motsu

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

He does little bursts of running with periods of walking in between, so I dont think it would work. Perhaps with other cats it would though

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Take out any spinning rust and pack those in a foam HDD case. Number them as you pull them for easy reinstall.

Put a bit of plywood under the rack, ratchet strap it, and now you can put it on a dolly without the lip hitting the equipment as you try and lift it. For avoiding it falling off the dolly, use a 2nd ratchet strap and wrap it around the chassis / dolly.

Put a 2nd piece of plywood on top once its in the uhaul so you can load more boxes on top... Maybe even do that at first so the initial strap is securing it as well.

As for the bottom plywood, if you add some felt pads, then it will help you shimmy the chassis into / out of its position once its unloaded. I have my rack vhb taped to ply with felt under it and recommend it to people IRL a fair bit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

oh thanks for the heads up!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Yeah, or even something in the middle where you still use a cheap microcontroller and the hall effect sensor to track distance without any treats. You would have to find a way to get the cat running in the first place though.

It seems like people have better luck getting the larger semi-domesticated savannah cats / similar to use the wheel than domestic house cats without training

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I wanted to make a human sized wheel to bring to opensauce that dispenses candy thats the equivalent to the calories you burned, or possibly had motors acting as a generator that powered up a power bank for people to charge their phones from!

Thanks for the feedback though, and glad you liked it :)

 

tl;dr: my cat was getting lazy, and was developing health issues, so i wanted to make something to trick him into exercising more. I did this by attaching a treat dispenser to a cat wheel, and giving him treats when hes ran certain distances.

This was my entry for the printables smart pet gadget contest. https://www.printables.com/model/1278945-smart-cat-treat-dispenser-for-one-fast-cat-wheel

There were a few back-to-back all nighters right at the end in order to get this submitted in time (managed to submit 7 minutes before the deadline!) - so the code is all kind of lumped in one file. Ill clean the code up in the upcoming weeks, but the short bullet point list of features are:

  • Almost entirely 3D printed (other than a motor, 4 bearings, some sensors, and the nuts and bolts
  • Detects that the treat level is low before completely running out! no more sad cats that hear the food dispenser going off, only to be left with an empty belly!
  • Self hosted wifi configuration page (connect to the AP, go to 192.168.4.1, enter your wifi settings, and it will join your wifi network
  • Completely self hosted web UI / API - configure all your settings, vend treats remotely from other smart devices, and track your cats stats!
  • MQTT support - connect your treat dispenser to a platform like homeassistant to see graphs of your cats activity and be alerted to when the treat dispenser is almost out of treats.
  • simple electronics (no analog components other than resistors for some LED's)
  • cool design features like internal wire channels so theres minimal exposed wiring (other than power, and a single connector to connect a hall effect sensor to the treat dispenser for detecting cat wheel rotation)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

smb share if its desktop to desktop. If its from phone to PC, I throw it on nextcloud on the phone, then grab it from the web ui on pc.

Smb is the way to go if you have identity set up, since your PC auth will carry over for the connection to the smb share. Nextcloud will be less typing if not since you can just have persistent auth on the app / web.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Its just a test to dial your printer in. I shimmed my bed with 0.1mm washers. I haven't done a full square of plastic, but I printed my first layer / z-offset print of choice in all 4 corners and center in order to verify the bed level results in octoprint were accurate.

Before hand 70% of my bed printed perfect, but one spot was a little lower, and the mesh bed leveling wasn't accounting enough for it. Parts printed on textured sheets would not pick up the texture as well in that one spot. I like the textured look for top surfaces of control panels and such, so having an area on the bed that wouldn't apply the texture was a bit annoying.

Tests like what you are talking about is an extreme way to verify that everything is square, or at least well accounted for in the firmware.

Also, since this wasn't something achievable out of the box until recently, printer manufacturers are showing it off as a point of pride / as a sales tactic.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Yeahhhhh, they have a sale going on right now, but its still like 1800. I really do think that its more of a business target with that price though. While the original stick einstar won't pick up on super fine details, a scan from it + some caliper measurements has done me pretty well with hobby projects. The price point is definitely more reasonable on that for hobbiest makers

 

So, i wanted a personal 3d scanner a while back and bought the revopoint mini and creality cr-scan lizard with my own money. I wasn't too happy with either, and ended up buying an einstar afterward.

I made a video comparing the revopoint and cr-scan to show off the pros and cons, but never did a follow up on the einstar. Well, i guess shining3d (the people that make the einstar) saw the original video and thought it was good enough to send me their new handheld scanner (einstar vega, i know... confusing names) to play with for a month, so i did just that and compared it to my own personal original einstar.

I made another (hopefully entertaining) video, and thought i would share. I use the 3d scanner a handful of times per year to make 3d printed bits that fit well with existing real world items, and i have also made some stuff out of clay, and 3d scanned it to use in 3d printed designs when i want more organic shapes that are past my modeling experience.

happy to answer any questions about modeling processes, or the scanners themselves! :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

yeah, i went the past 2 years. sadly driving a project down wasn't in the cards. Both times i brought a body mounted project though. First year it was a 3d printed cat treat dispenser that would track the distance my cat runs on a cat wheel, then gives him a single treat after he runs a certain amount. I had a mini version mounted on my chest. This past year, i brought some arm mounted EDF's that I plan on using to propel myself on skiis in the snow. I plan on making videos about both eventually, but im trying to space out larger projects like those (and the cooler kart) with smaller ones :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

yeah, the emergency kill switch had the full power going through it. I did something similar with relays on the back with the initial esp32 control, where if the relays were powered but no signal was sent to the relays, it would close the brake pins on the cheaper ESC's as another safety feature.

it was kinda cool, a little kid (like, elementary school aged) came up and was asking about the project, with his dad right behind him. the kids questions were all pretty much around how he could potentially make something similar. I answered them in an age understandable way, but also walked through all the different potential failures and how it related to saftey, and how I added things like the relays, battery fuse, and cut off switch to mitigate the risks. basically saying "yeah, making something like this is dangerous, but you shouldn't let that get in the way of making your ideas a reality - its just important to walk through those risks and mitigate them as best as you can, and think if you can reach an acceptable risk before you spend money and time". The dad didn't say anything, but i could tell he was beaming since the kid was realizing all the safety stuff, and realizing that thinking through that stuff is very important. about 1/2 way through, the kid was just asking more safety related questions haha

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

well, I wanted to to be a goofy and unique project, so having the wheels be in the "normal" location would be a less interesting to me. Also, the trike had a "male" axle for a wheel to mount to, and the hoverboard wheels also had a "male" stub coming out of the motor hub, so mounting them together would have required something to offset and join the parts together. Since I wanted to do 2 wheels on each side, a triangle just kind of made sense. In retrospect, they should have been a bit shorter so the top of the cooler was level. I chose to not use cad, since i have been relying on it a lot for other projects, and sometimes its fun to just make something and kind of make it up as you go along, but if i had designed it in the computer first, then i would have realized that the rear wheel height was too high. :)

 

more of a goofy and fun project, I wouldn’t say it was practical, and definitely won’t change the world... but I enjoyed it, and it got a lot of laughs and acted as a good conversation starter. Hopefully yall find the humor in it :)

 

so yeah, first time making an electric vehicle. the intent is to reuse the battery and ESC on an ebike.

A lovely person at the event i brought the motorized cooler kart to traded vehicles with me for 10 minutes, and i got to ride his electric mountain bike with a mid mount motor, and it was awesome, so i have the itch for that now.

Anyway, more of a goofy and fun project, I wouldn't say it was practical, and definitely won't change the world, but hopefully is brings some entertainment to your lives! :)

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