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Robotics: In Closing - Stanford's ML Class
It's been long coming, but I finally got my "Statement of Accomplishment" from Professor Ng at Stanford today. Many of us were waiting with baited breath; I was already sure of my score, but I was curious to see how the statement looked, and how it was scored...

Robotics: Weeks 9 & 10 - Stanford's ML Class
I'm so late on this due to a number of reasons, but I thought I would combine them both in one article; to put it bluntly, Week 9 (Anomaly Detection/Recommender Systems) looked to be easy at first, but I got bogged down in the homework, while Week 10 (Large Scale Machine Learning/Application Example: Photo OCR) is looking to be a "gimme" week, though it started late.

Robotics: Week 8 - Stanford's ML Class - Another Easy Week?
Well, this was surprising to me: Despite this week being another "dual unit" week (something I was dreading, given
my last experience with such a week), I actually found it to be fun, interesting, and anything but difficult! What were the units?
- Unit 13 - Clustering (K-means)
- Unit 14 - Dimensionality Reduction (ie, Principal Component Analysis)
Do either of those sound "easy" to you..?

Robotics: Week 7 - Stanford's ML Class - Easy Week
Week 7 seems to have been the "easiest" week yet (ok, maybe the first week was easier?). One would think learning about and applying Support Vector Machines would be more difficult, but it didn't seem that way to me...

Robotics: Week 6 - Stanford's ML Class
Well - this was an interesting week of fun and mayhem; I thought I had it all covered until I started in on the review questions...

Robotics: Week 5 - Stanford's ML Class
Well, I "survived" another week of Stanford's ML class - Week 5 was all about back-propagation and how to implement it.

General: HOWTO: Spotting the Low-Level Techie
I frequently visit and read an atheist and science-oriented blog called
Pharyngula. Not too long back, Pharyngula moved from ScienceBlogs to its new host at Freethought Blogs. Earlier this week, there was a server upgrade, and things got wonky; comments went missing, comments were assigned to the wrong posting, etc. PZ is understandably
upset and exasperated. On that blog posting, one of the commenters,
ColonelZen, posed a question that I thought I would try to answer, one that I have been asked in the past. My answer may not be the greatest, and it might act as a chainsaw where a scalpel is needed - but sometimes, drastic surgery is the only real option to getting the answers needed...

Robotics: Week 4 - Stanford's ML Class
Between plugging away at finding a new job and working on the class, all-in-all, the week turned out ok - well, with the exception of our dog dying...

Robotics: Week 3 - Stanford's AI and ML Classes
Well, as you know, this week was a major change for me; I won't go into any specifics there, but it did make me have to drop the AI class, unfortunately...

Personal: On with a new chapter in my life...
The past 15 hours or so have felt like a loose bicycle chain. This morning, that chain fell off.

Robotics: John McCarthy (1927-2011) has passed away...
John McCarthy, a distinguished computer scientist who coined the term "artificial intelligence", and was also the inventor of Lisp, has passed away at the age of 84.

Robotics: Week 2 - Stanford's AI and ML Classes
Well - I'm still involved in both courses, and I haven't killed anyone yet, even though at times I felt like it!

Robotics: My First Week - Stanford's AI and ML Classes
I'm currently signed up and taking both of these courses, which started this past Monday:
Intro to AI
Machine Learning
Both complement each other as far as material goes, and I'm having fun, but this is all still clearly an experiment by Stanford...

VR / AR: Barco RP-360 Flight Simulation Dome
Oh, to be able to own one of these for frivolous purposes...

Projects: QB64 _MAPTRIANGLE Cube Demo Version 2
Version 2 of this _MAPTRIANGLE cube for
QB64 adds a few extra features...

Projects: QB64 _MAPTRIANGLE Cube Demo
This was something I whipped up tonight to show off
QB64's _MAPTRIANGLE function being used to affine texture map a rotating cube.

Personal: Monsoon Storm Video - July 24th, 2011
I was doing my usual thing and clearing out the buffer of my ZoneMinder system, when I noticed a few of clips of the storm we had last night.

Robotics: How To Use An Analog Joystick With The Arduino
Analog joysticks are fairly easy to hook up and use with the Arduino. In this tutorial, I will describe the basics of hooking up such a joystick to the Arduino, and give some hints and tips on using the position values read from the potentiometers to control a basic vehicle using Ackermann Steering geometry, as well as to control a vehicle using Differential Steering geometry (like on a tank or bulldozer). Pictures and code provided!

