The Claw 

The claw is working and it is in pretty good shape. The claw can open and closes and pick up toys. It uses a small gear motor attached to the top. The gear motor is kind of slow and takes about 20+ seconds to fully close. I am thinking about replacing this motor with one of the drills to speed it up.

I have attached limit switches to the claw so I can tell when it is fully opened and closed. This prevents the claw from crushing the stuff animals.

Bill of materials

• 2 Cherry limit switches,
• Terminal strip
• Small geared motor
• Motor shaft coupler
• Wood

The Joystick 

The joystick is the simplest part of this system. It has 4 limit switches and a off the shelf  joystick that I picked up from John Jukes. All the wires lead back to a RS45 connector to make setup easier. I wanted to make this part strong in case the kids drop it and kick it around. The only thing left to do here is glue the box together.

Bill of materials

• Wood
• Arcade button
• 5 Cherry limit switches,
• 1 RS45 connector

The Gantry/Cube

The cube is pretty much a large wooden box made out of 2x3x8. I added trusses to the corners to make it more stable. I added the shelf to the top of the cube to allow the gantry system to ride on top of.

I would like to add a marquee banner to the top of the cube to make it look better. I am also planning on adding some fabric to the bottom so all the toys will gather in the center, making it easier for the kids to pick up a prize.

There is a lot I could do her to make it look better but I am running out of time and I may not get a chance before Breaker/Maker Faire.

Bill of materials

• 16 2x3x8 wood beams.
• 50+ 3″ screws
• 4 appliance moving wheels
• 12 pulleys
• 45 feet of rope.

The XY table

The XY table moves the claw around the cube. I decided to use the CoreXY (Cartesian Motion Platform) to do the actual movement. It works but there are many problems with it that I have not resolved yet.

The biggest problems I am currently having is that the cables that I am using are slipping in the motor’s pulleys. I tried using some sandpaper to rough up the pulleys to add more grip but they keep slipping.

I thought about adding a idler pulley but I wanted to keep everything as simple as possible and I decided to add expansion springs to the cables to keep the tension on the motor pulleys. Its still slipping.

The problem also could be with the cables I am using. If the cables are too slick they will slide around in the pulleys, if the cable has too much give they will stretch under constant use. I had some parachute cord (paracord) around my house and decided to use it and this might be adding to my slipping.

Another idea is to wrap the cable around the pulley twice (540 degrees). This would ensure that there is tension on the pulley but the cable might get knotted up.

I have not resolved this problem yet and I am looking for a solution.

The Cart

I have not started this yet.

The cart will ride along the center column being pulled across by the cables. The card will have its own pulley on it that will be used to raise and lower the claw. Here is a crude drawing of what I was thinking about doing.

There will be one large pulley that will rise and lower the main claw. this pulley will be at the bottom attached at the center to a dowel that is free rotating in the walls of the cart… kind of hard to explain.

Control system

I am using a relay H Bridge to control the motors. Each motor needs two relays and two pins on the Arduino. There are a total of 4 motors in this system (8 pins). One each for each of the axis X, Y, Z and one more to open and close the claw.

I also used a lot of limit switches to tell when the claw is in a certain state.

• 4x for each axis on the gantry,
• 4x for each directions in the joystick,
• 1x for the fire button on the joystick,
• 2x for the min and max of the claw’s teeth,
• 1x for the pulley to know when the call is fully retracted in to the cart.

A total of 20 pins. An standard Arduino has 20 pins, just enough to control the claw. I am trying to make all the connections with RJ45 connectors for an easier set up.

The programming for the Ardunio is nice and easy and pretty much done already.

Still lots to do and not much time to do it.

Like to BREAK things? Visit the Vancouver Community Laboratory for your chance to smash a car! For just a few dollars, you can take part in a scrumptious pancake BREAK-fast, WRECK a car, have your mind BLOWN by local art / creations, and PLAY a giant claw game! Wreckage form the car will be used by local artists for materials, and all proceeds benefit the Vancouver Mini Maker Faire.

All ages. Entrance by donation.
Saturday, May 25, 10 am – 5 pm
1907 Triumph St.

