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Making Minibots: Drawbot

Hey, guys, it's great to see some familiar faces, bob and callin some new faces that so I'm just going to get the new we've got dan, bob, kevin and chance, welcome and it's great it's great to hear that you've been to make her affairs also before you've been to the one in san mateo, how many times have you been to that one? Really you're so cool! Yeah love maker faire it's great on jane's been too. I think probably every maker faire eight eight or nine of them so far. Wow! Yeah is fantastic. Will this is this is very much the projects were doing today are very much in the spirit of maker faire. Yesterday we focused on a lot of cool craft the project's today it seems that we're getting a little more techie. Yesterday we made some ice cream sandwiches out of polymer clay that look good enough to eat. We made some soap shapes as as j k o mentioned, uh, we've made mixi sticks a game, anti gravity general sort of cool stuff. So today we've got a couple of robotics projects we're going to st...

art with, and, uh, I I've got some materials here you have the same materials there, the first thing I want to call your attention to is the battery holder and so this is just a double a battery holder holds a couple of double a batteries there's two wire leads coming out of it and the first thing that we want to do is you can see the part of the insulation has been stripped on the wires here but we want to make that a little bit longer because we're going to actually wrap these wires around the motor terminal so we have some we should have some wire strippers and cutters there you've got them let's see, I actually might need two swipes a pair from you grab some thanks, bob. And so have you used wire strippers before you guys familiar with using them so you can see there's there's different holes with different gauges here and it looks like this is probably, uh the uh ah higher gatch, right? Yeah. And so what? We wanted to strip about an inch of insulation all I'll do one gene and I'll let you do once, so to do it, go ahead and put it in the twenty two marking their end and just pinch it till it goes all the way and then just pull and you should be able to strip off the insulation like that jane, why don't you go ahead and do the other one okay, so right about you yeah, now if we were going to be sauntering this onto the terminal we would would have left the the amount out like that we're actually going we're not going to do so during this time we're just going tio have ah have a connection by wrapping wire around the terminal so it's good to have a little extra wired that way so these come in handy visa combination wire strippers and cutters they have some cutters down there as well, so if you need to cut wires, you can use that part down there and like I said it, it works for different gauges of why are also so how are you guys doing? Did you think that part is done? Okay, great. At this point, let's take you have some scotch tape there just to keep the terminals from shorting out while we're putting this thing together, get a little bit of scotch tape and and cover up one of the one of the bear parts of the wise she just needed need to do it to one of the wires so that it's covered up like like that and said that they don't touch you. Yeah. When once we put the batteries in otherwise that with the wires will get really hot and the batteries will train quickly we have a couple of double a batteries and you can see that there's a little guide inside the battery holder that shows you the orientation for the batteries the flat part goes against this spring and the little bump goes against the part that doesn't have a spring okay that's popped in and now you can see these wires we don't have to worry about them shorting out against each other next we have a little dc motor a little hobby motor and you can see on one side we have the spindle that's a little spinney part exactly and then the other side we have the terminals and there's little holes through them and exactly those air for the wires so what we're going to do is we're going to duct tape this on top of the battery pack just like that it should rest right between the two batteries and you want this the spindle part toe overhang a little bit and then what we're going to do is is wrap some of the duct tape around the battery so you want to get kind of uh I would say a piece about thiss long so we're talking maybe eight inches long and here's some scissors jane you can either rip or does it and then just to keep things neat with your scissors, go ahead and cut it lengthwise why don't you go and you wanna hold on to that and that and thank you and uh you cut it lane twice of it it just looks nice in need thank you throw that in the trash jane and then just attach it to the touch the battery back to the motor like so and get it on there so it z nice and tight and isn't going to wobble off the draw baht is going to be wobbly enough once we add a little bit eccentric wade onto it. So how are things going, you guys? So in the book, I, uh in my book I have instructions on doing a draw, but that uses wood pieces and it's more of a permanent object this this draw bots a little simpler uh, benefit is that it's easier to make and lends itself well to experimentation variation because it's basically made of paper parts so you khun try different drawing patterns and things like that, which is what we'll do a little bit later once week once we complete the project and that's a really cool thing actually market because you've developed this just seems specifically for our class he created one today. Yeah, well, it's really fun. I you know this this particular design has has been around and I should say that I found it on my my friends website his name's steve load think and he found it from somewhere else and I think every time somebody does this project there's a little bit of variation and so everybody changes it up a little it's evolving