Personal: Massive Mutant Lemons!
UPDATE! We cut them open!
Click here to see...
My wife and I have always had mutant lemons from our lemon trees (now bushes) out in our front yard - check out these new ones, the first new ones in a long time...

Personal: Old Cox 049 Engine?
I'm not sure, but I think this is an old Cox 049 control-line model airplane engine...

Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 6 - The H-Bridge Driver)
In order for the Arduino I am using to command the steering motor to move left and right, I need to control the motor with a circuit known as an "h-bridge". Basically, this is a circuit that switches current to the motor to make it rotate in one direction or the other, at will (it also allows for easy speed control via PWM - but we won't need that here).

Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 5 - Limit Switches)
I'd already ruined one good motor (which ultimately turned into three), through the misadventure of driving the motor to the end of travel in the steering mechanism, causing binding and ultimately destruction of the gears. The only way to prevent this moving forward was to install limit switches.

Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 4 - Adding Feedback)
In order for the robot to know how far and in which direction it is turning, it needs to have some method of feedback from the steering mechnism to tell it at what angle the wheels are. This is the basic principle behind all servo-mechanisms. For my Unmanned Ground Vehicle (URV), I decided to use a potentiometer for the feedback element. Properly wired, it can tell the UGV what angle the wheels are at (with a certain error percentage, of course).

Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 3 - A New Mechanism)
The motors finally arrived, so I could now continue with the steering mechanism...

Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 2 - How To Really Break A Motor)
As I noted in the last article, I had only spent $10.00 on a motor that the original manufacturer wanted me to spend $350.00 for a bunch of gears, of which I only needed one. Don't get me wrong; the fact that they were willing to sell to me at all impressed me, and if I had a bunch of the motors instead of the three I did own (not to mention if they were new, and not well used like mine), it might've been worth it. Needless to say, though, their offer wasn't enticing, so I decided to do what anyone else in my position would do - SWAP, SWAP, SWAP!

Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 1 - First Attempt)
Once again, its been a while (but not as long as last time!); progress is still being made.
Since my last post, I've been working on the front-end steering mechanism; let's just say either this is harder than it looked when I started,
or I'm just not that good of a mechanic. Likely, it's both!

Electronics: Solder Is Easy - A One-Page Comic
On another list I am on, someone pointed out this handy little guide on how to solder, written in a one-page "comic book" format. I thought others might find it useful, though I have a few extra points to add.

Projects: Homebrew Waterfall Display HOWTO
After reading this thread today:
Electro Tech Online: Waterfall Printer
...and the responses, and watching the videos; it got me to thinking how it could be implemented in as cheap a manner as possible. After thinking about it for a while (a few hours), I think I have found an idea on how to implement the valves, very cheaply (but there's going to be a bit of fabrication involved, TANSTAAFL); if you implement this, please at least throw a bit of credit my way, OK? Thanks. I'd build this myself, but I don't have the time or inclination. I honestly don't know if this system would work, but it seems to me that the idea is what is most important; I am sure someone out there could get this to work with some experimentation.

Sciences: Science Saved My Soul
"It's like the universe screams in your face, 'Do you know what I am, how grand I am, how old I am? Can you even comprehend what I am? What are you, compared to me?' And when you know enough science, you can just smile up at the universe and reply, 'Dude, I am you.'" - Science Saved My Soul

Robotics: An Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - An Update
It's been quite a while since I last posted an update regarding this project, but progress is still being made, if slowly. The last time anything was posted on this project...wow, has it been almost two years?! Ugh...

VR / AR: Pioneering Research Papers in 3D Virtual Environments
For a recent posting I wrote to a fellow member on the Arduino forums, I spent an hour or more tracking down a few historical papers on the technology of Virtual/Augmented Reality. My interest in these papers was mainly that of an amateur historical archivist; I had an idea that they existed, but in the past I wasn't able to successfully locate them. Either I became better at searching, or Google expanded its index; I greatly suspect the latter, actually...

Electronics: Solved: Lexmark/Optrex T612/T622 11K0627/11K0628 Display w/ Keypad and Control Panel
Great news! A reader by the handle of
Enif, on the
Eletro-Tech (new window) forums, apparently has solved not only the pinout, but also the I2C protocol/command set it uses to read the buttons and write to the display...

Sciences: A Very Interesting Group...
"To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge,
seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds,
put them in a room together, and have them ask each
other the questions they are asking themselves."

VR / AR: Homebrew Waldo/Motion Capture Rig - With Arduino!
This guy posted on the Arduino forums some pics and a link to his website detailing the progress he is making on construction of a custom waldo/mo-cap rig to control a
Nao robot...