Click here for information & updates via Facebook

More information at Vancouver Maker Faire

Relay H Bridge 

After finding out that my L298 H Bridge was not powerful enough to operate my gantry motors last week, I switched over to use a Relay H Bridge. The advantages of using a relay instead of the L298 is that the relay can take a lot more current but the switching frequency is much slower (~40 hz)

Image source: http://nvhs.wordpress.com/project/catspberry/motor-controller/

Circuit Design

I don’t have much experience with circuit design but I think this makes sense. I built it with circuitlab.com and online circuit designer.

Arduino Software

The code for the Arduino is pretty strait forward. Move the claw around until the fire button is pressed, then drop the claw and pick up a toy and bring it back to the start location. The source code for the The Giant Claw Game can be found on my GitHub account.

I have been having lots of problems this week with getting the motors working with the gantry system.

• The motors are from different vendors and move at different rates.
• The motors draw too much current for the motor shield to handle.
• The motors are hard to mount on the cube.
• The pulley for motors slips and I am unable to get them to move the cables.

The motors come from old power drills that I picked up at a local flea market (Binners market). You can pick up some pretty amazing things at this market when you look hard enough. I purchased 5 battery powered drills for $5 each, 4 of them worked.  The picture shows three of the motors taken apart with the supply voltage taped to the motors. Drill are great for finding cheap motors with a gear box and a chuck. A retail motor with a gear box would probably cost me in the range of ~$30 each. The problem with getting second hand motors is that I couldn’t get all of the same type of motor. Luckily, of the four working drills two of them have relativity similar gear ratios and power requirements. Even still the minor differences between these two motors will probably cause me problems after a few hours. I think I can resolve the difference by providing different voltage to each of the motors, its not ideal but it should work.

I purchased two L298 Dual H-Bridge Motor Driver from leeselectronic.com. They work great and are easy to interface with, but they have a 2 amp max current limit. After experimenting with the motors I have I found that they require 1.5 Amp to starting current and probably need around 6 Amps to move the gantry around properly. Way too much current for these motor shields.

After doing some more research and asking a few questions online I decided to build a relay version of a H Bridge instead. The advantage of using a relay is that it can take a lot more current +10 Amps but its switching frequency is much lower (~40 hz) and it costs quite a bit more ($5-10 per relay).

I designed this circuit in circuit lab (online social circuit building tool). I am planning on picking up the parts and building it tomorrow. Hopefully this will resolve the motor current problem I was having.

The next problem was how to mount the motors on to the cube. I wanted to use a hole saw and cut a circle in to a 2×4 and then attach the 2×4 to the cube. But I didn’t have a hole saw so I ended up using a jig saw and a drill. The results worked but didn’t look pretty. I might end up redoing this work if I can find a friend with a hole saw.

I also have to figure out a way of making pulleys for the motors that can pull the cabling and move the XY table. Normally I would have used a timing belt instead of cables. The rubber teeth inside the belt would have added the grip on the pulleys that I needed. But timing belts are really expensive. The two belts that I would have needed for this project would have easily cost me more then the entire project has so far. Still trying to figure this one out.

Still lots to do but things are coming along.

I was originally planing on attaching the claw to 4 cables running to pulleys in each of the corners of the cube. The cables would be attached to four electric motors. Just like the sky cam that you can some time see at stadium.

I ended up not using the sky cam and going with a more traditional XY table. With a sky cam I would have had to have four matching electrical motors in each corner. To move the sky cam North/East/South/West you need to move all 4 motors in sequence making it more complex of a system.

I decided to use the CoreXY system for the claw’s XY table. Its a brilliant simple system that uses cables with only two motors instead the normal 4 motors. The system does need 8 pulleys two work. Rotating both motors in the same direction results in horizontal motion. Rotating both motors in opposite directions results in vertical motion.

I added a shelf on the top north and south sides of the cube. The shelf will carry the X axis (blue)  up and down along the Y axis (red) giving the system its vertical motion. In the first picture you can see the wheels and the X axis bar.

I added the wheels to the X axis bar, installed the 8 pulleys and ran cabling thought the system. Using my fingers I pulled the cables back and forth to move the XY stage around. Everything worked!

Next I am going to add the motors to the gantry system and get everything moving around.

