All posts by chris

Testing the Ozobot

November 29, 2015 chris Leave a comment

Experimenting with ozobots & cubelets — Dunkin works on one of the prototype tests for the ozobot. A few cubelets are in the lower left corner.

In today’s meeting we looked at ozobots & dug out the cubelets to try and get the Bluetooth control working. Technical difficulties prevented the cubelets from working with the remote control app. But the ozobots were a bigger hit anyway with both the kids and adults there.

Ozobots are tiny dome like robots that have optical sensors that are used to follow lines. These lines can also program the little guys, through shapes and colors. Using a marker they will follow the line you draw but by using different color patterns they will change speed, change direction, pause, stop and even count.

Castlemaker kids try an ozobot on the maze they created — Path that the kids developed to test the ozobots. In this trial it’s not doing so well, but has a chance to redeem itself if it gets the square root of 1 correctly, otherwise it goes into the “imponderable death of doom.”

It was amazing to sit back and watch the kid’s creativity. After a brief introduction to the ozobot, the kids discovered much more on their own. Following mazes and lines drawn on paper, along with guessing which branch the ozobot would take dominated the afternoon.

The kids decided to “test the robot’s artificial intelligence” by creating questions that the robot could ‘answer’ by choosing the right path. The maze they created started with simple questions like 4 divided by 4, then progressed into more difficult questions like which country created french fries. There were plenty of death traps and black holes along the path for the ozobot if a wrong decision was made. They decided to conduct tests for both ozobots , you can watch one trial in this video. Of course the robot didn’t really evaluate the questions, just took a random path, but they still had fun.

Castlemakers_Ozobot_Maze — The final test path they created. You can see one of the ozobots following the line near the top of the picture. In this trial it picked the correct answer for 4 divided by 4 and even chose the robot vs. human path.

The ozobot color changing capability was a huge hit (different colored lines cause the bot’s LED to match the line color). They are somewhat sensitive to line width, but it’s not a huge factor. The large dry erase board attempt didn’t work well, the bot would eventually scrape off some of the marker then stop. Ozogroove, the dancing app, was pretty useless on a Nexus 7 – don’t bother to install it on that tablet at least.

We’re going to have to experiment some more with hand drawing the ozocodes, the programming language for the robot. It seemed to be inconsistent, sometimes working and sometimes not, even for the same color coded lines. Printed ones worked great. There’s also a coding language, ozoblocky, but that will be a future meeting.

3D Printing, Making, STEM

Model Rocketry in Putnam County

November 14, 2015 chris Leave a comment

Rocket launch picture — Rocket being fired from pad #2, which was for some of smaller rockets.

Rocket launching was the theme of the day last Sunday for the Castlemakers that could attend. Nick and Emily Adams extended an invitation to a Rocket Launch at their place south of US40. Four families, along with some invited friends and Castlemakers got to see a wide variety of solid propellant rocket launches in South Putnam County.

Pad #1 was used for some of the larger rockets. Up to size G rocket engines can be used without FAA approval.

Amateur rocketry has been popular for years; many people will remember putting together Estes rockets as kids growing up. That still continues, with additional firms involved, with more gps units, cameras, electronics and even Arduino boards. Many of the tools used in a fab lab/ makerspace are being used! For an example check out the Carbon Origins effort (10,000 feet & Mach 2 before breakup); their story was detailed in a recent article. We didn’t see that kind of launch on Sunday, but there was a video of a Mach 1.5 flight Gus hit the day before at a site near Chicago (and he does a lot bigger rockets).

Gus Piepenburg mounts a camera on the side of number 13 before launch. It wasn't the lucky number of the day, the landing didn't go well and it will become number 14 with some improvements. — Gus Piepenburg mounts a camera on a model CM-10 Bowmarc before launch. The flight didn’t go well, landing in several pieces, and after changes it will become number 14.

What we did see on Sunday was incredible. There were four families that had built multiple rockets, all involved with Indiana Rocketry, and there were two launch pads and 4 towers to launch rockets. I noticed several with GPS units (one hit 2500 feet) and several had cameras. One even had the infamous 808 keychain spy camera, sometimes used in robotics, that had a 3D printed camera case on the side of the rocket.

The local Putnam County 4H has a rocketry group if you’d like to get more involved, or you can also contact the Lafayette-based Indiana Rocketry club which has even more information.

Making

Packing Tape Ghosts

October 24, 2015 chris Leave a comment

Wrapping plastic wrap to make clear packing tape ghostly objects. — Wrapping plastic wrap and clear packing tape before removing it to make ghostly objects.

For the October 18th meeting we made packing tape limbs and ghosts. Well actually we tried everything from baby dolls to swords, and even mixed in a few body parts – basically anything that could be safely wrapped in plastic wrap and then covered in packing tape.

Baby Ghost made from clear packing tape — Ghost made made by using a baby doll. It will get more transparent after removing more of the excess plastic wrap.

