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Sparkfun has a converse going right now, which looks tempting. The only thing is I need parts I totally don’t have to qualify. I’ll lol into the economic feasibility while working on a general design. Thinking I might take six dollar teddy and make him the priority.
My current thought, based on streamlining the teddy design schedule to achieve stair dominance giving the right to bear arms. By bear arms, I mean to give it hands, hands that can grasp tools, tools that are claws. I want creepy teddy bear clawing its way up the stairs.
So, to recap, I’m thinking of fast tracking teddy to the full external armature. I’ll put all the heavy stuff in the legs and feet to keep my center of gravity low. I’ll give him arms that end in claws to drag himself up the stairs.
I should start looking at proof of concept. Probably do my initial consultation with the patient, for posterity, and then start seeing stuff up stairs.

So tired. Not really sure why, but meh. Trucking on.
How would I determine the crush pressure of a submersible. Obvious idea would be building it and then applying pressure until it cracked like an egg. Of course while commuting home with the Wif last night I remembered that mineral oil is electrically chill. I could just fill it with mineral oil. I’d have to check the pressure characteristics. Probably decide on the scope of the project.
I want to see the bottom of Greenlake. Blackman’s Lake would be dope as well.
If I went longer on the deployment, I’d need a charging system. I was thinking bring out to neutral buoyancy a few inches under the waters surface. Sugar cells on the top should be able to charge during peak hours, and then it could sink down again when the light is no longer enough. Just an idea.

I still have no patience. While seething with annoyance, I got thinking of a could drone ideas. See, I’m not a big fan of 30 seconds of play, loud noises, and easily broken parts. I want to go low, quirky, subtle. I started today, maybe finished last night, thinking of how to do the motive power behind a sand worm. Arakis style yo.
How does my phone not know the name Arakis?
Right, sand worm, I think I need to start reading Dune again. If you’re going to do something, do it right. In this case take as much inspiration from one of the, admittedly I maintain a long list of books, none of this top ten bullshit, best sci-fi novels around. Most of the follow-up novels aren’t bad either.
I think about one thing, and started thinking back on how to do a remote diving robot as well. That one might be based on a bottle off Jack Daniels.

My patience level today is low. Somedays my patience level is absolutely terrible. Over the last decade or so, my moods have become much more manageable, but perfection is still not achievable. Usually it manifests impatience, which is a definite improvement over my youthful anger, but I still feel bad about… somedays.

Superheroes.
(Most of the following is going to be based on the current set of movies. I am not geek enough.)
Many of them have a science background. Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider while working part-time in a lab. The Fantastic Four were all scientistsish. Batman has an entire R&D division on his side. Iron Man and Ant Man are both R&D divisions on there own. Then the Hulk, he made himself in the lab, and midst the time he still works in a lab. All these people are hella smart.
…and they hit stuff. Iron Man, faced with fighting the Hulk, builds bigger armor. He compensates. Ant Man, given the ability to grow or shrink at will, but to mention call a legion of ants to his side? He hits things. The only wit out of the Fantastic Four is when Mr. Fantastic thinks things out because he’s kinda useless.
Then you have villains. Scarecrow uses psychoactive drugs. The Mad Hatter mashes mind control chips. Dr. Doom builds his armies, weapons and designs clever traps capitalizing on each opponents weaknesses.
Is the Super Hero Industrial Complex anti-science?

My original thought consisted of a V shaped channel, with the bottles standing up right. Pressure would be maintained by a string lasso being wound in by a motor. It would probably work, but even adding that I wasn’t counting the load area, due to its general characteristics, I’m not super happy with the footprint or gestalt.
This brings me to thinking vertical.Have the bottles in a tilted rectangular hopper with the output rotating out and down. It might look dope but I’m pretty sure it’ll be more work. One of my co-workers pointed out the silliness of the project for two score bottles a month at most, but there’s a principle to it. At the end of the loader have two rubber wheels, one on the bottom pulling the bottles in, and the one on the top will push bottles out, kinda like a vacuum feed on a printer.
As long as I have the filling automated, any which way is fine by me.

So I tried modeling in Blender. First try was abysmal, but I just need practice. And to think about the project differently. Rather than try to free hand, think of the shape I’m making and what the shape is made of. Antlers, for example, are just stacks of Ys. Pinch and twist a bit and I’ll get my vertex number down and have some organic looking structures. The head is a pinched rectangle.
Then we have forming. I’ll have to check if solder will join my wire spool. Of course, now I get to thinking of the strength of the wire. If it can’t hold the paper long enough to get a single layer dried, it’s no good to me. I’ll have to give it a try and then consider other wire choices.

Started trying to freehand my forms last night, to while away the time as I was providing moral support for the Wif’s studying. Did not work.
I think I need to look at how I’m doing it. It wasn’t that the wire was too flimsy, though it’s hella flimsy. It’s that I was going long pieces, and then trying to knot then together. I should probably just muck around with my wire a bit. Maybe I should try soldering the joins.
On a different note, I decided to install Guild Wars 2 again. The story and environment are beautiful. It’s the gameplay. With the expansion, I have hopes.
I was also thinking about the classic DOS game Omega. Now that was an original game that I haven’t seen recreated since. You program tanks to autonomously fight each other. If I had a stack of cash, I’d totally buy the rights, and rerelease it. Since I don’t, I think it makes for a good breaking off point for a different game idea. Post apocalyptic, you’re trapped in a bunker, you need to scavenge to survive, so you build drones. Have low quality video of what your drones see, remote control is possible but spotty. I like it.

Regarding the pump, the peristaltic one I looked at is rocking a speedy 100ml/min. This means I’d be getting a brain melting bottle every three to four minutes.
So, idea next! Fill height sensing is a must, but, rather than a pump, use a motor as the valve. Just need to build a filling jig. Take a cork or bottle cap or whatever, mount… a solenoid, yeah, a solenoid to pinch the silicone tubing. Have the distance sensor grab the range to the cider. Feed the range to an Arduino, or whatever, when the height hits, kill the flow.
I also want an autoloader. Thinking like an autocannon.