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Nikos' Fibonacci Spiral Challenge - Page 6 — Parallax Forums

Nikos' Fibonacci Spiral Challenge

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  • I am going to have to do some fiddling around Whit. Yours have a 3D effect that mine don't. I am thinking that slowing the speed on some parts and going faster on others changes the light intensity and gives the 3D effect. Going to check it out!!! I also want to check out Erco's referral to the UV LED link. That looks pretty cool! Meanwhile here is one of Nikos's patterns which I messed up first time I programmed it into my S2. My hubby said it looked like a goat head but the corrected one looks like a Grecian vase.
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  • WhitWhit Posts: 4,191
    edited 2016-02-27 13:24
    Here is another idea from the Scribbler Taillight and Pen Port Light thread based on a conversation with erco (see image there).

    I thought of an idea where you could "print" dot matrix style with 5 X 7 pattern - one color or multi-color (if you wanted)

    You would have 5 LEDs running across a bread board or mounted (width of robot) for the column, Light the first column, turn off, advance forward a column width, light the second column and so fourth - "Serial style." A long exposure photo or composite photo (per zanadu's post above) and voila! - Dot matrix printing!

    A set of LED set up the same way turning off and on per specific control or randomly could make some interesting scribbles too!
  • Carol HazlettCarol Hazlett Posts: 312
    edited 2016-03-08 17:51
    I have ordered some neat little battery holders for CR2032 batteries that have their own on/off switch. The idea is to mount the LED on top of the battery case and glue or screw a wooden or plastic dowel to the bottom of the case. This would make an easy way to use the pen hole in the scribbler to use either the Sharpie or the LED. I am still waiting for them to arrive from China and will post the completed device asap. I also bought some bezel mounts for the LEDs but do not know if they will be needed for mounting the LED yet or not. I am hoping it makes a nice looking set up when it is done. If I use a wooden dowel I will have to paint it black to keep everything from looking hokey.
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  • Just some playing around. I used the lights already on the S2 for this to see what would happen. They are not on the pivot point of robot so it is hard to determine ahead of time how the pattern will come out. The S2 uses one light for a certain stroke and two lights on the other stroke. Not really good but just some trial and error to experiment with. I've included the GUI code which makes a spiky spiral with the pen and you can see just how different the pattern is with the off point LEDs.
  • WhitWhit Posts: 4,191
    Beautiful Carol!
  • Very nice Carol!
  • Progress on the Light Pen!
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Ain't no stopping you now! Nice update.
  • xanaduxanadu Posts: 3,347
    edited 2016-03-17 16:16
    My Activity Bot wants in on this! I'm going to try printing some words and images today. I also have the S2 setup with a single RGB LED on the pen port ready to go for the spirals.

    For the Activity Bot, I used 15 LEDs across with a max time 15 seconds, using half second time slots I have a total of 450 RGB "pixels" to mess around with. I may go down to 0.25 second slots depending on what that looks like.

    Interestingly you can see the bumps in my office carpet in the image. Also very little current is used by the LED strip, because it is very dim. This allowed me to power it directly from the on board 5v regulator. I was pleasantly surprised that there were no signal issues and everything worked very smoothly.

    This is the first thing I've done with this robot, the built in encoders are awesome I did very little tweaking to get it to track straight.



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  • Hmmmm, that lightbar idea has a lot of potential! Great idea!
  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Awesome, John! Should be easy enough for you to write some letters with that setup, too. I can come up with lots of other time-consuming projects for you if you like. :)


    Speaking of jumping in, have you posted anything in the figure 8 challenge (F8C)? Don't be shy!
  • Thanks Carol you're a source of great inspiration.

    Erco I really do need to do figure 8. Kind of sad that at least 100-200 of my posts here were about robots with encoders, I finally have two and don't use them...

    In a previous post on this thread I mentioned using software to overcome a short duration bulb mode. I tried this out using the S2 just now, and it didn't work as planned. It seems that the camera will take a random amount of time to write the image to SD. I put the camera on it's maximum 15 second exposure and setup an intervalometer to go off every 0.01 seconds. The time between pics is 1-2 seconds where nothing is captured.

    So in order to use the software you will need to also pause and start the robot too. The robots needs to go completely dark and the LEDs have to turn on and off perfectly in sync with the movement of the motors to not see the place where it stops and starts. Or more post production touch-up but that's not really fun either. I guess that will require some more thought. I'll have to hold off on the S2 part for now.

    The Activity Bot with the light bar is coming along. I moved the bar higher and will also experiment with making it vertical. I'm on letter "F", I'm writing a routine for each letter of the alphabet so I can spell things out easily.

    This will turn into a great Makerspace project. Wish you all could be there!
  • erco wrote: »
    Awesome, John! Should be easy enough for you to write some letters with that setup, too. I can come up with lots of other time-consuming projects for you if you like. :)


    Speaking of jumping in, have you posted anything in the figure 8 challenge (F8C)? Don't be shy!

    Just "print" an 8 with your lightbar. :D
  • I managed a Hello. I'm probably not going to work on this anymore until I buy or borrow a camera that can do longer than 15 second exposure. I would really like to reduce the number of LEDs on the bar and use multiple passes to make the image. I also need to consider how characters should be displayed, and try to not end up with a billion lines of code.

