The first thing to build in a technically challenging project is a functional prototype that helps to test and iterate on the core technical problems without being constrained by environmental, reliability, or aesthetic requirements. For the first functional prototype of...
Using a cell phone, some old dice I had laying around, and a table in my garage I was able to capture some fairly consistent images of both individual dice to use as templates and groups of dice to use...
There are plenty of examples online, especially academic content, involving people trying to detect the presence of and values of game dice. Classic six sided dice (with “pips” or “dots” instead of Arabic numerals) are the most common target because...
My wife and I started playing D&D with some friends a few years ago (after a gateway 3-year Gloomhaven campaign!) and were subsequently introduced to the insane dice culture of the hobby. While there are certainly apps available to roll...
When my personal cutting boards began to show their age this fall I began to search for good replacements. After talking to my wife about my research she asked why I would want to buy cutting boards when I’ve engraved...
I decided to build a miniature 2′ x 2′ version of the clock before beginning the final 4′ x 4′ version. This let me test out the different methods and processes used before a lot of material was on the...
I spend a lot of time in the summer swimming and floating with friends and family in the lake down the hill from my house. It is easy to lose track of time while relaxing, and I don’t bring a...
Turning a tablature file into a set of physical motions on the robot involves a lot of software work: parsing a GuitarPro file, considering potential fingerings for each note, planning the transitions between those fingerings, and optimizing the solution around...
The general architecture of a robot guitar will obviously share similarities with the way humans interact with the guitar: a set of actuators for plucking and a set of actuators for fretting. However, the complexity of some of those actuators...
While it is tempting to jump right into prototype design, the first step in any project should be translating the project goals into technical requirements. The two main categories of requirements for this project are picking and fretting, but there...