Kansas City’s Hacker Space
This video is of my robot kicking a toy football. This is about as good as he can kick it. If I speed up the leg to much he loses his center of gravity and falls over. I use this move in another contest called demonstration. The goal of that contest is to show off the abilities of your robot in a two minute demonstration routine. The three judges than give you a score between 1 and 10.
@mover
Arduino powered, WiiFit controlled robotic labyrinth game
Plug an Arduino and two servos into a wooden labyrinth board game then add some programming and a WiiFit board and you have instant fun. The robotic labyrinth game debuted as our regular weekly CCCKC meetings resumed after the holidays.
Check out this video:
Arduino Powered WiiFit Controlled Robotic Labyrinth Game
For more information about the game’s development follow these links:
We were picked up by Engadget and Makezine too. Check this out!
OpenCV is an open source “computer vision” library, which means that it can be used to extract information from an image, or a series of images (like a video). A computer vision library has many uses, but my favorite is in the field of robotics.
The Cowtown Computer Congress has started an OpenCV Study Group twice a month, and I would like a common development platform for everyone in the group to use. This has led me to consider the Eclipse IDE. Eclipse was originally developed for the Java Programming Language, but using the Eclipse CDT it can be used for C++ development as well. Eclipse is cross platform, and has a huge following in both the open source and the corporate communities (for example, Google uses Eclipse for quite a bit). Since we don’t want to dictate what the OpenCV Study Group participants use in terms of an operating system, I think Eclipse would a good choice, just to keep everyone on the same page.
* * * A n n o u n c i n g * * *
CCCKC – OpenCV Computer Vision Study Group
Inspired by progress on our robotic labyrinth game we’ve started thinking about making a few minor changes. It just seems logical that we need to put an accelerometer under the playing surface and use a video camera with motion detection so a computer can play the game. Why jump around on a Wii Fit like a crazy person if you can sit and watch the computer play the game for you, right?
One small problem, we need to learn about computer vision so come to the meetings!
When: Bi-weekly on Thursday evenings from 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Meeting[0] = kickoff meeting held on Thursday Jan. 8, 2009;
Meeting[1] = scheduled for Thursday Jan. 22;
Where: Meeting[1] is planned at the JavaNaut coffee house at 1615 W. 39th. St. Kansas City, MO
Getting Started
Learning OpenCV text book
The book “Learning OpenCV – Computer Vision with the OpenCV Library” is suggested reading from the OpenCV Wiki to explain the library (actually it is the primary source of information). This book is written to be used as a text book for OpenCV classes. We hope to get through the first 12 chapters in about six sessions.
For more information and notes from the kickoff meeting check the blog at SomeoneKnows.
If anyone has additional notes please link to them in the comments.
BTW, we’re keeping the Wii Fit – it’s too cool to quit.
Ok, so you probably heard that we are moving into the cave — as it turns out our landlord wants some money for this privilege. We are REALLY close to having the capital we need to be a thriving hackerspace, but we still need build-out materials, tools, and some basic infrastructure. CCCKC is now offering the Hackerspace community a raffle to help raise some funds to make this possible. By helping us start up, you could win a Macbook for CHEAP!
Here is how it works:
A TOTAL of ONLY 200 raffle tickets will be sold in order keep your chances of winning high. You can buy as many raffle tickets as you want for $25 each, dramatically increasing your odds with every purchase. For every raffle ticket purchased, you will receive an official “Ticket” via email. This “ticket” is simply a random number from 1-200 (That way numbers are not sold in order). Once a number has been purchased it will be removed from the pool so you and only you have this number.
Once the 200th ticket has been sold, a random number will be generated using Random.org’s true number generator. The lucky person whose ticket matches this number will have won the brand new Apple 2.4Ghz MacBook. It will be shipped free of charge to this person ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.
See additional Details and purchase your ticket on the RAFFLE PAGE
The video is of my humanoid robot Boomer. I was getting the robot ready for the 2008 Robogames. One of the contest is Robot Kung Fu. The goal is to knock the other robot down. You get one point per knock down. The robot with the most points after 2 minutes wins. The bottle is full of water and weighs almost 6 pounds.
I am thrilled to announce that CCCKC has come to an agreement in principal to lease a 1400 square foot facility located deep within the limestone hills of Kansas City. Don’t be fooled by the above ground access…the lab lurks 85 feet below the surface of the earth. What started as a few guys kicking the idea around over some pints at the Flying Saucer has become one of the most inspiring and diverse groups of hackers, tinkerers, makers and enthusiasts in the country.
Since meeting 0 last spring, we have incorporated as a Missouri not-for-profit corporation, recruited a great number of members, outlasted one potential landlord, elected officers, recruited a number of great affiliate organizations, screened an independent film, tagged the side of a telecom facility, held a public soldering workshop, built a talking robot and had countless meetings where we talked about how awesome it would be if we had a space.
This is a pretty impressive set of accomplishments for an organization which has no real home. Luckily that’s all about to change.
As you’ll see soon, there are four distinct areas within our facility. First, we have a 700 square foot classroom for workshops, presentations and speaker target practice.
We also have a mini-kitchen which will be decked out with numerous sources of coffee, tea and other liquids which plants crave.
One section will be dedicated to hardware workshops with work benches, soldering irons and other necessary tools.
Finally there is a location for members to store their projects and the home of the CCCKC networks.
We will officially take posession of our underground lab on February 1st and are planning for week long celebration during the first week of March.
If you’ve heard about the Congress but were waiting for the right time to join, this is it.