I am a professor of Applied Physics at Caltech and we are looking for a laboratory technician. The position is full time, and the primary responsibility will be to run a helium liquefier (this is a complex system which takes helium gas from our experiments and turns it back into liquid helium near absolute zero, 4K). No experience with such a system is required, we will provide training on this system. The ideal candidate will have a passion for science, working with scientific equipment, working with our research groups. Experience with electronics and/or machining is a plus, but not essential. We are flexible about educational background and are more interested in finding someone who is enthusiastic about the work and willing and able to learn. Caltech is a terrific place to work.

If this sounds interesting, please send a resume to:
Prof. Keith Schwab
schwab@caltech.edu
626-395-2986 (office)
www.kschwabresearch.com

If this is not the right fit for you, please let your friends and colleague know about the opportunity. Our intention is to fill this position as soon as we find the right person.

Thanks and see you at the Robotics Club meeting,
Keith

I would like to be joined by those with a strong background in Robotics, Arduino, Open-source Hardware, etc. We will be discussing our opinions on the local Robot news and various topics. If you feel strong enough to be involved, please let me know. If you know someone who is, please let me know. This will be streamed On-Air so anyone can watch and ask questions and I may be able to get Kelly Ness to moderate questions and comments so that we can answer questions on the fly. Sireesh Adimadhyam , Richard Wooding , Steve Berry Andrew Smith and Axel Lottel are all definite invitees. We need to work out which evenings will work best – I’m leaning toward Saturday afternoon or evening seeing as how we have a real-live Robotics Club on Sundays. We may even use every other Sunday, for the days we aren’t meeting IRL.

I actually just watched a presentation by Chris Walker (the inventor of the Netduino) a couple of months back.

The Netduino is 100% open source and provides Arduino shield pin compatibility. Like the XDuino and other non-AVR “duino” platforms before, they also provide code compatibility with the Processing libraries used on Arduino.

The Netduino uses the standard .NET Micro Framework SDK. If you outgrow the Netduino, there are a number of high-end boards (200MHz! 8MB!) that you can get for a few hundred dollars. Some even have integrated networking and touchscreens. Any standard .NET Micro Framework code should move between boards by simply re-deploying the application to another board. Plus, their design files are Creative Commons licensed–so you can remix them into your own custom board if you’d like. Lots of commercial customers will do this in high-volume applications.

That said, most microcontroller projects will work nicely on the Netduino.

The Netduino SDK includes added functionality (AnalogInput, PWM) which is Netduino-specific. But it’s open-source, so if you wanted to use your code on another platform you could port the behind-the-scenes C code for that to another processor as well.

Now, for a comparison between the Arduino and the Netduino… Arduino is actually a pretty cool board, and the guys who run the project are pretty swell guys. Here are a few points of differentiation:

1. Arduino uses a simplified version of C, so it’s pretty low-level. If you’re making a really fast-moving blinking lights application using the GPIO pins directly, Arduino is probably a better choice. Netduino uses managed code–which does lots of awesome things for you (and many of them very efficiently)–but there’s some additional overhead there.

2. Netduino is 48MHz, 32-bit, has 128KB of Flash (up to 200KB if you remove FileSystem support and such), 60KB of RAM, etc. Arduino is 16MHz, 8-bit, has 32KB of Flash, and a few KB of RAM. They have higher-end versions available with more Flash.

3. Both platforms can be used for simple projects in a pretty straightforward fashion. But as you create larger, more sophisticated programs… As you start wanting to pause your code and step through it to fix a bug in your code… And especially if you like event-based programming, garbage collection, and threading… Well, that’s where Netduino becomes the only option.

Both projects (Arduino and Netduino) are helping build the same open source community. They’ll also be building some very specific accessories for Netduino and actively promoting and supporting them for Arduino. They’d like to see the whole community grow. But that said, Netduino is a really excellent product. If you want to do cool things with a microcontroller–without all the complication–Netduino is for you.