Wrapping an arm or leg and the manikin were definite hits, and looked surprising good! The process is fairly simple: put a couple of layers of clear plastic wrap on the item, then wrap it with several layers of clear packing tape, and finally making a cut in the wrapping to remove the object used. Once the object is removed you take out the excess plastic wrap and carefully re-tape the pack tape wrapper back together for a clear ‘shell’ of whatever you wrapped! Adding some LED lights inside the object can make a great ghost or really strange object for Halloween.

For our upcoming meetings we’ll be having a intro to coding class for 9-14 year old kids and a soldering class, next meeting dates are on our events page.

Artistic Endeavors, Making

Make Your Own Casting

September 24, 2015 chris Leave a comment

sand block carving for aluminum — Sand block carving for the upcoming Community Aluminum Pour in Greencastle at the Peeler Art Center on DePauw University’s campus.

9/30 UPDATE: There are still sand blocks available for carving as of today, stop by Peeler Room 105 to make one!

A quick note on the Community Aluminum Pour; Thursday September 24th is the last day to make an original piece of art that you can have cast with recycled aluminum. From 4-8 pm you can carve your own design into a sand block that will be cast on October 2nd. There’s not a lot of information out there yet (although it has been listed on our events page) and carving is limited to 200 participants; but both the carving and casting is open to the public. I stopped by last night – still plenty of sand blocks available for carving!

If you miss the carving or don’t want to make your own casting, the main casting event will be on Friday October 2nd from 1 to 10 pm (back courtyard of Peeler Art Center). Looks to be fun, Sculpture Trails Traveling Foundry will be there to help and will be explaining the casting process.

Artistic Endeavors

Banana Tatooing

August 31, 2015 chris Leave a comment

At our August 23rd meeting we got updates from the teams on how their Water Balloon Challenge ‘devices’ are coming along. The Barcus Bunch showed their video on development and testing of the air-compressor powered water balloon launcher for the upcoming Water Balloon Challenge, raising the competition level for all of us making launchers!

Castlemaker kids take comis to tatoo some bananas. — Castlemaker kids take comics to tattoo some bananas.

Besides the air-powered units, there are reports of the classic latex tubing powered units and rumors of a Gatling gun style unit going for the quickest reload time category. It’s going to be an interesting competition, which will be at Big Walnut Sports Park on September 13th. Please check our events and project page for updates.

Some example tattoos that were made by using needles to bruise the skin.

Our making project for this meeting was tattooing bananas. After first talked about how skin tattoos worked we then talked about the process of how fruit changes colors when bruised.

After putting bunches of bananas on the table, everyone took needles to bruise the skin so it turns brown. Some used Sunday comics to trace the character outlines on the banana, others just designed their own tattoo free-form. Conclusion: there’s nothing like personalizing your own banana so no one else will mistake it for yours!!

Hovercraft, Making, STEM, Uncategorized

Liquid Nitrogen – August Meeting

August 15, 2015 chris Leave a comment

What happens when you hit a marshmallow frozen at -196°C. — What happens when you hit a marshmallow frozen at -196C.

At our August 9th meeting we covered the Water Balloon Challenge, which is now up to 8 groups. Details on our project page, but they seem to be performing so well that we concluded that the Greencastle Farmer’s Market display in early September should be a demo, not the actual competition, since the Greencastle square may not be large enough!

What happens when you insert a balloon into liquid nitrogen. There's also a video where you see it shrink and then expand. — A balloon being shrunk by inserting into liquid nitrogen before re-expanding, the record was 4 times for one balloon!

For our ‘show & tell’ portion Chris brought liquid nitrogen in a dewar for experiments. After explaining describing liquid nitrogen and where it comes from, we poured the -196°C (-320°F) liquid over the marshmallows that Alice had brought in. We also froze a banana to drive nails into a piece of wood and then tried lots of things that kids and the adults suggested. Some that worked and some that didn’t!

A raw egg that was frozen first with liquid nitrogen then melted down during the meeting back into a normal uncooked egg. — A raw egg that was frozen first in the shell with liquid nitrogen then thawed down during the meeting back into a normal uncooked egg.

Freezing balloons was a big hit, the kids had tons of questions which you can hear and see in the balloon video that Brian H. took. For the coin collectors there, we showed how older copper pennies are more malleable at minus 200 degrees Celsius than the new copper plated zinc pennies – which shatter after hitting them with a hammer!

There’s another good regional event for science in Bloomington on 8/29, Makevention, along with some other events on our events page. Last year we took one of the shovercraft (shoveable hovercraft) to the Bloomington event and did demonstrations. It’s well worth the trip if even to just to look at what other people are doing.

Since we’re starting to look for projects after the Water Balloon Challenge, I can’t help but mention the Lexus created hoverboard that uses liquid nitrogen. I just watched a video (long version) on it, sort of outdid our shovercraft but a lot of more engineering in that design. Now that would be an awesome next project!

Greencastle's Makerspace, Making, STEM

July 2015 Castlemakers Meeting

July 30, 2015 chris Leave a comment

Alice tries flying Isaac's drone that he brought to the meeting. — Alice tries flying Isaac’s drone that he brought to the meeting.

At our July 26th meeting we shared and discussed the upcoming Water Balloon Challenge in August. Interested kids & adults signed up and there are 5 preliminary teams creating something to launch a 2″ diameter water balloon farther than you can throw it – but there are several more rumored to be forming and folks can join in at any time.

