Photo 365 - Cirque du Soleil

The circus is in town, as in Cirque du Soleil. Ovo is performing in front of the Mall of America

Photo 365 - Geek Culture Day

As a celebration of Geek Culture Day, I programmed an Arduino board to send the message "Hello Geek Cultures!" in Morse Code. The plural on cultures is because there are so many different ways of being geek- find yours and embrace it. A video of this code running has been posted to below for your enjoyment.

Photo 365 - Sunny Day

A nice sunny day in America.

Photo 365 - Back to the Future Delorean

I didn't start the day expecting to see a Delorean decked out in Back to the Future style. But there it is! Nicely done, the interior featured appropriate renderings as well. And yes, that is a person dressed as Batman in the background. Don't ask.

Photo 365 - Carriage Hills Paved

Been a while since I've posted a "Pic of the Day". Golf course development continues, here's a shot from the fairway.

Photo 365 Project - Minneapolis at 5 Miles

A weak picture of downtown Minneapolis from 5 miles south. It's from a phone camera not designed for distance, but a keeper because the sun has come out after days of haze.

It didn't fail, it just needs more work

I noticed this sketch on the Robotics team captain's notebook. He was planning the organizational structure and is apparently blissfully unaware of the negative connotations of the term "pyramid scheme". Either that or he has a sense of humor and sarcasm that I wasn't aware of until now.


One of the interesting aspects of working with a team of students on robotics (or perhaps on anything for that matter) is they seem to be free of idea censorship. They lack a filter that stops people from trying things because the probability of the idea working is too low. I'm lucky enough to work for a company that is not paralyzed with 'initiative deficiency', you may have seen idea censorship at work or even during volunteer activities; a sense of risk aversion so high there are no new ideas with enough chance of success to get implemented. So instead nothing new gets started. Its the old way or no way at all.

On the flip side, the robotics team tries out some ideas that fail. They pick themselves up, dust off, adjust, and try again. They never really consider these missteps a 'failure', just something that just needed a bit more work.

It's that kind of thinking that might be what a lot of organizations need.

Beyond the Robot

FIRST Robotics isn't just about the robot, it isn't even mainly about the robot. It is about hands on experience showing students that careers in engineering can be fun and rewarding. Along the way the students pick things up, like how to combine whatever resources you have on hand to solve (sometimes complex) problems.

One of the programming students set up a camera to take time lapse photos of a build session. He had worked out the system outside of robotics, cobbling together pieces from Ubuntu Linux, gPhoto, Python Scripts and cooked it all together to capture pictures from a digital camera.

But one problem remained. Occasionally the camera would freeze up. Some more scripts were put together to detect the camera hadn't sent photos in a particular time frame and triggered an Arduino board to cycle power using a relay hacked into an extension cord, forcing the camera to reboot. More scripts renamed the last cycle of files (to prevent overwrite) and the entire system was underway.

Robotics - Trebuchet Contest

It was time to warm the students up for the FIRST Robotics FRC build season. The team decided a fun way to prepare would be to have teams build trebuchets to throw a tennis ball.

Trebuchet building would let the students get some practice researching, designing, planning materials and building. It was quick, and was also something that could be opened up to non-students involved with the program; everyone from the team's sponsor companies to the school's custodial staff great guys, they have keys that get everywhere in the building, allow the students to transform the lunchroom into a robot test drive track and perhaps most importantly are tolerant of crazy robotics students tearing around the building at odd hours (insider info you may not be aware of; robots get built at night).

The company I work for is a sponsor of Team 2220, and I mentor the programming subteam (robots need code to go). So a small contingent from my company decided to play along in the trebuchet challenge. The attached video shows the small pyramid design we implemented really does work. While the custodial staff loaded 45 pounds of counterweight to clean up the field with their 43 foot throw, our little 5 pound power pyramid chucked the tennis ball over 14 feet. So I'd say our "foot per pound" ratio was looking pretty good.