as it goes along which is pretty cool actually the first time I saw it was from a nineteen seventies kids pbs show called zoom which was a fabulous show that had in between the segment that's when they called a zoom do where they would show kids how to make projects and this draw boat was actually one of the projects they did and I remember watching that as a kid in the seventies thing that is so cool and so it's great to be able to like introduce a new generation to it all right so you guys uh we're almost done with our kind of brains flash muscle part of the robot what we need to do now is add a weight on and we're using in for the way we're using a nut what what this does is it add some uh imbalance to this motor so that when it spins it really makes the whole thing wobble and like instead of just making lines and pigs yeah it makes it up all over the place exactly jane so to do this what we need to do is cut another strip of of dr tape jane you're really good at ripping its perpendicular lee and I would say what take a look at how I'm cutting it and uh you can do something about the same I would say we want a piece that's about a half an inch wide and two inches long. This is extremely sticky duct tape, which is good, though, because, uh, as you noticed the diameter, the spindle is really small. So there's not a lot of surface area for this tape the grip onto which you said that it's sticky. Yeah, which means that is really great that this tape is sticky. What I'm doing is I'm putting this tape underneath the spindle, and then I'm actually going to fold the tape over the size of the spindle until it meets at the top and sticks together like that. So you can see here it's ah wrapped completely around the spindle, and then what I'm going to do is then drop the nut right on top of the spindle like that on the tape, and you can probably see that they're they moved that up a little bit, and once you have it on there, go ahead and wrap the rest of the tape around the nut and pinch it down, and it will probably just hang loose, like it might just drop down, which is fine. This is that's exactly what you wanted to do. You wanted to be able to rotate freely, like fast pictured on the spindle, and then yes can you can you see let me see if maybe if I go then that's just going to flop around not right there on the spindle but on the rate so can you see that uh the way it looks I'm going to carry this so I'm going to bring this over so you can take a look at how I've got this set up here yeah it looks like you've got it looks like you you're exactly on the right track let's see here that's that's perfect yeah, that looks good. You know, it seems that gets on there pretty well, ok, if we have problems we can start over I think that looks good. How are you? See holy hole you see how yeah, I do that so yeah, I know that you guys go ahead and you can start over with that there's another rack not teo said that other one aside for race now thank you. Yeah, you back? Okay. And just like what I here's what I would do is is good and pinch that part like that okay and now dropped that nut on there. Okay, now wrap it around great. So now what we're going to do is attach one of the wires to the battery terminal but not both because it will start spinning and we want to wait for it to start spinning once we have solid data from the right and it doesn't really matter which side you which which wire goes toe which terminal it will just make the motor spin in one direction or the other but just wrapped the wire around you make a little loop and then hey do you want to do it yeah and then just kind of wrap it around so that you have a good tight connection if we had a saw during iron way we'll go ahead and sauder it but uh in the interest of time we're just going to do this it will be fine we'll be doing saw during a little bit later and it is yes in the session that looks great jane really good and so this other one will just let the world we'll just let it stay loose for now yeah go ahead and give me the paper cup but I just want to make sure you guys are are on track how's everybody doing here good any questions from the no it looks like everybody's coming along on life is looking good okay so great I'm glad to hear it what should we do it? I'm just leave it right here we'll probably use in just a second change ok so now that we've got our our little pack set up here are sub assembly you can go ahead and just set it on top of the paper cup and we are going to attach it to the paper cup using more of this wonderful wonderful extra sticky just he's case and we can use that once the use of duct tape if it's not stick I know you're right just show me just better is much better I agree jane and you might want tio he's a couple of pieces of tape the idea is to keep it on there securely did it on there and does that feel good? I'm also just to be safe I'm going to take a little from the front onto thiss part of the cup here too okay why don't you go for that change go ahead jane and said it right there like this I was thinking like that get it on there so it's nice and tight I've heard the saying that you only need two things in your toolbox duct tape and more wd forty duct tape to put things together that won't stay together and wd forty to take things apart they won't come apart coming from s noises saying it's like the force it has a light side of dark side and it binds the universe together I still think that like I love it there are yeah there are actually books dedicated to duct tape people have have very strong opinions about duct tape I played with the books about duct tape didn't make them out of duct tape but I think they might have attacked and then what they should do as the pages should be made out of duct tape and then the word should just be cut through the duct it would be cool ultimate duct somebody do is listen I would be really cool okay so how are how are we doing does everybody have their motor on it's nice and lets it upside down you're going to go ahead