Projects to find the limits of what is possible right now?

[coppercone2]

"or extracting proteins from human fecal waste for use in food production, as long as the end result is clean and of acceptable quality for human consumption."

If you put that in a resume there is a Boiler Room job waiting for you. Wolf of wall street. Sell me this pen? Fuck that. Sell me this turd.

fucking ruthless.

man could sell anything. penny stock, contents of a porta potty, whatever.

*i would install a lock on my lunch box though

[ali_asadzadeh]

Nice topic , I have a 5 USD wrist watch that's made in china,  As soon as I saw it, I told myself if you don't buy it you are stupid and you always think with 5USD you can not do anything.



It's so complicated! it's like G-shock brand, with all that mechanical complexities, the material it has used, the effort and the fact that I know it has passed at least 2000Km to Iran and has passed at least 3 people making profit down the line, it would bit the shit out of me what are the pushing limits

Also I have these Ideas, we need a programming language with the power of C++ and it's ability to use ASM and also ease and wast free libraries of Node.

Also some games like the "Ready Player one"

[SiliconWizard]

Well, there is nothing inherently wrong in designing a short-lived gadget that barely does what its sales pitch promises.

There is also nothing inherently wrong in using human hair to make a soy sauce analog, or extracting proteins from human fecal waste for use in food production, as long as the end result is clean and of acceptable quality for human consumption.

Well, I don't know what is your own definition of "wrong" here, in both cases. I know many philosophers have been debating the concept for centuries.

Regarding the shit- and hair-based food (let's call things by their name), wrong or not (whatever that means), that really isn't appealing.

As to the design of short-lived gadgets, that tends to promote bad engineering whether you want it or not. I don't know if bad engineering is wrong, but it's certainly bad, as much per se as its consequences (in terms of waste/resource consumption/pollution for instance).

[Nominal Animal]

Well, I don't know what is your own definition of "wrong" here, in both cases.

Well, people happily eat pink slime and chicken washed in chlorine at the Lard of the Free, don't they?
I don't think chemical extraction of amino acids from any source is any worse, if the end result is clean.

[cdev]

You should know, this is not a good idea. Human hair is often toxic. People should be aware that its one of the ways people eliminate all sorts of garbage that our bodies need to get rid of. Its contaminated with all sorts of chemicals. You can't feed it to animals, let alone people.

Well, there is nothing inherently wrong in designing a short-lived gadget that barely does what its sales pitch promises.

There is also nothing inherently wrong in using human hair to make a soy sauce analog, or extracting proteins from human fecal waste for use in food production, as long as the end result is clean and of acceptable quality for human consumption.

Yes it is, even if its sterilized so its no longer contaminated with all kinds of diseases, bacteria, fungi and parasites, its still going to have a witches brew of heavy metals etc. Heavily skewed to contain the very things the human body most tries to eliminate via its hair follicles.

[cdev]

We have lots of ways to make amino acids, industrial processes with yeasts etc, which will give you high quality food grade amino acids. For cheap.

So if your business case is making amino acids, look elsewhere.

That said, there are things that could be done with human hair to use it. It might add nitrogen or porosity to soil, like chicken shit, bird droppings, etc, it could be used as a soil amendment. It could also be used in clay based building materials, like bricks or used in clay pots.

Some time ago I had a dog who produced a LOT of fur, kind of like owning your own personal sheep. I used to save his fur in shopping bags and when I accumulated a lot of it I gave it to people who made it into sweaters. Fur like that has a lot of uses. Its best use is likely its natural function, as insulation. It would make good insulation of almost any kind. It didn't smell.

Well, I don't know what is your own definition of "wrong" here, in both cases.

Well, people happily eat pink slime and chicken washed in chlorine at the Lard of the Free, don't they?
I don't think chemical extraction of amino acids from any source is any worse, if the end result is clean.

[Electro Detective]

The post is getting a bit gritty now 

The deleted comment re  'eating anything to survive'  may fly ok in the movies, and sell lots of attention seeking liars books, but just try it for real and see how you scrub up

especially when choking to death on stuck 'kernals'    and rat bones due to a parched dry throat and toxic filled constipated intestinal tract etc


Good luck finding any rats or mice btw, they usually hang out where there is FOOD and wood panels/walls to chew through for access

They won't be digging through bricks or oxy torching steel panels to risk becoming food for human captives,
especially if they can't smell a drawcard on the other side, and human waste smells ain't it   

Good luck catching them too, when your energy and speed levels are at snail pace. 

Gotta love Hollywood BS... 

[Nominal Animal]

Yes it is, even if its sterilized so its no longer contaminated with all kinds of diseases, bacteria, fungi and parasites, its still going to have a witches brew of heavy metals etc.

Well, that would be analogous to a cheap and cheerful small gadget that occasionally electrocutes you, wouldn't it?

