I had the fortune of kicking it with Ian Lesnet from Dangerousprototypes.com and having a couple of beers in my workshop while watching Curiosity stick its landing on Mars (massive props to the JPL and NASA engineers who pulled that off, btw!).
Ian took a video of the meet-up and with Chris Gammell’s help did a bang-up job of editing it. The interview is posted at his site, and in addition to giving a quick tour of my workshop we traded tips on soldering, sourcing, and survival in the Shenzhen electronics markets. Too bad the interview was done before my new laser cutter arrived…it would have been fun to engrave silly pictures on random household items!
That robotics board with arm and FPGA, what are you up to?
I have been combining beagleboard with fpga to get good motor controls for my machine, but it sounds like I may be able to get something along same lines with your board. Is there any way to learn more about this project?
I’ll have more details posted soon, here — it’s still in pre-production, but once I ship the board, all the source will be posted at kosagi.com. Should be sometime in October with any luck!
Please keep us updated about SD card internals. I am curious about that too. That uP must do wear leveling on the card. Presumably the first block or so of the array is the code for the uP (not unlike some HDs (called ‘drive firmware’ usually on a slow, safe track). I don’t think people are aware quite how many uPs are ‘out there’. Even a smart battery has a coulomb counter with 20kb of code.
Great video, thanks! Definitely interested in your uSD research, please post some of your progress on it!
Keep an eye out at this xobs’ blog for updates on the uSD research!
http://www.xoblo.gs/
BTW congrats for the EFF Pioneer Award! :)
The URL for http://dangerousprototypes.com/ is mistyped as http://danegrousprototypes.com/
I have a question for the author of this blog. I’m interested in the gardens owned and operated by Chinese factories, especially any case in which factory workers also cultivate gardens. Or, alternatively, any instance of Chinese workers living in villages where they eat food produced by their communities. In both cases, food that the company does not need to purchase feeds the worker and subsidizes the wage.
Anything you can tell me–or a contact to whom I can write–I would appreciate.
Steven Stoll, Fordham University
I’m curious about the Full Spectrum laser engraver.
Have you formed an opinion on this product.
I ran across their products on inventables.com.
Can you let me know if there is anything scary about FS lasers?
email me if you want