    If anyone is interested here is the Prop C code I started for this.
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  • Xanadu, that is wonderful!!!! I am really impressed!! I have to try this, my hubby has a professional camera and can take very long timetables. We are working on a night time drone spiral with LEDs right now.
  • Thank you! I can't wait to see what you do with the drone. I used to do that with micro rc airplanes. Here are some pics.

  • Those are really nice! I want to try and get some very specific spirals that are very geometric in form. The drone I have now is not programmable so it is hard to fly in a precise formation. When I acquire an Elev-8 I think it will be much easier.
  • Amazing work y'all!!!
    Hmmm... I think I know who;s responsible for all those crop circles we keep seeing. :-)
  • ....... We are working on a night time drone spiral with LEDs right now.

    I'm looking forward to see the result!

    .....I've just received from China an air pump for my RC-smoke machine......

  • xanadu wrote: »
    Thank you! I can't wait to see what you do with the drone. I used to do that with micro rc airplanes. Here are some pics.
    Awesome pictures! ! ! ! ! !
    You have made me to want a new camera!
  • WhitWhit Posts: 4,191
    edited 2016-03-18 20:15
    Sorry to have missed out on this stuff as it was happening. Been a bit busy here... See http://www.saintalbansepiscopal.org/2016/03/march-10-2016-st-albans.html and http://www.saintalbansepiscopal.org/2016/03/good-news.html

    I've been working on something like xanadu's cool light printing with the S2 using only an unmodified S2 and the GUI (tape to cover the Power LED and DB9 for Light Bleed) - Two column LED pass for the top of letters, a 180+ degree with correction turn and alignment, and a Three column LED pass for the bottom of letters. I am working on alignment now and then will shoot a long exposure photo - fun stuff (trying to do more with less via erco!). I was also going for HELLO! See photo... 5 LED high (column) X 4 LED wide (row) matrix per letter, two column gap between letters.

    Been sitting on this and I got passed up by you high achievers! Hopeful code and successful photos will follow. Keep up the pressure!
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  • ercoerco Posts: 20,244
    Yeah, I feel a bit left out too, but at least I'm busy building robots. I might post a vid soon of one doing a figure 8 with a BIG finish.
  • WhitWhit Posts: 4,191
    edited 2016-03-18 22:51
    Whit wrote: »
    I've been working on something like xanadu's cool light printing with the S2 using only an unmodified S2 and the GUI (tape to cover the Power LED and DB9 for Light Bleed) - Two column LED pass for the top of letters, a 180+ degree with correction turn and alignment, and a Three column LED pass for the bottom of letters. I am working on alignment now and then will shoot a long exposure photo - fun stuff (trying to do more with less via erco!). I was also going for HELLO! See photo... 5 LED high (column) X 4 LED wide (row) matrix per letter, two column gap between letters.

    Okay - here is the best effort yet on the EXTREMELY low-tech LED Dot Matrix printer for the S2 that I posted about above. The only modification to the S2 is tape over the programming port and Blue Power LED to stop light bleed.

    Code is written entirely on the GUI and uses Sub-routines for different LED configurations. The time-lapse photo is a bit shaky because it is over 2 minutes long. Remember to that this is a pass left to right for the top of each letter, a turn and a pass right to left for the bottom of each letter - alignment and rotation of that critical turn are done by trial and error - only in the GUI!

    Code attached as is the sketch from above for the pattern and the photo (Software version 2, Trail 3.1).

    Edit: Just noting that the gap on the "O!" is on the side following the turn - so to fix this - the turn should be tighter and less final rotation - that way, the "O!" should be more closed and the "H" will not be compressed. Otherwise - alignment is pretty good.
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  • Holy Cow Whit!!!! It must have taken a lot of time and trial and error to program this! I am truly blown away. You have certainly raised the bar with this one. I have another idea to try with the Scribbler. It sort of combines what you have done and what Xanadu has done. If I make a slanted bar of LEDs to fit in the S2 pen hole and spin the S2 for a POV type of display.
  • xanaduxanadu Posts: 3,347
    edited 2016-03-19 02:08
    NikosG, you should get a camera with bulb, the 15 seconds isn't that bad unless you cant stop. It's probably not good for anything flying, but ground stuff can get away with it. If you get a Cannon camera they have the CHDK firmware which is great for this.

    Whit, that is a good test. Nice work, I started with a time table just like you have. I wonder if you could use line following to help it out?

    I did a figure 8 test today. I had a hard time with wheel slipping, I ended up adding weight and ramping and things got a little better. My Figure 8 entry will be much better :)

    These pics do not lie, every little imperfection shows up. It is very useful, but don't kick the robot in the dark room!
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  • I put the instructions for the light pen on my facebook page and on Robothon's page. Go to either facebook.com/Robothon or facebook.com/CarolLynnHazlett.
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  • WhitWhit Posts: 4,191
    @xanadu - beautiful

    @Carol - will check it out!
  • NikosGNikosG Posts: 705
    edited 2016-03-21 23:55
    smoke%20_machine_sketchup1.jpg
    Well......, I can't keep my enthusiasm with this small gadget I made ! Although I'm still waiting some parts from e-bay in order to complete it, first test are totally successful! This is an idea of my DIY RC-smoke machine. I estimate that the entire weight will reach 400 gr approximately. This is no problem for the ELEV-8 V3! The only I'm not sure is the quality of the smoke in the air, especially because ELEV-8's propellers will create a big turbulence....
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  • WhitWhit Posts: 4,191
    HOLY Smoke?

    Sorry - I had to...
  • Is there a place in perdition for perpetual punners?
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