The post is getting a bit gritty now 

Well, to be honest, I wouldn't mind eating rat meat if I knew it was a wild one, and not say Nth generation sewer rat.  So rat is not the offensive part; the offensive part is that typical rats are full of diseases, chemicals, bacteria, viruses, and parasites with their own bacteria, viruses, and parasites. EU didn't ban chlorine washed chicken because it was dangerous, but because it is only needed when you grow your chickens in insane conditions ignoring all basic hygiene.

In electronics, having there be cheap chinesium USB wall warts that usually won't zap you or your devices on the market is not the problem; the problem is when you cannot tell which ones are reliable and which ones are those dangerous cheapies.  (I don't buy anything like those from fleabay for exactly that reason.)

By extension, having LED lamps and USB wall warts that are okay and cheap is not a problem; the problem is when you assume that that is the best we can do, and plan accordingly.

Even in the software world, the fact that most programs are not that reliable, and occasionally crash and lose your data, is not a problem.  It only becomes a problem when it becomes the norm and expected, even when it could be easily avoided.  (I mean, I don't expect perfect software. I just expect users to complain if the software crashes too often, instead of just shrugging that oh well, there went your data, nothing I can do, thanks for your money and pity that happened to you, computer says no, bye.)

Finding out the limits of actually what is possible right now, if nothing else, gives some perspective to examine what we have accepted as a norm, and a point to compare to.

[cdev]

Good friends and family are worth a lot.

[Nominal Animal]

Some time ago I had a dog who produced a LOT of fur, kind of like owning your own personal sheep. I used to save his fur in shopping bags and when I accumulated a lot of it I gave it to people who made it into sweaters.

When I was a kid, my neighbor did the same, just to see if it could be done.  The dogs we had (Finnish Spitz mix from the same litter) had too coarse outer coat, but the inner coat made rough, but passable "wool".  My parents house had a cyclone-based central vacuum cleaner (which did not mind large quantities of dog fur), and in the spring, our dog loved to get rid of the hot fluffier winter undercoat by brushing and vacuuming it off.  He also used to pre-warm my bed whenever I was going to sleep. I never needed to shoo him, as he always left of his own volition when I was about to go to sleep -- with a few head scritches as the obligatory thank-you, of course.  Much nicer than a sweater, methinks.

He was an odd mutt.  Loved fresh carrots.  Drove squirrels from up to a kilometer away to the pines surrounding our house, and often lost his voice for a day or two afterwards.  Ate all the voles around the greenhouse.  Hated reindeer with passion; might have eaten one or two, but we don't talk about that.  Let little kids ride him and tug his fur without complaint (quickly slipping away if they were too rough), but almost ate two Watchtower-leaflet-offerers when we weren't at home: didn't mind visitors when we were at home, but barked and growled like a gremlin if he was the only one home.  And obviously considered himself a four-footed human.

Because of him, and my brothers' dogs, I've always been interested in those gadgets that purport to analyze dogs' brainwaves or vocalizations.  That is one of the fields where what is technically possible is way ahead of what is really feasible in the financial/commercial sense.  In particular, FMRI imaging to compare their brain activity in different contexts has shown that the human-canine relationship is not just about food, shelter, and companionship; the interaction is deep and mutual bonding real.

So, as an example of an electronic project to find what is possible right now, consider dog sensor bands, a large storage and processing backend, and humans with cell phone apps or something like that to record their understanding of the dogs intent/vocalization/expressions.  You'd need a lot of them, with very little to gain financially (compared to the cost of the system), but even statistically (considering that the humans' interpretations will have significant error), there would be a lot to learn there.  As far as I see, the existing forays in this direction ("translator bands", basically everything except medical research) have been attempts to fleece off money off pet owners, because they're often happy to buy such gadgets even when they know they don't work.

[TrickyNekro]

Now I will actually be doing some shameless self promotion but hey, it´s not often I get that excited about something I try to build.

Now by any means, this project is not going to fly us to Mars but it sure breaks two major headaches people had with hobby servos.
I designed a board able to replace the standard PCB in hobby servos, it adds feedback, comms over CAN and a truly "HV" option,
being able to run the servo off 4S LiPo packs directly. Still in the development but I recently made a small BOM for the thing.

For 10 pieces the materials would cost me around 18€ tops, probably around 16€, boards included and of course the outrageous 24% Greek VAT.
So say you buy an MG995 for around 20€ you would have a nice digital servo, probably compatible with CANOpen... Also open-source (still non commercial though),
so you can try to build your own program around it. And I suppose if I ever wanted to start manufacturing it, it wouldn´t cost more (lower prices for high volume parts and manufacturing included).
Try to find a servo that comes for that cost and it´s digital with feedback. Hardly any...

The funny thing is that all these are just a byproduct, it´s been years I wanted to create something like that just for fun, but hey! It´s progressing!

[Nominal Animal]

I designed a board able to replace the standard PCB in hobby servos, it adds feedback, comms over CAN and a truly "HV" option,
being able to run the servo off 4S LiPo packs directly.

