Entries by Harpo
I’ve installed the WordPress Tipjoy plugin. This allows users to easily donate to the LC(A) via Tipjoy, a Twitter-integrated service. It’s pretty cool. Hopefully this will allow people to donate money easily in an affordable amount (currently 25 cents).
We did some more work on the iPod. We took more photos, and Will has added them to the Facebook gallery. We’ve also decided to install iPod Linux on the finalized product, and, if we can sell it on eBay, to go into production.
Will has created an LC(A) Facebook page. If you have Facebook, I would strongly encourage you to check the page out. I don’t really know what it can do, but it seems pretty interesting. There appears to be some sort of mechanism for creating advertisements to promote a page. I am not yet sure if [...]
It is now possible to donate to the LC(A) directly and securely using PayPal. Use the button in the sidebar on any page. If we can raise enough money this way, Will and I will probably file as a 501c(3) nonprofit organization (the Legal Conglomerate of Awesomeness [or LC(A) for short]), making all further donations [...]
We’re knocking off work for the day. We’ve made a significant amount of progress on the theme, which is looking pretty excellent. It’s not quite ready to go live yet, so we’re reverting back to the normal one, but it’s almost there. I think we will be able to finish it entirely in one more [...]
We’re doing some work on the WordPress theme. We’ve got the basic template structure created, and we are working on populating it with some skeleton content as we start to do the layout. This is extremely exciting.
We’ve decided to move the entire site to WordPress. This requires redesigning everything from the ground up. We’re in the process of moving the content we put up last night to some WordPress pages. The next step will be building our own template from scratch. I haven’t done this before, although I’ve done a lot [...]
Well, we’ve explored our options. But they don’t work. Both Will and I devised separate systems for transferring the torque from the “gears” (which we are now referring to as the “quote-gears”) to the differential. Both systems were hampered and ultimately made useless by the actual geometry of the pieces. Axles stick out and interfere [...]
Several major redesigns later, we’re still having problems. Although the “gears” we installed are pretty much the burliest thing ever, the gears between them and the differentials are not. On the side of the car that has an extra gear (so that the two pairs of wheels turn in the proper direction), the whole gear [...]
We’re putting the car back together, slowly but surely. We’ve just completed one major redesign of the central chassis frame, and are working on another. It is rather agonizing, but we’re hopeful that the car will be in much better shape after we’re done.
We’ve created an experimental implementation of the new bevel “gears”. As of now, the car is in two large pieces; Will had to remove one of the ends, including the shock arms, wheels, and steering assembly, in order to install the new system. It looks like it may work very well, but we will need [...]
We may have found a way around the looming potential redesign. It is too early to tell for sure, but we are hopeful. We may be able to use some rather odd pieces which may or may not have been originally intended as gears to transfer torque instead of the older bevel gears. There will [...]
Well, we’re having some problems. To say the least. After installing the new steering systems at either end, we had a lot of problems with the gears not locking correctly in the drive train. When under a lot of force, the motor would stall and the gears would skip repeatedly. We reinforced and consolidated the [...]
We have successfully incorporated a worm gear into the steering rack. We used one of the weird double-beveled gears to achieve the right clearance. We are about to duplicate this system to the other side of the car, and then we will start working on the touch bumpers again.
We incorporated rack-and-worm drive systems into both the shifting assembly and the steering. We are still working on mounting the drive motor for the steering. We had a lot of trouble at first, but then we realized that we could use an intermediary gear between the worm and the rack. This makes it a lot [...]
As you can see, we are now on the new site. Please bear with us as we work on it. For the moment, you can see the Plog and the galleries here. Soon this section of the website will be integrated into the theme we are designing for the rest (you can see how it’s [...]
I am taking tomorrow off work, and Will and I will be working the entire day and part of Thursday morning. We are going to get a lot done. We also finally have the server information for the new location of the website, so by the end of our work, this Plog and the image [...]
Will’s gearbox system worked, but we decided to try a worm gear again. We’ve come up with a system that may work, but we have not finished it. We raised the worm gear up, and decreased the length of the rack, allowing us to place a gear on the worm shaft closer to the center [...]
Our main problem right now is the steering system. We are trying to find a way to make it slower and more powerful. We attempted to come up with a system that would drive the rack with a worm gear, but we had problems physically fitting a drive gear onto the worm gear’s axle without [...]
We have finished work for the day, and are currently cleaning up. We designed a new touch bumper based off of the one from the Mindstorms manual, extending the arms and remounting the touch sensors within the system, as well as redesigning the actual mount for the whole system. It functions almost perfectly. It will [...]
We are having a very hard time making the bumper system work. I spent about an hour and a half working on a system which we then completely discarded. This is a rather common occurrence; one of us has a brilliant idea which turns out to completely suck. This time it was my turn. I [...]
We are working on a new mounting system for the touch bumpers. One problem with the current one is that there is too much shear; the bumper twists when struck on the side. Ideally it will transfer the force of impact directly to the respective outboard touch sensor.
We’ll be working this weekend. After I get out of work on Saturday, we’re going to my school’s production of King Lear, and then Will is staying here. We will do some work Sunday morning before I have to work at 12.
We are done working. We are loading up my car with all of the stuff. We have not finished mounting the touch sensors. Although we came up with several ideas and built prototypes, none of them have worked properly. At the moment we are thinking of trying to mount the sensors vertically aligned with the [...]
We did some work on the shifting system, reinforcing the gearbox and bracing systems. This part is now complete, but we’ve run into problems in other areas. First of all, the touch bumpers have been far more complicated than we imagined. We have only now come up with a working model for them, and it [...]