At first I tried using a direct drive electric motor that I found at VHS. I constructed my own shaft coupler out of sheet metal and hotglue. It worked but it had no guts. As soon as the smallest amount of force was applied to the claw it would stop moving.

Next I upgraded to a small geared motor, 12v 36x gear, 100RPM motor.  This motor could easily crush a play pen ball in the claws. It had a ton of torque but it was slow. It took upwards of 30 secs or more to close the claw from its fully open state. I also found a local supplier of shaft couplers that made attaching the motor shaft to the screw much easier.

I extended the length of the prongs to speed up the time it took to close the claw from an fully open state. I was able to reduce the time from 30 secs to around 22 secs. It took me many iterations to find the optional length for the base plates that I have. Still took long.

I changed focus and started working on the limit switches. These switches are used to tell when the claw is fully opened or fully closed. It took a while and a bunch of configurations before I found one that worked.  I added a terminal strip for cable management to try to keep things organized.

I also built the wooden frame “The cube”. I added trusses to the frame to reduce the wobble. Its a cube, not much to say about it.

I am planning on working on the XY table tomorrow. The XY table is used to move the claw around the cube in 2D space.

I tried doing the math to get the right ratios between each sections, but it was harder then I would have thought. I ended up taking the cardboard prototype apart and measuring each sections. Not the best way of doing it but it worked.

This version is made out of wood and brass hinges. I cut it with a ban-saw as VHS’s laser was down for repairs  It can picks up balls most of the time on the first try and holds them even when swing the claw around. I think its going to work great.

Next I am going to attach a motor to the claw so that it can be automated.

A few weeks ago I found a few cheap HD webcams (HP HD-3110 Autofocus 720p 30FPS Widescreen Webcam) on NCIX. These Webcams work with the Raspberry PI and consumes a less power then other webcams I have tested in the past.

I wrote up a little bash script that uses fswebcam to take a picture once every 10 secs and store it on the local disk (SD Card).

Instructions 

1. Connect to your Raspberry PI via SSH terminal
2. Update your Raspberry PI
   sudo apt-get update 
3. Install fswebcam
   sudo apt-get install fswebcam
4. Test fswebcam. This should take an image from the webcam and store it in your local directory.
   fswebcam -d /dev/video0 -l 10 test-fswebcam.jpeg
5. Write a script for fswebcam and automate
   1. Open up a terminal text editor such as nano
      sudo nano timelapse.sh
   2. In the nano editor type the follow script
      #!/bin/bash
fswebcam -d /dev/video0 -l 10 test-%Y-%m-%d--%H-%M-%S.jpeg
   3. Use [ctrl]+[x] to save and close this file.
6. Change the scripts permissions to allow for execution
   chmod +x timelapse.sh
7. Run the script
   ./timelapse.sh

I knew I wanted a 3 pronged claw to make it easier to pick up the balloons. I need it to be as light as possible so that the motors could lift it. If it had to have some electronics in the claw its self then I wanted them to be as simple as possible.

I made a mistake here and rushed off and made it out of cardboard. I didn’t think this design thought fully and I just wanted to get something done in a night.

The first version was made out of cardboard and only had two prongs (grippers). I did this to make it simple (it was a prototype after all). It worked but not very well. I told myself that it was because it was made out of cardboard instead of wood. I quickly designed a three pronged version in inkscape, took it down to VHS and laser cut it.

Both of these where failures and I quickly abandoned them. Haste makes waste.

I slept on it and instead decided to do some researcher before I designed my next version.

• The Claw by AntMan232 on instructables.com. – I like how this design attached the prongs (grippers) to the bottom plate. Its simple and it doesn’t require the use of ball bearings. I didn’t like how it uses springs to normally keep the prongs apart and a servo as a pulley to pull them together.
• Motorized K’nex Claw by T86157 on instructables.com - I briefly considered making it out knex. They are light, I have a huge box of them and I could make many proto types in a single night. I decided against it as it doesn’t have that home made touch that I was looking for.
• Robotic Claw – MKII from sparkfun.com - I also considered buying a claw. There are several different versions out there and it would have made my life a lot easier. But it just didn’t feel right for this project, I wanted to do it all from scratch.
• CRANE GAME by marc.cryan on instructables.com - I really liked the overall simplicity of this one. It may look ugly as can be but its simple and works. It uses a motor attach to a metal screw with the end of the screw in a bolt. When the motor is activated the screw turns in to the bolt pulling up the platform. The video does a much better job of visualizing it then I do of describing it.

