'm now adding more moving parts than it originally had, it now has enough moving parts that I'm finding a problem controlling all the motors from a single SBC

I now need (that I can think of) at least 4 motor controllers with fwd/rev for motors that I've tested with PWM, and they work, but, it's not what they're made for. Variable voltage would be better, but I'll settle for a set voltage

And at least (that I can think of) 4 servo controllers

And 1 more for the new left arm that I haven't even figured out what kind of motor I'm going to put in it. I ordered a couple of NEMA17's (I needed spares for my 3D printers anyway cuz I burned out the last one I had in stock), one of which is potentially going to be for the arm, maybe. But the Nema's are steppers, so if I use that, I'll also need at least one stepper controller

So, with all that going on, ROS seemed (to me anyway) the logical choice to coordinate all the different "moving parts"

I've tried a few HATs that have a combination of stepper, motor, and servo, but, none of them have enough ports for all the motors, so I have to somehow incorporate multiple SBC's and motor controllers, and since I've been playing in ROS so much lately, it was the first thing that came to mind

Might not be the easiest or best choice, but it was the first thing that popped into my head

I was kinda hoping when I first started with ROS that it would figure itself out, but...

So yea, programming is problematic for me 

Oh, and hey look. I finished printing another level... He's now 3 more inches taller

Yea. It warped a tad bit, but I'm gonna have to bondo over the seams anyway, so that tiny bit won't really show. And at almost a full 24 hours per 1/4 level piece (4 days for one full section), I wasn't about to start again. I did find that changing the painter's tape on the print bed helps stick it better, so I'm gonna be doing that from now on, even if I don't rip the tape when I remove it from the bed

And also yea. I ran outta red, but, I'm gonna paint it anyway, so no biggie

I'm also probably gonna need an access panel of some sort. So once I finish printing it all, I'm gonna go and hack a chunk of it out

Now that I think about it, it might just be easier if I get some sheet metal and just make something. It'd save me another week and a half of printing

Or not... It's a process

Not sure what to make of the duce robot but apparently "the launch date is set at year 2525 lol give or take a few days." 🙂

"The programming is proving to be more than I can handle ..."

Not sure that ROS is going to help then? There are people here that can help with the programming given the hardware details and requirements. Back in my early days there was no Arduino development board instead I had to program an 8085 in machine code 🙂

It is all for fun.  What do you want your omnibot to actually do apart from turning its head around which I assume you do by remote control?

Is there any reason you are making the base taller?

Posted by: @casey

Not sure that ROS is going to help then?

Well, I found this really cool thing. It still needs ROS, as well as a desktop or laptop to be the master tho. But with the new additions to the bot, I'm not really sure that all the controls would actually fit on a phone screen

Posted by: @casey

There are people here that can help with the programming given the hardware details and requirements.

And that's another thing. I've got plenty of circuit boards, but, I'm not quite sure which ones to install to make all the bits actually function. I'd love some help, but, since I'm designing it as I'm (re)building it, I'm not quite sure what help to ask for

Posted by: @casey

What do you want your omnibot to actually do apart from turning its head around which I assume you do by remote control?

I was kinda hoping that it would somehow be of some use to my mom, but, she wouldn't use any kind of remote. She's a bit of a luddite. She won't even talk to Alexa, she preferrs to just unscrew the light bilb

Also, I'm not sure you'd actually call how I turned his head "remote control", as all I did was run the "testmotor.py" program after I hooked it up just to see if the motor would work with that particular motor controller. It obviously did, but, that's a far cry from what I'd call remote control

The remote control I envision would ideally be a web page with all the parts of the bot on it, with the wallpaper being whatever the camera is looking at. I found a few that I downloaded, but, I could never get them to work

The way the ones that I found, that were the closest to what I want, had most of the controls that I need on the screen, along with the camera, and the buttons sent commands thru the web page that lives in the bot via CGI. You just log onto the bot's webserver, and start pressing buttons

Would have worked great if I knew what I was doing. I'm a hardware guy. Aside from a couple of eggdrop bots back in the 90's the last program I wrote was on a Radio Shack Color Computer

I'm trying to take a ROS course thru Udemy, but, it's not being explained in such a way that my meager intellect can fathom

Posted by: @casey

Is there any reason you are making the base taller?

So he has a better reach to things that are above floor level. I even ordered a piece of 3D printer threaded rod so I could add a 3rd arm that goes up and down, so he could actually pick something up off the floor, and set it on the table. But I just looked at my Amazon account, and it turns out that was a month ago. With this CV thing going on, Amazon is prioritizing their shipping. Who knows when I'll get it

My guess is that the only thing I'd really need ROS for is for when I call him to "come here" or "follow me" would be nice. I started working on the voice today (actually, just sitting there working on the right arm (which I'm going to redo cuz it looks nothing like the left one) while software downloaded) but, I kept getting errors that wouldn't google. I just found a new "Pocket-Sphynx" image that was unpacking that I was gonna try when I saw @robo-pi 's post about that very same program

Anyway, if you've got some ideas, I'm open to suggestions. 

Oh, and here's the right arm that I'm gonna redo the wrist on. I took a shortcut that really didn't need to be taken. They both should look alike, and will, once I redo it

@Spyder

Looking good so far. I will have to live vicariously through your progress until I am motivated again to work on my own version. I will have to read through the post again to try and get an over view of the electronic hardware you are using. Do you have plans of using say a RPi for more computing power?

Posted by: @casey

Do you have plans of using say a RPi for more computing power?

I've got the Jetson in there, that's got plenty of horsepower, and I was thinking that I'd need at least one Pi, maybe 2 more, so I'd have enough GPIO's in case I was gonna use the HAT's, cuz the HAT's take up all 40 pins

I had originally assigned 3 3B's, the Jetson, and a 4B to this project, along with an assortment of motor controllers

I'd kinda like to keep the Jetson if possible... cuz I kinda like the antennas sticking out of his ears (it's got the same 40 pin GPIO as the Pi's)