Some of the kids afterwards viewed the drone videos from earlier in the day. You can see one of them on our Youtube channel.

Special thanks to Isaac & Matt who brought their new drone for the sharing portion of the meeting. All the kids that wanted to try it got to fly it. We also learned that one is very durable!

Making

June 2015 Castlemakers Meeting

July 2, 2015 chris Leave a comment

Preloading the Water Balloon Cannon with air pressure. Meanwhile some kids make water balloon for launching from the rubber tubing launcher. — Preloading the Water Balloon Cannon with air pressure. Meanwhile some kids make water balloon for launching from the rubber tubing launcher on the right.

Water Balloon Air Cannon Launch — One of the ‘bad’ shots where balloon busted upon launch. If you look closely at this photo you can see the water squirting out the back of the balloon in the air, apparently it was not tied tightly!

In our June meeting we discussed different water related projects and tried different water balloon launchers to learn how they worked. Besides the classic surgical tubing slingshot method of shooting water balloons that Boyd, Elise, & Jim brought, we also looked at a pressurized water cannon that Rebecca & Chris built.

The water cannon, pictured to the right, was made from 2” pvc pipe and then used a bicycle valve stem to pressurize the main chamber. By opening the 2” pvc valve after pressuring, the burst of air propelled the water balloon… well initially 40-50 feet in prototype testing. But by correcting the launch angle with the help of the other folks there, a smaller volume of water for the cushion, and increasing the pressure with the bicycle pump we discovered that it easily went into the next city block. Not sure exactly how far it will go since it was hitting tree branches down the street.

After making sure anyone that wanted to (and a few that didn’t) were drenched, we decided that this would be our next build that we could show off at the Greencastle Farmer’s Market. More details soon!

Artistic Endeavors, Making, STEM

Making Ideas from Art

June 5, 2015 chris Leave a comment

While you hear a lot about STEM, many in the Making community talk a lot about STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art Math). Attend a Maker Faire or look at any Make magazine and you can’t help but notice how many artistic creations (how about an electric giraffe) are being made. Many of the same things shown at the bigger Maker Faires have also made appearances at Burning Man, arguably one of the most creative artistic community rituals that I’ve encountered.

Clay Sculpture by David Katz at Peeler — One of the traveling exhibits at Peeler Gallery. This temporary clay sculpture in 2014 by David Katz seemed to be attached to the walls.

A good Putnam County art resource is the Peeler Art Gallery on the DePauw campus. A lot of people forget about it and it’s open to the public for free. One of the current exhibits has some Andy Warhol photos and prints, but it changes every few months. If you look at this exhibit link read it very closely, summer hours are reduced from regular hours during the school year. It’s not a huge gallery like IMA, but I’m always amazed at the quality of the exhibits at Peeler.

3D Printing, STEM

3D Printing & Math in a Classroom

May 22, 2015 chris Leave a comment

Printrbot 3D printer in classroom — Kids look over the a mini-whistle being printed in their math class.

Last Friday I got to talk about how 3D printers work & demonstrate printing to a class at Tzouanakis intermediate school in Greencastle. A lot of the math skills being learned in 4^th and 5^th grade math, at least in the current common core curriculum, are used when printing on a 3D printer. Obviously simple length and dimensions are needed and almost all 3D printer software controls are entered using metric dimensions. In contrasting a 3D printer with an ink jet printer (which the kids all have seen) we could bring in how coordinates are used with the printer head so the plastic goes on the right place on the printer bed (some of the kids have already been plotting x and y coordinates on charts).

Cura Software Screen printing whistle — The Cura 3D software screen used to show some of the things taught in 4th and 5th grade math.

There was lots of other things briefly covered related to math & science, including how the software being used (Cura) estimates how much plastic will be used (both length and weight). By having them measure the diameter of the filament used, we worked through calculating the circle’s area and then volume so they could see how much plastic will be used. Some of the kids have been exposed to unit volumes in the current curriculum, and while it was covered pretty rapidly perhaps the rest will remember it when they get that in more depth next year.

We also talked about the temperature settings and how that melted the plastic, asking if the 206 degree setting was hot enough to melt plastic. Some of the children that have been overseas immediately recognized that this was in centigrade rather than degrees F, so we worked through a conversion equation so everyone could realize these were oven like temperatures.

Mrs. McCoy's Tzouanakis Class with their 3D printed whistles — Kids trying out their mini-whistles… outside!!

After printing out a mini-whistle, I then showed them how the scaling function could change the size with a few clicks and re-printed a larger whistle. Most of the kids guessed correctly that the larger whistle would have a lower sound/pitch, but there was a lot of looking around to see who was raising their hand when they were asked to vote.

A special thanks to Mrs. McCoy for allowing me to come into her classroom for the printing demonstration. The class was scheduled at the end of the day & each of them got a 3D printed mini-whistle. Hopefully their parents are still speaking to me! I certainly hadn’t realized how loud 28 small plastic whistles blown at the same time would be!! You can listen to it in a video here…

Greencastle Indiana's Makerspace!