and shake it because this thing is going to shake like crazy and and if it falls off now we know tio I'm having a problem all right? So we you have several marchers here and now you have a really big decision to make which three colors are you going to use these all of that that might be for face too but let's start with three classic tripod drop box so how about we do the primary colors red blue and yellow? Okay, that sounds really good. Okay. So before taking the cap off what we want to do is arrange thes these cans in a around the cup at I'm going to say one hundred twenty degree angle but that's hard tio eyeball but arrange them evenly around the cup and you should have the the top of the car that I guess the base of the penn go up to about the top of the cup and just for stability I would start by putting the first one directly under the motor and have it go to have it go for now a straight down it's possible later we can experiment with the angles and the height and things like that okay it should be like this on the cup should be yes exactly ok jane do you want tio but that was the first one under the motor just aware came a korean can I put the table I'll do the first one and then you know you can do the others if you want tio market it was you could mark with the pencil kind of her pen we're approximately where to put the other ones used to color of the mark everywhere you want market eyes blue tio you may be right about there I think and so what the idea is that you wanted to be a stable is possible when you set it down. Okay could you put the cabs on these air similar to the pens you invented the mix he sticks game with here the abdomen can I get you a piece of bark but can you throw me another pen? We're just missing one oh yeah you got an extra you get green take a purple something fancy purple your tick how are you guys doing with pens? Ok, you've got enough over the you have three over there also ok, you get a piece of tape here so if you uh if you go online and search on draw but you'll see that there is a huge menagerie of different kinds of draw bots people come up with really creative materials and ways of constructing them and this is just like the introduction to the world of dropbox easy yeah I think it's probably the start of game me she started out at level one and this is a bubble on yeah this is the level one version looking at that overhead came okay so it should look fairly stable you know what I'm gonna just this one gene that looks like I need to move it down just a little bit when it's when it's down on the table if it should be fairly level go ahead I made was also throw away stuff that's cool I don't know what it is is purple you might want to just kind of tuck the wires away like this so that so that this wire doesn't have a chance of crossing over and touching the unexposed part so we've got you guys are you guys air moving ahead at a really great pace ok so now for this next stage is the same thing oh actually you know we should probably do is is go ahead and pull the caps off and you can set the draw but either on this nice piece of brown paper or you can put it on on a sheet of paper to start creating the art actually I'm going to set mine on the brown paper first and we'll just uh father and keller almost finished cruel jeanne okay so go ahead and lift it up when you put this on because once you once you put this wire move through this hour other terminal the motor is going to start spending like that don't pay yeah just as best you can close that move on then what you do that you can just set it down there it goes it helps to have a giant piece of paper his obstacles it's fine okay way I see a little problematic piece of duct tape their minute just dreaming give it a try now this way give it a try now are you guys doing way you can see they're they're pretty crazy I also also take a look at everyone you probably noticed that because nobody made them exactly the same they kind of have their own personalities and drawing styles that is great take a look at chances are there I want to put that on that let me set this on the table here that's really good theo only question his chance when you take this home do you put the draw about signature on it or your signature drop on signals that's really cool you've got some halloween colors going there to that is pretty awesome that's really nice so I think what we should do now you guys is experiment with position of the pens what would happen if you put the pens so that the bases is lower here what I'd like to try a few different things you could add a fourth pen a fifth pen you can add extra pins to it you can also adjust the angle so that they're like this all the pens around you that that might give make it go in a circle you could also make it so that depends are a lot taller. You will be concerned about stability that that might knock over but try and see how high you can do it without it knocking over what else can you d'oh? Uh uh I would be curious to just see you know, go this this is your chance to really experiment and try some different things what you're drawing there because that's really cool. Now you kind of a guiding yours they're holding out for the cameras they could see that. Yeah, it is. Yeah. You anything at all of it with your hands because it was not stable. Yeah it's really good. What? He came up with that's cool. Yeah, you know what? Uh uh that's a good point, jake. So there are no rules about this kind of thing if you want to guide it with your hand that's great if you want to attach, put a hole in it and drag it along with string more power to you got some really like a fun thing to dio yours to see what the door and was gonna hold out your drawing from your drove off for the camera we can take a look at that the boxes are thicker lines on your watch is really cool yeah pushing down so you pushed it down from the way well for oh that's cool like this I'm like learn you guys showing me things I never thought of before with withdraw ball