Finally completed my self balancing two inline wheeled vehicle project which really began about seven years ago and culminated in this vehicle using 730gram gyroscope rotor, dc 395 gimbal control motor and VNH5019 motor driver. It uses RC gear to control vehicle drive motor and steering and an Arduino Uno to control the gimbal balancing control using a single non-contact potentiometer to determine vehicle angle (gimbal angle).
Love the old-style inventions, they are one of the reasons I got into tech, computers, robots, etc.
How about making some bridging service between those high rising buildings, besides the danger, kids could find it fun, I certainly would have had.
This could be a nice prop for a steam punk theme retro-futuristic movie as well.
Not much going on here anymore, but maybe I’ll make a video about my real self-driving car as well. Have you seen the one about my simulated self-driving car?
Yeah, the reason I got interested in self balancing vehicles was because of the animated movie “Robots” with Robin Williams voice, RIP.
That would be interesting to run a cable between buildings but so many people below us. My wife recently dropped her phone from our 9th floor window onto the sidewalk entering our building. Fortunately no one was there to be hit. The phone survived with no damage - surprising!
Yeah, not much going on here anymore - sad. Guess there is in the forums and tutorials but I don’t frequent those. Miss the old days.
Will check out your self driving car - I like the idea of using NNs but I just don’t have the head for it though I played with it in a couple of projects. I guess I have the steampunk mentality.
I’ll have a look at the movie, do you share your projects somewhere else? I saw your balancing projects had a few comments on your blog, or do they come from students?
Interactions really motivates when doing such projects and makes them much more fun. But I saw your wife participated with you for a song, accompanied by your very rhythmic drum lol. Looked cool
No, I only have my self balancing project on my Wordpress blogsite. Never get much response to it though have a few thousand downloads of my pdf book on how to build one - mostly from India.
Yeah, my wife and I have done a couple singsong videos, mostly for friends from highschool days that I stay in touch with on FB. We can’t sing worth beans but it is fun.
I think the real problem is that I don’t do any 3D work so my stuff looks really primitive. But that’s ok, I do the projects for my own interest sake. A couple made it into hackaday.com and that was satisfying.
Personally, I think it’s great you do “primitive” stuff, it is more hands-on, and less about just planning everything out on a computer sitting, then just executing and putting things together. It’s more direct.
3D printed stuff can look more professional, but also less personal.
I just feel the maker movement has changed and has less momentum to it than before, more focused on being professional/show case for companies, than being amateurs exchanging and enjoying it. For example, big metal sculptures made out of scrap metal were very successful in Maker fairs in the past.
Eventually, I will get a 3d printer as well, when I have the room/time, but I will probably just use it for some key parts (such as tightly holding some elements, making joints etc.) not all. For example there is a cool tutorial on youtube about making an RC plane out of foamboard, no 3d printing at all (would be too heavy anyways).
You are right on about the loss of amateur makers - people want slick looking projects.
One of my hobbies is flying wings - I usually build them out of laminated EPP - indestructable. I have seen 3D printed wings and planes - yeah they usually are too heavy but when printing a plane like the P51 or Spitfire, they fly much more scale like.