More research is needed… 52 days left !

This got me to thinking of how I could track system stats from my Raspberry PI with python and record the stats on COSM.

I have written about sending data to COSM with a Raspberry PI before in my Raspberry PI and the GPIO pins post.  Adafruit also has a great tutorial on this as well Send Raspberry Pi Data to COSM.

This code snippet will get the system stats (CPU, Ram, Disk Space) from the Raspberry PI, We can then send these values to COSM. I then added in the eeml class to talk to the COSM servers. I also added reading a light sensor that is connected to an Arduino talking pyfirmata.

Full source code can be found on my github account.

A few weeks ago I found this tutorial on make magazine Turning the Raspberry Pi Into an FM Transmitter by Code Club pihack.

It uses the hardware on the raspberry pi that is actually meant to generate spread-spectrum clock signals on the GPIO pins to output FM Radio energy. This means that all you need to do to turn the Raspberry-Pi into a (ridiculously powerful) FM Transmitter is to plug in a wire as the antenna (as little as 20cm will do) into GPIO pin 4 and run the code posted below.

Instructions 

1. SFTP the pifm.c and sound.wav files on to your Raspberry PI.
   • You will need to enable SHH to SFTP a file on your Raspberry PI
2. From the SHH terminal window, compile the pifm.c for your distro of linux. By default gcc will produce a a.out file as the compiled program.

   gcc -lm -std=c99 pifm.c

3. Run the output. You must run the application as an administrator (sudo) because this application uses direct memory management to access the GPIO pins.

   sudo ./a.out sound.wav

The box was cut with VHS’s laser cutter, using a pattern that I created with this laser cutting box making tool. I purchased the joystick and button from a local arcade suppler John’s Jukes for $14.

The wiring was the hardest part of this part of the project, taking about an hour. 5 cherry switches with 3 connections each, for a total of 15 wires. I wanted to use a RJ45 connector to make set up easier.

As seen in Toy Story, The Claw. These games aren’t as populate as they use to be in north america anymore but have exploded in Asia and Japan. You can even play for lobsters Sub Marine Catcher

The claw machines are made up of a 2-4 prong claw, XY table, A controller, and a box for the play area.

Before I started on this project I looked to see if anyone else had done anything similar that I could lean from.

I found Mega Claw! created for the 2010 NY Maker Faire. Its the exact same idea that I was planning on doing, with a different approach to the XY table. They have written up a great article on their progress and a post mortem after the event. Very impressed project.

Their Mega claw uses a more traditional rail based XY table and the playing area is limited to the max size of the rails that they are using. My system is more like a skycam/skycrane and can be expanded to a very large playing area only limited by the size of the motors that you use for the winches.

Next I found a skycam project (featured on hackaday) created by Dan Royer from Marginally Clever and a fellow member of Vancouver Hackspace (VHS). His Skycam is based on two DrawBots working in tandem. I like his system a lot and since he is so close I plan on talking to him a lot more about his project.

• Knex Claw machine game
• A version made out of Knex
• Another version from found parts

I plan to spend this week working on the design and making a few prototype, probably out of Knex.

• Using the Raspberry PI to control a Arduino
• Raspberry PI + Python + WebIDE + GPIO pins = Blink sketch

We are running the Raspberry PIs headless (no keyboard or mouse, using SSH) because VHS only has one device capable of being used as a display (out projector) and asking people to bring in their monitors as well as their Raspberry PIs would be bothersome.

To run the Raspberry PI headless, we need to enable SSH and know the IP address of the Raspberry PI. Some distros like the Occidentalis come with SSH enabled by default. If your distro does not have SHH enabled you can follow these instructions to enable it Adafruits Raspberry PI Lesson 6 Using SSH

When people arrive they connect their Raspberry PIs to our network and DHCP an IP address from our router. The problem is that by default all the Raspberry PIs have the same hostname and its very hard to determine what Raspberry PI has what IP address.

