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Tech Log #007: Fixing & re-assembling Bowie

Tech Log #007: Fixing & re-assembling Bowie

Bowie has been disassembled since the summer when it was disassembled for the trip to France. With some of its pieces in different boxes, and sensors on different robots. It’s time to re-assemble a working Bowie again.

One of the pieces that broke was the front hinge, this was 3D printed and replaced.

The next piece that broke was a pad on the Teensy 3.6 lifted when trying to remove it. This is understandable, since the force of all the headers was much greater than that of a small copper footprint pour on some fibreglass. Alright, thanks to PJRC, we soldered new headers on and replaced this.

After that was fixing the Operator Interface on the green foam board Bowie. We ordered a replacement display, and all is displaying properly again.

There was a motor driver missing, but that was an easy find – it was in the prototype tree bot of course!

On the super bright lights board (version 1), some F headers are in place but the shrouding is missing. This was fixed by adding new F headers in place.

Alright, now it’s time to add everything back in place. All the electronics are in the main chassis now. Then, the air quality sensor on the back. Followed by the RPi on the top. We’re leaving the laser on the other side, because it’s still functional and cool. The claw is added too.

And now there is a working Bowie assembled again!

Kit Log #048: First blink code guide progress

Kit Log #048: First blink code guide progress

Since on our system everything has been installed from various experiments and projects, we had to go back and be diligent in tracing the steps to install everything properly. The goal is to install all the software and Bowie libraries properly to get to a first blink. Today, the initial descriptions were written for this process. The next step will be to gather and make the thumbnail images for the steps. Then, running the .csv through the python script to publish as a page on the site.

Collab Log #008: First pan-tilt test and nearing completion on Bowie Kit

Collab Log #008: First pan-tilt test and nearing completion on Bowie Kit

Tonight the groups continued on the progress. The pan-tilt servo connections were added to the Bowie brain board. The pan-tilt mechanism was assembled. Test code was written to make sure the pan-tilt works. Beck added the motor wires to the brain kit. It’s interesting to see how less dusty / sandy the brain is when new.

Collab Log #007: Pan-Tilt Mech Printing, Progress on Brain Kit

Collab Log #007: Pan-Tilt Mech Printing, Progress on Brain Kit

The uOttawa Masters Engineering group made progress on 3D printing the pan-tilt mechanism for the IR camera. Beck gave a tutorial to the group on how to 3D print with the Tinkerines and how to slice the models. Meanwhile, another member of their group worked on installing Tensorflow on the Raspberry Pi. The servos fit perfectly into the mount, and it gets assembled with M2 screws. Beck and Brenda made progress on their Bowie Brain Kits as well. Brenda had a thought about a 3D object detection method, so we brainstormed a bit about that on the whiteboard. Next steps is to continue the work.

Kit Log #047: Chassis build instructions

Kit Log #047: Chassis build instructions

The chassis build instructions are now live. Check it out here. Many thanks to Beck for writing the descriptions for the steps.

The nice photos of the CAD models with annotations and arrows on them, these were made before the kit log began. The most of that work was done in September, October, and some November 2019.

There will also need to be an additional page for the build instructions, consisting of all the pieces. This is also logged in the google sheet. Python to parse this and then output html is what will be needed next.