I've looked at OpenServos, as the analog nature and timing-based standard servo control seems .. complicated? to me.  Sure, using a time-based control signal makes the servo itself simple, but it does so by shifting all the complexity to the controller.  I mean, for most use cases, telling the servo the desired state and getting back the actual state in digital form would be so much more useful.

Something like a SPI but with a shift register, so you could chain any number of servos together, and control them with a single SPI bus, would be really nice.  Sure, others do need acceleration profiles and whatnot.. but a simple serial shift register control with state feedback would be lovely.  Hmm.. Is there a cheap Padauk chip suitable for this? 

About the "HV" option: Do you use the same ground for both digital I/O and motor?

I have a SmoothieBoard (an LPC1769 with four A4988 stepper controllers, a couple of MOSFETs, and various I/O), but the way they used the same ground plane for both digital logic and motors makes it a pain in the butt in my opinion. (If you connect it via USB, your computer ground is now the motor ground. That isn't good.  Yeah, I can isolate the USB 1.1, but why would you design it like that?)

It matters less with hobby servos -- definitely so for anything battery-powered! --, so perhaps I'm just obsessed over keeping the digital logic isolated from the noisy motor world and avoiding ground loops that so easily burn out my precious little toys, though.

[coppercone2]

This thread is proof engineering work drives people crazy. Discuss your projects

Discusses eating rat organs.

[TrickyNekro]

I designed a board able to replace the standard PCB in hobby servos, it adds feedback, comms over CAN and a truly "HV" option,
being able to run the servo off 4S LiPo packs directly.

I've looked at OpenServos, as the analog nature and timing-based standard servo control seems .. complicated? to me.  Sure, using a time-based control signal makes the servo itself simple, but it does so by shifting all the complexity to the controller.  I mean, for most use cases, telling the servo the desired state and getting back the actual state in digital form would be so much more useful.

Nah, they use PPM and then something like a de-serializer at the receiver, and for analog servos they use op-amps in a PID like configuration (if not only P), which you can totally achieve with a single op-amp
some resistors and some caps, plus the drive stage.

About the "HV" option: Do you use the same ground for both digital I/O and motor?

In the hobby market "HV" means around 7.8 - 8.something... In my design I go absolutely max at 18V.

Well about the ground thing... Yes it uses the same ground for everything... BUT and that´s the beauty of CAN Bus!
CAN Bus does not need ground to operate, cause it´s a differential signal. You can have a separate "power ground" and a separate "signal ground".

If you want to get extra freaky for whatever reasons there are also isolated CAN Bus drivers, but that should be on the controller side, it´s plain stupid to put it in the servos.
Plus by no means I had the space for something like this. That´s something you do on controller side.

[TrickyNekro]

This thread is proof engineering work drives people crazy. Discuss your projects

Discusses eating rat organs.

Bruh! I got this hanging out of my door... I came prepared bruh! 




Edit: As a fellow RA2 fan I expect understanding and compassion in this matter. :-P

[Nominal Animal]

This thread is proof engineering work drives people crazy.

Nope, I've always been this way.  It might indicate that crazy people get into engineering and science, though.

Besides, rats are not that different to guinea pigs, and guinea pigs are a staple food in the Andes.

Now tall pig, however, that I would decline. 

CAN Bus does not need ground to operate, cause it´s a differential signal. You can have a separate "power ground" and a separate "signal ground".

Yup; I haven't used CAN bus at all yet.  Nor servos, really (although always wanted to build a hexapod). I mostly use steppers. Got lots of small ones, too!

I came prepared bruh!

For a second there, I read that as "I came peppered, bruh!".  Now I'm hungry.

[coppercone2]

 

I start thinking that everything has a spec. Like i imagine stuff with little blueprints and infographics sometimes. And the little datasheet blurb.

[SiliconWizard]

This thread is proof engineering work drives people crazy. Discuss your projects

Discusses eating rat organs.

Well, this is no proof of that from a logic standpoint. Just proves that some engineers tend to discuss crazy stuff.

That said, if it shows anything, that may be that some engineers have a hard time focusing on just one topic, and this is indeed something that I've noticed over the years.

[TrickyNekro]

That said, if it shows anything, that may be that some engineers have a hard time focusing on just one topic, and this is indeed something that I've noticed over the years.

Thank god there is still hope out there!!! 

[RoGeorge]

In the programming world, one of my interests is finding out ways to speed up certain types of simulations (high-performance computing stuff).

If you are not already doing it, you might like 'Programing Kata', or 'Code Kata'.

[Nominal Animal]

If you are not already doing it, you might like 'Programing Kata', or 'Code Kata'.

I mostly just find answers to oddball and not that popular programming and geometry questions.  I don't know that much (even when I do, I soon forget; I'm not keen on spending my meager brain capacity for remembering stuff when there is more interesting things for it to do), but I'm pretty good at finding stuff out and solving problems.