If you know the MAC address of your Raspberry PI it makes it a lot easier to look up the MAC address in the router IP address tables. Or better yet change the Hostname of your Raspberry PI.

How to find the MAC address of your Raspberry PI/Linux Box

The MAC address is very useful for finding the IP address of your Raspberry PI if there are other Raspberry PIs on your network with the same Hostname. I would suggest writing this on your Raspberry PI case.

ifconfig -a | grep HWaddr

This will display a list of MAC address of your network devices currently installed on your system. Eth0′s MAC address should be prefixed with B8:27:EB.

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr b8:27:eb:a1:b2:c3

In this example the MAC address is B8-27-EB-A1-B2-C3

How to change the Host Name of your Raspberry PI/Linux box 

A host name makes it easy to find the device on your network when you do not know the IP address of your Raspberry PI.

sudo nano /etc/hostname (and enter the desired name, “CTRL+X” then “Y” to quit) 
sudo nano /etc/hosts and replace raspberry with the hostname you chose above
sudo /etc/init.d/hostname.sh start (to enable the changes).

Instead of typing the IP address of your Rapsberry PI you can use the host name to connect to your device.

The first version I designed while at VHS one night.

I changed a few things in Version two. I added more rings, designed in holes for the strings  instead of doing it manually drilling them afterwards, I also painted the rings as well.

For the next version I think I am going to put the death star in the center and use starwars  icons.

In MagPI issue 7, has a great article on using the firmata protocol to communicate between   Arduino and the Raspberry PI.

Requirements

• A raspberry PI
• A Arduino
• USB Cable A to B
• pyFirmata python library (documentation)

Install and setup 

1. Enable SSH on the Raspberry PI
2. Install Adafruit Learning System Raspberry Pi WebIDE
3. Get the required packages:

   sudo apt-get install python-serial mercurial

4. Install pyFirmata

   sudo apt-get install python-serial mercurial
   hg clone https://bitbucket.org/tino/pyfirmata
   cd pyfirmata
   sudo python setup.py install
   cd .. ; sudo rm -r pyfirmata

Source code 

Read analog pin 1

import pyfirmata

# Create a new board, specifying serial port
board = pyfirmata.Arduino('/dev/ttyACM0')

# start an iterator thread so that serial buffer doesn't overflow
it = pyfirmata.util.Iterator(board)
it.start()

# set up pins
pin0=board.get_pin('a:0:i')             # A0 Input      (LM35)
pin3=board.get_pin('d:3:p')             # D3 PWM Output (LED)

# IMPORTANT! discard first reads until A0 gets something valid
while pin0.read() is None:
    pass

while True : 
  print "PWM: " + str( pin0.read() ) 
	board.pass_time(1)                  # pause 1 second

board.exit() 

Software

I started by formatting a SD Card with the Raspbian “wheezy” (2012-12-16) image from Raspberry PI’s website. I followed this tutorial on how to set up the Raspberry PI for the first time.

I then enabled SSH so I don’t have to attache a monitor, keyboard or mouse to the Raspberry PI. Since my main box is a Windows machine I downloaded and installed PuTTY to use as my SSH client.

Once I was connected to the RPI via SSH, I updated the OS and all of its packages to the latest versions, by running the following command.

sudo apt-get update

Note:  This command may take a long time to complete depending on how out of date your system is. 

Next I installed the Raspberry Pi WebIDE from adafruit.com. The Web IDE allows you to create Python programs from your webbrowser directly on the Raspberry PI. The WebIDE has a few nice features like a debugger and visualizer and auto version control via bitbucket.

I also installed the “easy_install“, “python-pip“ and “EEML – markup language” and other python packages that I wanted to use.

$ sudo easy_install -U distribute
$ sudo apt-get install python-pip
$ wget -O geekman-python-eeml.tar.gz https://github.com/geekman/python-eeml/tarball/master
$ tar zxvf geekman-python-eeml.tar.gz
$ cd geekman-python-eeml*
$ sudo python setup.py install

Hardware 

The Raspberry PI has a 26pin mail connector that connects to its GPIO pins. These ribbon cables and breakout boards can be found on adafruit.com ($2.95) and Sparkfun ($2.95)

You can also make your own. Hardware lesson with Gert: make your own ribbon cable connector.