General: URLAI stats for this site...
Well, according to
URLAI (new window), this site is written by
...a male somewhere between 51-65 years old...
and I have a
...writing style {that} is academic and happy most of the time...
I'm not sure it is a totally fair assessment (new window) - I'm not that old, dammit! {...grumble...}

Electronics: Altair 8800 - CCS 6502 Board
A few months back I purchased this board to go with my collection of Altair 8800 items; I don't know much about this board, other than it is a bare (no components installed) 6502 processor board for the Altair 8800 system. It was made by CCS (California Computer Systems) in 1979.

Robotics: The Smithsonian Robo-Arm/Bio-Arm
Here's yet another re-release of the Tomy/Radio Shack Armatron robot arm...

Robotics: The Armabot - Interfacing the Armatron to the Radio Shack Color Computer
I found yet another article on interfacing the Armatron - this time to a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer! This article first appeared in the April 1984 issue of Color Computer magazine, and was written by Steve Cox (et al).

Electronics: Lexmark/Optrex T612/T622 11K0627/11K0628 Display w/ Keypad and Control Panel
I recently purchased a couple of these control panels from a local surplus vendor (Apache Reclamation and Electronics), and I am trying to find out how to interface to them, preferably with my Arduino. From what I have been able to discover, they are control panels for two particular Lexmark laser printers, the T612 and the T622...

VR / AR: CheapVR - An (old) series on Homebrew VR
Waaay back in the day (1994) I played around with VR more than I do now. Recently, I decided to join a new homebrew VR group that's just starting up, and I decided to dust these oldies off, and post them once more...

Robotics: Up in arms - Tandy Armatron Dissection
Here's a nice disassembly/teardown "review" of a Tandy Armatron, featuring really nice and large pictures of the various gearing internals. This might be useful to those hacking their Armatron for interfacing to a computer...

General: A Minor Facelift for the Site
In a previous article I noted that I was making some changes to the site; today I have completed them. I hope that they will bring more visitors, and that perhaps now I will get some comments on articles.

General: ChChCh...Changes...!
If you're reading this, you've probably noticed the filtering option by now...

General: Link Sharing Is Here!
Yeah, yeah - nothing new to everyone else, but I finally got around to adding it...

Robotics: The Big Trak is back?
Do you remember being a kid in the 80s, watching the Milton Bradley Big Trak commercial, and wanting one yourself, just so you could have an apple brought to you?

Robotics: Another Armatron Interfacing How-To
While googling for something else, I recently ran across this interesting article that depicts an alternative method of controlling the Armatron.

Electronics: Thank You, Energy Concepts, Inc!
A few weeks ago I purchased used (and in pretty rough condition) an
Energy Concepts, Inc. (new window) model # 20500B Digital Solid-State Power Supply, from my favorite local electronics junkyard, Apache Reclamation and Electronics...

VR / AR: Flogiston Design - Design for the Immersive Age
I was doing some research for a post on the Arduino forums, and I re-discovered this site...

Robotics: Doh! Missed one...
I just found this interesting PDF, which describes a direct-drive motor interface to the Armatron using steppers (check out what those students did to that poor robot)...

Robotics: The Discovery Spark Robot Arm
I just found out about this robot arm as I was doing some research -after- I had posted my archive! Argh!

Robotics: The Tomy/Radio Shack Armatron Super Interfacing Archive
This archive was created in an attempt to bring together several sources of information that have floated through time (and the internet) detailing how to interface the Tomy/Radio Shack Armatron (and Super Armatron) to a computer. I hope you enjoy this archive as much as I had compiling it!

Robotics: Gismo the Great (from Boys Life magazine)
Gismo was a robot from another time; a time when boys played with electric motors and train sets, with maybe an occasional "Cowboys and Indians" game outside thrown in...

Robotics: A Computer Controlled Tank
Ever play with (or own) a Milton Bradley Big Trak? Ever wanted to control it with a computer? Want to interface your Arduino with one? Read this "future past" article to find out how!

Robotics: I was an 18-foot robot!
So begins an interesting article found in a scan of a fairly old copy of Popular Mechanics; in this article, you quickly learn that the science and art of "Giant Robots" is much older than you think...

General: Another Nearly Pointless Update
It's been a while since I last posted, if anyone out there cares and is reading this, read on, and you'll be filled in...

Personal: Housefire - A little too close for comfort, this time!
Thank $DEITY, not our house; unfortunately, it was our neighbor's house. Nobody was living there, fortunately...

Personal: Our new fence: Done!
Laziness got the better of me, which is why I probably shouldn't tackle a project as large as building a fence, because it would never get done! Anyhow, I took all of these pictures on Saturday, April 4th, showing what the new fence with the gates and view panels installed looks like...

