Zooids - Open HW/SW small bots swarm

[Miles Teg]

Hello!

This afternoon I met the creator of a nice bots swarm curttently created to make research of alternative for user interface, display and input.

https://youtu.be/ZVdAfDMP3m0

Quite interesting! And all open, from PCB, 3D model, bots FW, control PC UI.
https://github.com/ShapeLab/SwarmUI



Made in relationship of Sean Follmer, creator of the Shape shifting user interface:


Ho men! I really want to build some of these!

[Miles Teg]

Ho... surprised to didn't get more reaction from you

I'm currently porting the embedded code from Crossworks to an open ARM compiler toolchain (editing by Qt Creator).
The desktop command side is working on Visual Studio. need more time to understand the worflow on this side. between shape generator, simulator and server.

And later will work a BOM from my usual suppliers to get a supplier price.
Bots PCB is neat and seems to fit in the PCBPool technical constraints. But is done under Altium. I should port it under CircuitMaker to make it more Open compliant.

See you!

[mikeselectricstuff]

Instead of a projector for tracking, it might be interesting to look at using a similar method to graphics tablets on the base (Micah recently did a couple of videos on these) 

[Miles Teg]

Yeah, I've heard some remark that getting ride of the projector would be interesting.
From your, guess what kind of "carpet" surface we could get as result? 1 to 5m² possible you think?

And we should maybe consider using the near field to make data transmission instead of the 3Ghz radio.

[chris_leyson]

Thanks Miles, I really like these. There are a lot of possibilities for tracking, overhead camera maybe but I like the idea of near field comms and tracking.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Yeah, I've heard some remark that getting ride of the projector would be interesting.
From your, guess what kind of "carpet" surface we could get as result? 1 to 5m² possible you think?

I'd imagine anything is possible, it just comes down to at what point costs become excessive.
Another possibility might be capacitively coupling to a grid of electrodes (maybe PCB, or printed carbon ink) - you could use interpolation to get sub-pixel resolution on a fairly coarse grid.

[RoGeorge]

Whaaaaa, Minions! 

[Miles Teg]

Whaaaaa, Minions! 

Creator said that everybody says that!! 

Thank Mike, Micah videos are really instructive around these oscillators "simple" designs.
For ideas around zooids, I will focus now on making them work as designed, learning and mastering how they work. And will see... next year, how to improve.

[Miles Teg]

With more informations on positioning, SW flow and principles of change in user interface with humans.

[Miles Teg]

DLP price is a big "ouchh!!"

http://www.ti.com/tool/dlplightcrafter
500-600$