Printing the JHack simple servo bed

Jhack's derivative of the simple servo bed seems to be an improvement over the original simple servo bed that Gael posted recently.  It is certainly simpler to mount servos in it.  It is, however, fragile, in a few places and it isn't obvious how you attach it to the forearm shell save using glue. The same can be said for the cover over the servos that fits on top of the bed.  Once glued down, it would seem to me that you'd have to tear the while forearm apart if a servo failed.  I'm probably going to try to modify that while I'm waiting for the rest of my HK15298B servos to arrive.

The simple servo bed was a touch too big for my UP! Pro 3D printer so I had to tilt 45 degrees on the vertical to fit into my print volume.  Given the height of the resulting print, I had to use the stable support option which took a lot of filament to make the support and a lot of extra print time.  You can see the finished print here.

The extent of the support structure needed is quite clear.

You can get an idea of the nature of the paper-thin support structure in this pic of the support structure being removed.

While the removal of the support structure looks like a formidable task, as a practical matter it took less than ten minutes to clean it from the print.

The cover, not pictured, required a similar support structure.  It was considerably more fragile than the bed and required greater care in removal from the support structure.  I was able to do that successfully, however.

Kinect is active

I was able to get Kinect going and run it through most of its paces.  It can capture a 3D radar image out to about 4-5 meters as you can see with this colour coded screen grab.

This perspective projection gives you, perhaps, a better feel for the depth of the space.

Oddly, it flips the data from left to right.  I don't know what that is about yet.

It does face tracking down to about a meter away from the Kinect and skeleton tracking down to about 2 meters.  I was unable to capture that with the very primitive Visual Studio apps that I have so far.  I thought it showed the orientation of the palm, but with what I have I apparently don't have that possibility.

I was also able to videotape the skeleton tracking option.  Here is the full body tracking.

I understand that Microsoft used quite a large farm of servers to develop the parameters for this feature.  Notice that you have trouble when a foot leaves the visual field of the Kinect.  Also notice the problem when you accidentally get one leg behind the other or behind an obstacle, in this case a stool.

Here we restrict tracking to the upper body, viz, "seated mode".

Notice that when the hands leave the visual field of the Kinect the same thing happens that happened when the feet left the visual field in full body mode.  Also note what happens when I placed one and the both hands on my head.I was able to locate some open source finger tracking software for the Kinect that was written in Spain.  I will be trying that next.

HS-805BB servos arrive

Although the United States Post Office is due to stop Saturday deliveries, I was mistaken in thinking that they were going to stop today, so I have my the high-torque HS-805BB servos for my Inmoov robot arm today instead of Tuesday.

I plugged one into the Pololu Mini Maestro 24 servo controller board and it appears to work perfectly.

Left arm of Inmoov robot complete

Printing an assembly for the left torso, shoulder, bicep, forearm, wrist and hand is complete.

Front view of left torso assembly, shoulder, bicep and base of forearm.

Detail of rear view of upper torso and shoulder.

Left arm raised.

Forearm flexed.

Forearm extended.

Detail of lead screw and collar controlling the left shoulder.

The Hitech HS-805BB servos that drive the torso and arm kinematics are on order.

Printing Gael Langevin's Inmoov Robot

Andreas Maryanto and I have been working on animatronic hands for some time now with Andreas' Dexhand project streets ahead of my own efforts.  About a year ago, I happened across a printed hand done by hairygael {Gael Langevin} in Thingiverse.  It was interesting enough that I printed a copy of it, but at that time Gael had not got very far with the design, so I neglected to follow his subsequent progress.

Big mistake!  About a week ago I discovered that Gael's modest beginnings had subsequently blossomed into a full fledged animatronic robot upper half.

I was both shocked and completely entranced by what Gael had accomplished in so short a time.  Gael was kind enough to make his print files open source, so I immediately began a campaign to print a copy of his robot.  Using his files, I have so far managed to print out a copy of his Inmoov robot's left arm.

I apologise for the poor quality of the pictures.  My own camera was lost a few months ago when my son's car was broken into in Seattle and I have been remiss in replacing it even though his insurance company was quite prompt in reimbursing him for the loses.

At the moment, I have not tried to install servomotors but have concentrated on understanding how the many pieces go together.  I shall be buying the torso, shoulder, bicep and wrist servos in the next week or two.