Rob Englebright :: Blog

Snow falling which is really rather timely, as I've spent the last few days bending a sheet of playwood into a toboggan shape (hope it hasn't split)...

Also snowed under in email dept... lots of old piffle to wade through, am being harsh, and will delete on a whim. Real work of updating tech content specs is within sight.

 

Dom and I built the first version of the potato cannon... unfortunately it seems a trifle underpowered.

Having run out of CO2 we decided to use compressed air, though as I didn't have a 1/8"BSP fitting I couldn't attach the pressure guage to the buffer tank, so it was guess work as to how much pressure my weedy old airbrush compressor could manage to put out. The dump valve into the barrel wasn't up to much either, it is a 1/4" ball valve, and doesn't allow swift opening.

However I have some alternative parts. I have a couple of solenoid operated valves that are good for 16 bar... and with some cunning plumbing I could feed two inlets to the barrel...

So pic below is the gun as it stands, stay tuned for more updates.

Like almost every blogger I've been very bad at updating this particular blog. I feel I need  focus to concentrate the mind. Back in 2000 when we were building robots for robot wars, we were actively keeping a diary, and posted what amounted to blog entires almost daily. (see http://dangerousvegetables.tripod.com/kc1/archivesept2000.htm )

I have some big projects that'll probably keep tickling on for years... the dalek, the steam powered walker, the valave amp for my guitar, but what I really need is some back to basics projects that I can bodge up, and get focus again.

I've got a few projects that I'm going to try and get done, on a slightly smaller scale, as aweekend projects with Dom, like the fireball shooter we made:

I want to put an arduino board into an R2D2 chassis I have

build a CO2 potato cannon, with the giant cardboard carpet tube Ali brought home from work,

Create a sledge BEFORE it starts snowing

and  build a windmill powered MECH, or dragon  scarecrow for the allotment

 

On a more HaCk level, I'm part way through the Stamford Java tutorials, so hope to finish them over the Christmas holidays.

 

Just back from a Governors meeting. The school uses Remote desktop, and has fitted out an old classroom with small footprint, thin client pc's. It looks good, but I want to test it and see how well it works.. I think it's more a virtualisation tool, not true thin client.

 

Ok, after weeks of playing with the BBC iPlayer, I seem to have sorted the problem. Unfortunately the steps to get there are going to make it tricky for anyone who isn't tech savvy.
The problems are due to the DRM, Digital Rights Management.
The BBC obviously don't want to just give away their programmes, and by adding DRM they think they are adding some form of control, which to be honest they aren't. In fact by making it so hard to get to see the programmes legally, they are driving traffic to the very simple illegal routes.

To get the programme running you first off have to be using a Windows platform, onlt IE, and Media player. Media player needs to be configured to share DRM data, and firewalls and VPN's turned off, or unblocked. Once all this is done you may be lucky and able to download stuff, but what I found was that the existing DRM file in the "All Users " profile was stopping this. SO it needs to be backed up and removed, only it's a hidden system file, so needs to be made visible first.... The thought of some low end user trying to do this without breaching security or accidentally deleting the wrong file is quite scarey.
To help the process there are arcane error messages that don't actually tell you what you need to do, to fix the problem, and an unthreaded unindexed message board where it's unclear if any solutions have been found.
That said once done the application runs well, and the programme quality is fair, though the selection of shows is poor, I looked through and was a bit suprised at the stuff that was available. One gem I found though is the BBC Click programme, which I'd never heard of, it's not too bad....CLICK

20 July - Dom's final assembly today, his last day at Primary School.
this makes me feel terribly terribly old.

Steam Punk
Ok, I got bored and started to look at some of the tat I have lying around the cellar.
The project is to build a walking robot, using an old Wilesco steam engine.
There are a few people out there doing this sort of thing, notably the crab-fu works.http://www.crabfu.com/
First job is to build a reduction gearbox to give the weedy old steamer a bit of torque.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1ZrER4_PJQ

I've put together a set uf reduction gears and have a housing that surrounds the flywheel, made form an old paint can.
Once I've bolted it together I'll dump some pics up.

Soundtrack, Carry Go Bring Come, Justin Hinds and the Dominoes

After watching Dr Who this Saturday, the kids have decided it's time to start work on the Dalek in the basement again.
We started building it in 2002, way before Dr Who returned to our screens, as a way of getting them involved in building stuff. We'd been doing Robot Wars a lot, but the build for that tended to involve lots of welders and angle grinding. Whilst I tried some elementary lessons in welding with Adam, it wasn't a great success, so the wooden Dalek seemed a good compromise.
So way back we'd built the frame for the skirt, and started on the waist section. On Sunday evening we put the "arm" holders wogether, a job I'd been putting off, as it involves a bit of fiddling around to get the pressure right to stop everything being floppy...
Anyway, pic below shows build so far, we have a head, and a drive mechanism too.. need to build a neck now.

So I've had this little featherweight hammer/axe robot for years doing nothing.. and all of a sudden everyone and their cat have an axe robot.
First the axe was electric, but it soon stripped the gears, so it went pneumatic.. but I really wanted a robot that could just plug in charge and go.. so I went back to electric.. stripped gears again, and so back to pneumatics.
works fine, 10.4kg in it's undies.. I have some titanium sheet for the skirt/armour.

40x135 ram running at 10 bar, the axe mechanism uses an acceleration linkage to speed up the strike in the last third of it's downward travel...
bunch of fun

soundtrack: California Dreaming

Ok so I travelled to Southampton Univeristy this morning, got there nice and early, and had given them the mac address of my laptop a couple of days before, so when I got there I could log straight on to their super fast net connection.. which I did.
Cup of coffee and a kitkat, and I'm happy as a pig in Sh&t, the chairs are comfy as anything, I've got an interesting day lined up listening to CETIS SIG folk talk about e-assessment.
Everything is rosey, until my laptop conks, it won't spark up into windows.. it did this before Christmas, and I swapped to this machine (same model)... I guess it's a bit too fragile for my burly workstyle.
Anyroad.. no matter I thought I have a linux live cd in my bag.. buuuut that didn't recognise the wireless card.
So I get home, and try and spark some life into my spare laptop so I can get some work done.. but it won't work on WPA, so I reconfigure the router to recognise the mac addresses.. buuut this makes the mac the kids`are using fall off the network.. so I twiddle it about, and eventually everything is up on the wireless.
inspired I think I'll have a bash at configuring the ubuntu laptop to connect to my phone, so I don't have to bother about getting the work laptop fixed so quick..
and I try starting the bluetooth services, and they can't be found.. and I try finding the IR config... and before you know it it's late.
Time vampires.
why do I feel the need to make all this tat work.

Soundtrack: Manic street preachers... if you tolerate this..