Vancouver Hackspace (VHS) just happen to have a bunch of the 26 pin press connector and I was able to make a few cables.

 Source code 

Since I am using bitbucket all my source code is public. I created a few learning scripts to understand how the GPIO pins work on the Raspberry PI. The first script I made was a simple blinking LED, just like the arduino blinking LED script. Next was to read the current state of a switch and print the results to the screen.

This image was tremendously helpful in figuring out what pins go where

Next I followed Send Raspberry Pi Data to COSM from adafruit.com. I changed the tutorial  to read a digital pin (as the Raspberry PI does not have any analog pins) that I connected to a magnetic read switch for my front door.

The GPIO pins on the Raspberry PI are pretty easy to use with the python libary. Its too bad there are no analog pins. I can add AtoD converters or interface the Raspberry PI with an Arduino to add some analog pins.

More to come.

• B.C. Liquor cracks down on wine fundraisers

• B.C. to ban clubs’ all-ages events in bid to restrict underage drinking

After much searching I was unable to find a list of the board members or any public meeting notes. I emailed them directly asking for more information.
From: Steven Smethurst
To: lclb.lclb -[at]- gov.bc.ca

Hello
I can not seem to find a list of the board of directors for the B.C. Liquor Control and Licensing Branch (LCLB)

Can you provide me with a link or a list of the current and past members?
Can you provide me with a link to past public board meeting minuets?

I am interested in the current and past board of directors
Thank you.

From: lclb.lclb -[at]- gov.bc.ca
To: Steven Smethurst

Dear Steven Smethurst,
Thank you for writing to the branch with your enquiry. There is not a board of directors for the B.C. Liquor Control and Licensing Branch. You can find more information on the branch’s structure on our website here: http://www.pssg.gov.bc.ca/lclb/branch/structure.htm.

The executive of the branch are as follows:

• Karen Ayers is the Assistant Deputy Minister and General Manager;
• Bruce Edmundson is the Deputy General Manager, Compliance & Enforcement division;
• Cheryl Caldwell is the Deputy General Manager, Licensing and Local Government Liaison division;
• Barry Bieller is the Director for the Policy, Planning & Communication division;
• Jan Evans is the Director for the Management Services division.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to write back to this address or to call our Help Desk, toll-free, at 1-866-209-2111.

Liquor Control and Licensing Branch
Ministry of Energy, Mines and Natural Gas

http://www.pssg.gov.bc.ca/lclb

More research is needed.

A bathymetric chart is the submerged equivalent of an above-water topographic map. Bathymetric charts are designed to present accurate, measurable description and visual presentation of the submerged terrain. In an ideal case, the joining of a bathymetric chart and topographic map of the same scale and projection of the same geographic area would be seamless. The only difference would be that the values begin increasing after crossing the zero at the designated sea level datum. Thus the topographic map’s mountains have the greatest values while the bathymetric chart’s greatest depths have the greatest values. Simply put, the bathymetric chart is intended to show the land if overlying waters were removed in exactly the same manner as the topographic map.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathymetric_chart

I have been struggling to find Bathymetric data that covers both Canada and USA coastal regions for the Salish Sea. The USA data is easy to find and highly detailed but finding data that matches up with Canadian data has been next to impossible. Even finding data was difficult in the first place.

I was able to fine some low detail layers for 0 Meters and 200 Meter for North America from naturalearthdata.com  that are useful for plotting out the major elements.

I also found some highly detailed coastal layers from Vancouver Open Data catalog that I used for the finer details around Vancouver.

Next I added Coastal BC Bathymetry data from DataBC but the files did not import in to TileMill correctly, and the “Depth“ column got corrupted. Super annoying as it was the main column I was interested in. I had to spend a few hours learning about .shp and .dbf files and was eventually able to edit the file to make it work sort of.

BC Open Data catalog is weird in that I had to add the data to a shopping card, then “check out” the data with my email address and wait for a link to arrive in my email. The link came quickly taking at most 25mins. I still found the process strange as most of the other open data sites let me download it directly.

Currently I have only included the Canadian data as Its been exceedingly difficult to match it up with the US data.