which is that's why doing these things in groups is so much fun and one thing that I would encourage all of you to do is find a local a maker space or hacker space in your town because they often have activities like this and it's so great to hang out with other people who are interested in making things because you will learn stuff from everyone even people who are beginners off what will often come up with super creative ideas so looks like you're trying something interesting team with a couple of different pens at the same time you want me to hold this couple it's let me help let me just I think you should have that one panel it'll lower e did you try? Are you trying it at a different angle or something nice maybe make summation little lower because you're like it's up on the center of gravity right now okay listen he doesn't know you know might be interesting if you could like I get a huge piece of paper and then have like kind of like a pedestal our steak and then attach it to a string and we just drop big circle just go around it and it would wind itself up and draw all the way in a big spiral stable that we're just pulling it with one leash we're gonna try to leashes on each side so I'm going tio open my my book here and show you that one that we made um is here in the book is extra easy to adjust the pens here's thea you can see the draw but here is a little bit different here and it's uh it's made of wood and then the pens are actually attached to binder clips on those binder clips can rotate and you can easily lower and raise the pens just by pushing on the binder clip and so jane here's a picture jane and her friend they took it outside with a giant piece of paper and you could see it drew some really great spiral patterns and this one you can do everything you can do all these all the things we did in this one it just takes a little more time with the duct tape and you might kind of you might need to replace it with a new paper cup after it tears but that's okay paper cups of cheap two more pens they're just really cool got five going it's still working on that one well that's great that's really a good way not dying it's probably just that with fiction that's a great idea you can hear a natural dancing let's lift this went up just a little more in the er in a later segment today I think we're going to take these upstairs onto the roof with some large paper so we can really go to town with it yeah and then there's some collaborative draw body another thing that would be interesting is to have two motors on the way I would love to have this just set in a piece of paper the size of a football field and just have a bunch in there and just sit back and watch them be amazing jane you put two markets together they're two markers to markers one and you put one on and angles and you've got some really good results some of the colors a little bit yeah maybe good yeah the red did a great uh kind of ticker pattern so kevin you put one on an angle where you belong mangle right so that makes the color a little bit heavier doesn't I'm going you guys that you have some extra paper there you could tape for pieces together wait you know still manually hole and takes out one is the last okay? Kevin you got the runaway here you know I would love to know it vehemence people are doing withdraw or somebody the chariman saying they experimented with this cooking, they actually substituted pens, the battle, and they put it in a amazing that's great, that is good it's kind of like a roomba a little bit right on art movement, you know, let's, move a fourth pin this move, one of these tens over here. So, yeah, it looks like stability is something that you had to be careful about. What? Yeah. So we'll do this for another minute or so, you guys, and then we'll start working on our next baht of the session. Good to see how this one works. Wait, I should just mention actually, that obviously mark's book is called make a dad, and he worked very closely with both his daughters and we've got dad's and indeed a granddad in the studio today. But everything that we're doing here on creative live in this particular courses for any parent, we've got some moms who are working in the trapped as well with their kids or a guardian or anybody who's working with kids, moms, dads, grandmas, it's, all for you. So definitely take the chance to join to join tennessee, and we'd love to see what you mean. Making please feel free to go to our gallery you can upload their images of your draw butts or anything else that we've been doing in the course and we'd love to see that too yeah I'm going on tv art that people have created with totally okay you're older wait really wants to go in a straight line thing I haven't seen that usually they want to go in a circle way something I just wanted to be I'm going to see what happens way like goes all the way I just want to see how it does here so you don't have one division crawls around if you put the caps on all about see where it goes where does on floor there goes it's my work of art it took me twelve years it's very jackson public so let's see what it really does so chance let's have a look at yours holding out for this camera over here where builders that's a multiple pictures preparations dexter they're all in on nose over their holy style one's got a lot of holy ones because I had orange quacking brown originally then we added white, green and red so very nice that kevin let's have a look at yours that's the original one you did yeah, that was with three penn uh I know that when you change you you angle them, didn't you? Yeah, these two are angled one could could you hold that up? So bill, concede out over there and has, well, thank god I did it with that, yeah, untested cal let's. Have a look at your so you do you put two piece of paper together? No, put three pieces, three. Ok, I hope that I'm supposed to take a look at that three leashes. The youth kind of guided that around again with delish. Tried good grades got a mind of its own.