Challenge Yourself

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Hey all, it’s been awhile since I updated the blog. It’s not that I haven’t been actively working on the robotics projects and 3D printing – quite the opposite! I’ve been mainly posting videos directly on video platforms YouTube, Vimeo, dailymotion, and BitChute while posting occasional pictures on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.

Here’s a quick pic of the latest work:

Ironically, BitChute is the smallest of the platforms but it’s actually been getting the most views in the shortest period of time after posting. Strangely, from what I can tell my videos seem to be some of the most current “tech-ish” of the Science & Tech category on their site.

Now, the other oddity I’ve noticed is I’ve had ZERO traffic on Vimeo. It says I’ve had hundreds of impressions with no click-through. I haven’t researched this too in-depth but I’m getting tempted to pull my videos off the platform for lack of performance. I was forced to pay a subscription fee since they called me a “business”. Yes, I’m promoting my work but if the platform doesn’t show a return for the subscription fee when YouTube has no fees, no storage cap, better analytics… I don’t see any benefit continuing with Vimeo’s services. I’m paid up for awhile so we’ll see if something changes until then.

So, I’ll close today’s post with ebmedded links to my YouTube, dailymotion, and BitChute videos. The last video was just over a half hour but there was a lot of stuff to cover with the progress I’ve made on the robotic hand!

YouTube:

BitChute:

dailymotion:

Stay tuned!

Tom Clancy’s The Division is a 2016 survival game following your character’s activation after a viral outbreak in New York City. A companion survival guide was released around the same time based on the events ensued by another character’s timeline. In it are a lot of real-world survival tips and snippets of case studies, historical events, and a whole host of other information that is a great primer if you’ve never really thought about real-world, situational survival. I highly recommend it for its entertainment (since it ties to the game) and practical (i.e. all the things you can do with dental floss) value.

Note: I purchased this game and book. No sponsored or donated literature, equipment, or software has been provided in this video.

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I bought a 3D printer last week and fired it up for the first time over the weekend! It’s time to retire the popsicle sticks in my robot arm and go with something a little more “custom engineered” (and by yours truly). The main driver for the 3D printer was to build stronger and more precision struts for the arm. Also, from the amazing communities on YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit I purchased an Arduino Mega, more stepper motors, and some higher power driver boards to test against my RPi. I also shot some video last week and will be editing that for a couple more posts this week. There is a LOT of very exciting stuff being worked on so stay tuned and stay safe!!

I did a short un-narrated tour of my insane base in Conan Exiles… this is irrationally enormous but it was a lot of fun to build. There was a great resource area so I built a Hoover Dam size wall to get to it. It didn’t start out so elaborate but when you play with friends and they step away for awhile these are the things I do in-game to pass the time! There’s also a tower on top of the one mesa that functionally doesn’t do anything – it’s just tall.

I hadn’t logged into the game in a LONG time and found all my attributes were reset. I’ll have to read the change log to see what new stuff they added!

In one of my first un-narrated videos, I did a test run with my MyoWare muscle sensor that I hooked to a Feather board, isolator, and my arm.  I was still a bit camera shy and the video didn’t really have any instructions, explanations, etc.

This video shows what the sensor is capable of, one of the stumbling blocks I ran into, and how to set it up.

Here are a few links for reference:

https://learn.adafruit.com/getting-started-with-myoware-muscle-sensor/about-emg

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-feather-32u4-basic-proto/using-with-arduino-ide

https://learn.adafruit.com/heybrows

The MyoWare muscle sensor uses electromyography (EMG) placed on the skin surface to measure the electrical activity produced my muscle cells. By measuring the potential or voltage difference between the two electrodes it sends the output signal to the screen as a value or a graph (electromyogram).

Note: I purchased these products except the MyoWare sensor (Christmas gift). No sponsored or donated equipment or software has been provided in this video.

My homemade robot arm “waves hi” (slowly) for the first time! The little gearbox I was putting together worked out pretty well, although the teeth are rounding off since they’re plastic. Time to upgrade!

#robotics #engineering #raspberrypi #challengeyourself

Check out the parts list I’m putting together here!

Thank you to all for the amazing support to my blog and YouTube channel! We hit 1,000 subscribers today and are still growing! Stay tuned as there’s some great content underway. Video will be expanding to Vimeo, DailyMotion, and several other platforms.

Be sure to subscribe on YouTube, share the video, and leave comments or questions for future content!

Here’s the link to the YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoWhGF4h-3fDZ9jKNy_rK8Q