This map still needs a lot of work to get it right. I am expecting to have to do a lot of optimization in InkScape afterwards. Each colored layer will be a different layer of plywood  and stacked on top of each other glued in to place with “Ground level” layer being the top visible layer. I am still debating if I should leave all the little islands on the map as they will dramatically add to the complexity of the map.

I want to add some complexity to the top “ground level” layer so its not just a normal sheet. I was thinking about adding rivers and lakes to the top layer to add some details. I found the river data on DataBC website.

The river data looks beautiful but to complex and there doesn’t seem to be a way of differentiating between rivers and streams.

• Create a new post for ABlueStar.com (This blog) each week. – Last year I only missed a few weeks and created a total of a ~47 post.
• Learn Ruby on Rails using Heroku. Currently all my web projects are created with JavaScript and PHP. While there is nothing wrong with JS and PHP I feel that i am shooting myself in the foot by not learning one of the newest web programming languages.
• Do 300+ Geo Caches this year. I just started Geo Caching this year during October and I have found a total of 22 confirmed caches. The number would be a lot higher if I would have started at the start of summer instead of fall. This also helps me get outside. It gives me a reason a quest to do.
• Create a open data apps for Vancouver.
• Make a board game/card game. After the success of Cards Against Humanity on their recent pay what you can campaign as really inspired me to make my own crowd-sourced board/card game.
• Start using ifttt.com more to help automate my life.
• Create more sensors to monitor my life.

It looks like I have only ever done one post like this in the past What I did in 2010, Year end review. It looks like I have accomplished all the goals I set out for my self in 2010, Woot!

The Noun Project is building a global visual language that everyone can understand. Visually communicating with symbols is incredibly powerful. It’s no wonder the most important information we encounter on a daily basis – health and safety information – is almost always communicated visually. This is because symbols allow people to communicate quickly, effectively, and intuitively. Symbols can transcend cultural and language barriers and deliver concise information effortlessly and instantaneously. The Noun Project is creating a platform for an image-based system of communication to create a social language that unites the world.

Building a Global Visual Language from The Noun Project on Vimeo.

The icons are licensed as either public domain or under Creative Commons – Attribution (CC BY) license. For most of the CC BY symbols, you can pay a small fee to the designer to waive the Attribution Requirement.

Examples: 

	Earth Designed by Francesco Paleari From The Noun Project
	Flower Designed by Adam Zubin From The Noun Project
	Fire Public domain From The Noun Project

These icons can easily be converted in to pendents, earnings and engravings on to objects that can be laser cut.

I used the icons for all the GeoCoins (aka wooden nickles) that I created for the Thing Tracker.

In typography, a counter or aperture is the area of typeface anatomy that is entirely or partially enclosed by a letter form or a symbol (the counter-space/the hole of).[1][2] Letters containing closed counters include A, B, D, O, P, Q, R, a, b, d, e, g, o, p, and q. Letters containing open counters include c, f, h, i, s etc. The digits 0, 4, 6, 8, and 9 also possess a counter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter_(typography)

To get around this you need to use a “counter-less” font or a stencil/laser safe font. Recently I have been using Stencilano. There are many other stencil/laser safe fonts available as well.

Note: This font will not be available on most computers by default and you will need to download and install it.

The talk revolved around TileMill studio and how to style maps using a CSS variant then you could export them as SVG files (vector image). Once the image has been saved as a SVG file it can be imported in to InkScape, cleaned up and then saved as DFX file for the laser cuter.

These maps took about 2 hrs each to cut and look amazing. This is a map of all the Vancouver roads and parks.

The problems with these maps is that I only used 1/16th inch wood. The wood bowed and twisted significantly. To flatten it out, I had to soak the map in water for an hour then stack books on top of it. Next time I think i will use thicker wood 1/8th or 1/4th

The maps are also very busy, with lots of lines. The next time I do this I will make a map with less lines. maybe just the parks or the bike lanes, ect..

