GroundskeeperWillie

Sweet!

Yes, but from watching the video it's pretty clear to me that he is not using pre-determined movements but rather set coordinates with calculated movements, probably using a model that knows the arm's geometry and limitations. But since he doesn't discuss how it's modelled and implemented it doesn't help much. I've been using the Java Mindstorms OS, LejOS quite a lot and it has great abstractions for many robotics tasks. But again, unfortunately, they are mostly aimed at controlling/pathfinding in 2D, not 3D. This is just to say that your suggestion to create an open source python project is probably the best way to go about it. Good luck! From a quick look, this looks promising. And you're right, doing this math from scratch is a monumental task. I've been a developer for 2 decades but since I've mostly been doing high level work, I still find robotics really difficult and I'm always struggling to find the right abstractions. But they already exist and it's just a question of finding those that match the problem at hand.

I can highly recommend watching this video from Akiyuki. Especially the second half has many details about its motion. Unfortunately it doesn't get much into programming details.

What a great idea combined with great explanations and the experiment to match. Wonderful!

You could use a rubber band in the transmission which will allow the motor to slip once it reaches the extreme positions. Then just use a timer than runs slightly longer than necessary. Then it will remain in sync without a rotation sensor. Alternatively, you could change the gearing of the rotation sensor to make it turn slower and thus increase the measurement precision. Let me re-phrase that. Making the rotation sensor turn slower will actually decrease the precision, but this is probably what you want. If it goes out of sync, it probably means it turns so fast that some ticks are skipped.

Thanks for sharing @MikeTwo9398.It's too bad about the lower capacity but it does seem to work fine nonetheless. I'll consider this for my Control+ and Mindstorms hubs as they are a little tame with 1.2V batteries in them.

That's a cute little tractor. Looks very authentic. Well done

It seems there are also 3.2V AA 14500 LiFePO4 rechargables. 3 of those come really close to 6 alkaline in voltage. Has anybody tried those?

There is an ongoing discussion on https://www.facebook.com/groups/PoweredUp/ about app-less control options. Doesn't look too difficult although it does require building a controller with custom electronics.

Awesome! Very well done.

Did anyone explore the possibility of bluetooth connectivity between the smarthub and NXT or EV3? It seems it should be possible, right? I'm kinda fond of using Lejos and its workflow but would of course like to be able to integrate the new stuff.

Great work! I can hardly imagine the work that must have gone into this marvelous machine. The programming mechanism reminds me of this "punch card" programmable crane from the 8888 ideas book, published in 1980:

Sweet!

This is an amazing build I have sometimes considered building a baler but have always given up fast because I could not find a way to cut features to avoid it getting too complex. It's incredible how you have just taken all features and the full complexity head on and solved it too! I'm gonna watch that video quite a few times