Personal: Radio Shack Color Computer Frappr Map
Interesting Frappr Map of TRS-80 Color Computer owners worldwide...

Personal: Our new fence: The blocks are up - beautiful!
The block arrived early this morning...by the end of the day, our fence was complete; all that is left is the "ironwork"...

Personal: Our new fence: A work in progress...
Well, with several phone calls, a few estimates, one insurance adjuster, and a pittance insurance check later, we are now well on our way to a new fence...

General: It Can Be Done
I found this neat little website which opens with the line "Do not believe the naysayers who say it cannot be done". Apparently it is centered around an individual who goes by the handle of "rog8811"...

Personal: #$%@!! Our fence blew down!
Yesterday I came home from work thinking "Ah, a relaxing evening", never imagining anything outside of what my wife and I now define as "ordinary" (things get weird when you have your mother, who has dementia, living with you). Never did I think this would be here to greet me when I got home...

Robotics: Some Interesting Sites for the Homemade UGV Project
This article serves to document some of the interesting and useful sites both I have found during research - read on for more!

Robotics: Our Homemade Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV): A New Direction
Well, it's official: I am going a new direction in the development of the UGV. A friend from my work, Jared Hurn, has decided to assist me in the development and programming of the robot. We hope to eventually be able to enter it into the Robo-Magellan contest, if not the one next year, then the year after. Read on for more about this exciting new direction the project has taken!

Personal: My Busy Life...
It's been a while since I last updated this site, so I thought I would post something to let everyone know what is going on, where I am at with things, and how I am doing...

Robotics: Homemade UGV/ROV Pan-Tilt Mechanism in Action!
I made a small, low-quality video of the pan-tilt mechanism of my UGV/ROV today. The servos are currently controlled via an R/C transmitter; in the future everything will be controlled with a
Basic Stamp 2.

Projects: Helping to Preserve the Past: Paladin's Legacy
I am currently involved in a project to help preserve an interesting RPG for the Color Computer - Paladin's Legacy...

Sciences: Genes, Memes and Turing Machines: A Replicator Primer
The following is a list of books I recommend, that when taken as a whole, can serve as a primer for understanding the what, how, and why of self-reproducing bits of information known as "replicators"...

General: Welcome, Nuts and Volts Readers!
Welcome to my website. Whether you arrived here via the link in the
Nuts and Volts September 2008 issue, where it was announced that
I won (new window) Vern Graner's Personal Robotics $100 Workbench Design Challenge (new window), or in another manner, I want to thank you for visiting.
Enjoy the website, and consider joining phoenixgarage.org's member list to post comments to this and other articles!

General: Lately, I've Been Lazy...
I've been lazy about my site, and about my projects. Which is strange, because I have been working...

Personal: A Beginner's Guide to Welding
I originally released this guide back in October of 2003, and several people enjoyed it. All of them said it was helpful and interesting. When I updated my site, the welding guide went away. After looking at my site statistics, though, and noticing people trying to find it, I thought I would dust it off and bring it back.

General: Republican Presidential Nominee McCain Responds!!!
I recently received this email response from John McCain. Note the distinct lack of reference to what it is regarding. This man and his staff are considered "presidential material"? A wookie from the planet Endor makes more sense than this...

Robotics: Programming the Parallax BASIC Stamp 2 using Linux
Those of you following along know that my current project is the design and construction of a homebrew UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle). I intend to control it using a BASIC Stamp 2 OEM microcontroller module I constructed (
see my assembly primer (new window) for more details). So, once I had the module built, I then needed some way to program it...

Robotics: Status on my ROV, err - UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle)
I just wanted to post a short "status update" on where my ROV project stood. First off, I am sure you notice the name change...

Robotics: The Basic Stamp 2 OEM Assembly Primer
I wrote this primer for those out there who may need some extra visual and written explanation to the assembly manual which is included with the
Basic Stamp 2 OEM kit (new window) from Parallax.

Personal: Tasty...? Morton_toes' BBQ Bacon Breasts
I found this recipe today on
Fark (new window) - I haven't made it yet, but I thought it sounded tasty:
Morton_toes' BBQ Bacon Breasts (new window)
Read on for locally-hosted version of the comments and recipe...

General: Possible Breakage...
To all who visit: Please be patient, I am switching stuff over to mod_rewrite, and you may notice things breaking from time to time. This is normal. I will post a comment when everything seems stable. If you continue to have problems, please
contact me...