Source files: vancouver_map_roads.svg

• Removed stressful people from my life, simplifying my life considerably. 
• My girlfriend has moved in with me, helping me to become a better person, with my heath and generally motivating me to become all I can be.
• Making new friends and surrounding myself with positive people that do wonderful things.
• Started taking on smaller more attainable projects and completing them.
• I have built so many interesting things over the past year with the help of VHS.
• Been looking in to buying my first place, hopefully somewhere in the city limits.
• I’m on the board of directors for 3 Orgs, trying to make the city a better place.
• I learned a lot about how to run large groups with the help of Vancouver Hackspace (VHS). VHS now has ~110 members.
• I learned a lot about how to run large events like MakerFaire and I am looking forward to Maker Faire Vancouver 2013.
• Zee has started makermobile.org and looks to be an amazing project.

Its been an amazing year and I can’t wait to see what 2013 is going to be like.

A year ago I found about a application called TeamViewer. It WAS this great utility that allowed me to support my friends and colleges with a remote desktop tool. After using it for free for 3 months I decided to do the right thing and purchase it. Big mistake.

The problems started when they updated the version to version 7. Only 2 months after I have purchased version 6.

Now every time I start TeamViewer I get a warning screen telling me that there is a new version of the application that I need to download. If I download the new version I get a ERROR message telling me my licence is not for this version and I can’t use this application. So I have to downgrade to an older version of the application.

This wouldn’t be such a problem but all of my family members that I support also get the warning message that they should upgrade to the newest version. When they upgrade to version 7 and I can no longer connect to them with my version 6. And since I can’t run Version 7 on my computer because of the licencing issues I can’t connect to them.

Since the upgrade to version 7, my version 6 application is useless. 

The upgrade from version 6 to version 7 is $700 US, a new version is only $800, so not much savings at all. Version 6 of TeamViewer cost me ~$600 and was only useful for 2 months. 

Now I am stuck in a very bad situation, I can’t upgrade but when I ask a friend or family to download TeamViewer and give them a copy of the install for 6, they get a nag screen to upgrade their version and when they do I can’t connect to them.

When I call TeamViewer to complain about this problem they give me a 10% off coupon for the retail (not upgrade) version of the software.  Useless.

If I never purchased their software I wouldn’t have this problem as I could continently use the software for free and upgrade as they release new versions. But because I was a good guy and purchased their software I am being punished.

TeamVeiwer is punishing me for doing the right thing and purchasing their software. 

After doing some research I found that they release a new version of TeamViewer every 6-8 months forcing everyone to upgrade again. Forcing everyone that paid money for this application to pay again.

TeamViewer update cycle is there to force old customers to pay for the upgrades. 

I will never buy another version of TeamViewer again and anyone I see using the application I will warn never to pay for it because of my bad experience.

I have since found join.me that is supported by logmein and made the switch with my family and friends.

• Source image
• Gcode for the drawbot

The crystal skulls are a number of human skull hardstone carvings made of clear or milky quartz, known in art history as “rock crystal”, claimed to be pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artifacts by their alleged finders; however, none of the specimens made available for scientific study have been authenticated as pre-Columbian in origin. The results of these studies demonstrated that those examined were manufactured in the mid-19th century or later, almost certainly in Europe.[1] Despite some claims presented in an assortment of popularizing literature, legends of crystal skulls with mystical powers do not figure in genuine Mesoamerican or other Native American mythologies and spiritual accounts

This year I am going to cut a Crystal Skull by laying acrylic slices on top of each other. The skull model came from 123dapp.com and cut on VHS’s laser cutter. Since the acrylic is clear it makes it really hard to get a good picture.

The model has holes cut though each layer that I threaded with fishing line to keep each of the layers together. Some of the holes did not a line perfectly and I will eventually need to glue all the layers together.

The images only show the top half of the skull. the bottom half is much more detailed including teeth and will require a lot of work to put it together.

One of the problems is that the acrylic that I used is 1/4th of an inch. instead of 3/16th cardboard that the original model called for. This caused the head to be elongated and distorted a little bit. The skull still looks great but it could be better. The acrylic sheet costs about $80.

There are a few problems with this set. Two of the very tightly packed circle ones walls are too thin and broke while I was cleaning them up. You may be able to see the broken walls in the picture above. Next time I will make the walls a bit thinker by about 2mms.

• Source files SVG files,
• Script to generate sacred geometry.