Tahoe II by Device Solutions (100MHz)
Comparison Table

The Tamiya gearbox assemblies we ordered were of high quality plastic, metal and even came with lithium grease, but during the class we faced many hardships. You can find great reviews online (these really are good gearbox assemblies at a decent price), but I thought I’d give my 2 cents about why we probably will not be using this model in the future for large classes and give a list of solutions in case you run into the same problems as we did.

1.) Assembly took roughly 90 minutes. It was a great exercise in patience and eye/hand coordination, but I don’t think it’s something I need to do more than once in a lifetime.

2.) Working with 40 people in a presentation room means when you drop one tiny screw or gear, you’re out another 10 minutes crawling around on the floor searching for it.

3.) There are NO EXTRA PARTS. If you lose something, you do not have a working gearbox.

4.) A few people complained that the boxes they received had been opened already (I was the only one with access and didn’t tamper with them) and there would be a small grommet or screw missing which impeded the functionality of their Robot.

5.) The bottom of the box is left open, which in most cases is fine, but considering our robots were running around in non-sterile environments, any dust, hair, carpet fibers or dirt from the ground would stick to the grease and create wear on the teeth of the gears over time. We were able to remedy this mostly by applying a few short strips of masking tape to cover the opening. Just make sure the tape doesn’t touch the gears.

Now, in the future, we are looking into going with a completely contained gearbox assembly that comes in two separate parts so that they can be spread as far apart or butted up against once another if needed. I’ve already spoken to someone about getting a few to test with and will post an update with my findings.

Any suggestions?

Today around noon I will be in Google+ Hangouts working on sensors and motors, soldering and uploading code. I’ll try to post a blog with documentation, schematics and photos within a couple of weeks.

“I was looking at images after the flight that showed a blood red creek and was thinking, could this really be what I think it is? Can you really do that, surely not?” the pilot tells sUAS news. “Whatever it is, it was flat out gross. Then comes the question of who do I report this to that can find out what it is and where it is coming from.”

The pilot, who has asked to remain anonymous, was put in touch with the Texas Environmental Crimes Task Force, who began monitoring the plant for violations. “Any time there is some type of discharge into the Trinity River… especially from an environmental standpoint, this is a real concern,” Health and Human Services chief Zach Thompson told sUAS News. “I think they discovered a secondary pipe again is my understanding, so the question is who installed the pipe and why was it there.”

The drone hobbyist says he captured the footage from the plant using only a point and shoot camera and a $75 airframe.

-Via Yahoo News, Dallas, TX.

Some other shout-outs from today’s lab go to Junix from Robotis who is very graciously donating one of their OLLO kits to the LA Robotics club for us to test. Junix showed us a line following program, and little Kutya, our club mascot was terrified and curious of this being that moved, but was without smell.

We also had some fun with DARwIn-OP. There may be other donations and tutorials coming from Robotis, who are interested in being involved in STEM programs for young children, so we’ll keep you posted here and on the meet-up site.

The LA Robotics Club will also be promoting and supporting the Robotis booth at Maker Faire this year. Hopefully, many of you can join us. So far, 16 club members are planning to attend. If you’d like to RSVP, you can get tickets here.

Today our featured member project comes from Tahnee, and it’s a “KIT-e-CAT.” I just made that up. She is using an Arduino Uno, conductive thread, LCD displays for eyes with IR sensors on each side for motion tracking. It’s almost(!) cuddly, and its audio output purr is a delight. We’ll post video when this cat comes to life.

And lastly, Michael and I worked on the next installment of the ArdBot project for Lab. “Mood light” will include a Piezo buzzer and RGB LED combo. We soldered the current limiting resistors for each LED in-line with a cut jumper wire and then protected it with short lengths of shrink tubing. Pink heat guns are hawt!!

We are off for Mother’s Day this weekend, and then Maker Faire is the following weekend of the 19th and 20th. So if members would like to bring their ArdBot kits in that last weekend of May, we can ready some of the bits and pieces that take quite a bit of time, like the heat shrink resistor wiring. Prepping this will help things move more smoothly on the day of our next ArdBot class.

See you at our next lab. ‘Til then, happy tinkering!
-Sashibot