General: Reciprocality - An Archive
"This project began as a bit of practical industrial psychology, and ended up unfolding into an understanding of how most people in most human societies have a consistently distorted view of everything. Not everyone is caught in the confusion, and as the picture emerged, an alternative model of relationships between observable phenomena that seems to be experienced by creative programmers in software engineering, star diagnosticians in medicine, great physicists and mathematicians, so-called ADHD children, people who "Know Quality" in industry, poets, painters, sculptors and mystics became describable - but only in its own terms. The alternative picture is wholly rational, but not reductionistic. Best of all, it is scientifically grounded and experimentally testable. If the experiments fail we can junk it. If they work, we've learned something important." - Alan G Carter

Sciences: The McMaster Engine: An Engine for Our Time
In this time of expensive gasoline, any gains in fuel usage efficiency can only be taken so far using ordinary Otto-cycle engines as found in most cars. What is needed is a more efficient engine. Engines with complicated arrangements of cranks, cams and pistons have a lot of moving parts: parts which induce friction, parts which have to be cooled and lubricated, parts which can easily fail. Enter the McMaster Engine...

General: Modern Mechanix: Yesterday's Tommorow Today
This blog was recently recommended to me. If you are a fan of old tech magazines (Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Byte, etc), then you will love this site.

Sciences: Need Alternative Fuels? Find a Station Here!
I recently received the occasional email newsletter sent from
Knowledge Publications (new window), my favorite alternative energy book publisher. I am just a customer, but I have found that even what they offer for free is worth way more than what they charge.

General: MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU
All I can say is "WOW!" - this is a great example of street art...

Personal: A Public Apology to the Cox HSI Support Staff
First off: I apologize, for both my attitude and demeanor during our email conversations. Yes, the issue was at my end, but one can easily see how I was mistaken - it wasn't so much that I was wrong (which I was), but that I didn't have all of the information, either. Read on...

General: Mr. Trent Franks: Why do you think I am stupid?
I recently (like 5 minutes ago) sent an email to my Congressman,
Trent Franks (new window), after I received one of his so-slickly-produced mailers. Even though I should know better by now, it still surprises me that he regards the citizens of this state to be so ignorant. Then again, maybe he is right?

General: America is China is America - The All-Seeing Eye
Every day I seem to come across an article or comment that does nothing but solidify the idea, in my mind, that we are living in a dystopian nightmare as bad or worse than anything depicted in a fictional context.

General: The Law of 150 - Otherwise Known as the Monkeysphere
"One death is a tragedy. One million deaths is a statistic." -Sportacus
So begins David Wong's (new window) humorous and insightful article on Cracked.com.

Personal: Cheap and Cheezy Mac and Cheese
Tonight, my wife and I prepared a cheap meal, part of which was a simple box of mac-n-cheese. But a little improvisation went a long way...

Robotics: Robot Intelligence: An Interview With A Pioneer
I recently had the pleasure to conduct a short and informal email interview
with a pioneer in the field of hobbyist robotics, David L. Heiserman.

Projects: Making SSH and OpenSSH Play Nice
Towards the end of the development of the new "look and feel" for this site,
I ran into an interesting issue when I attempted to implement an automatic
authentication scheme between my development server and and the virtual
server my site is hosted on. The issue turned out to be easy to resolve, but
learning how to do so required me to perform many Google searches before I
had the correct answer.

Sciences: High Fuel Prices? It's The Investors, Stupid!
As a resident of Arizona, I recently heard about Senator Jon Kyle's opinions on why we have high gas prices. The following URLs shed light:
'Cause-and-effect' behind high gas prices (new window)
Dollar Value Down, Gas Prices Up (new window)
I disagree with this, and if you continue reading, you'll see why...

Robotics: A Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) Project
THE CONCEPT:
In the early part of 2005, I began the design and construction of an ROV based
on the chassis of a 1/6-scale radio-controlled toy monster truck. Utilizing
this and other various items, I managed to implement a working - if not very
elegant - ROV system. Though I never obtained any video of it in operation, I
did manage to document its construction with a series of photographs.

General: Daniel Quinn - The Human Future: A Problem in Design
Sometimes the jewels on the internet are hidden from you until that right moment and time comes along, when it somehow seems to hand you the treasure. I was recently handed such a gem, and I want to share it with you.

General: FOSS Factory
FOSS Factory is the only website where the community collaborates on every aspect of free/open source software production, including design, funding and development. Our mission is to help accelerate the advancement of free/open source software.

General: Ugly doesn't begin to describe it...
Of course, what I am referring to here is the look of the site, especially under Internet Explorer 7.