Tavares Labs

Ouch! That Butterfly Just Bit Me! Or Was That My New Inverter?

Matthew Tavares — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 20:51:52 +0000

Picture this. You are driving along on a perfect day with the top down on your Jeep Wrangler. Suddenly, Zombie Butterfly’s are attacking you from above! The horror!

Inverter Mounting

By complete coincidence, abandoned on the side of the road you happen to see the zombie butterflies sworn enemy, the Wet-Dry Vac! But how are you going to power it? Luckily you have just installed a brand new Black and Decker 1000 Watt Power Inverter in your jeep! You break out the flamethrower attachment on the Wet-Dry Vac and you go to town on the tiny winged brain munchers! After you have dispatched with the insects of doom, you want to keep the life saving wet-dry vac but you cant fit it in the jeep! But then you remember that you did away with those silly screw things and used magnets to hold down your 1000 watts of instantaneous butterfly dispatching power! You pop it off the floor and you stick it to the side of the trunk!

It just so happens I have installed just such an inverter in my Jeep! I can sleep and drive easier now that I don’t have to worry about those damned zombie butterflies any longer! I used eight N42 plastic coated magnets to mount it to my jeep. It can be moved to anywhere the wires will reach. I ran 2 Gauge wire from the battery, through the fully boxed jeep frame, to the trunk. Even those vampire grasshoppers are shaking in there boots now.

Carbonated Fruit Salad

Matthew Tavares — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:56:25 +0000

I have been putting together the necessary parts for making carbonated fruit salad. It is exactly what it sounds like. A friend of mine named Victor White turned me on to this idea a couple years back. You make a pressure chamber out of large, pressure rated PVC tubing. Keep in mind that it will have to fit into the refrigerator. Then you add all sorts of fruit. Things with skins like key limes and oranges are fun if you leave the skins on. They tend to explode a bit when you bite into them. You then have two options to carbonate it. You can either just pressurize it with a tank of CO2 or add dry ice. Either way, you want the tank to maintain around 3/4 of the maximal operating pressure of the PVC and PVC fittings you are using. Always let any PVC cement and primer completely set before pressure testing the chamber. If you are using dry ice you HAVE to set up a regulator so it will dump any CO2 beyond your PVC’s limits or you are potentially making a PVC shrapnel bomb with a fruity after math. An emergency pressure relief valve is a good idea as well for good measure. If all goes well, you will have a deliciously fizzy fruit salad after a night in the fridge. I will put up pictures of my setup soon.

As always, do all of this at your own risk. Your safety is your responsibility, not mine.

TurtleBot

Matthew Tavares — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 19:04:10 +0000

Turtle Bot

A while back a friend of mine donated an old and broken Friendly Robotics lawn mower to my garage. It sat in my garage for a while until recently. I recently pulled a Frankenstein on it and replaced it’s gut’s with a few parts I had lying around. I gave it two victor 883 speed controllers, an SSC-32 board for controlling the victors, an Xbee module for communicating with the ssc-32 wirelessly from a computer, the essential LED lights, and a Car Battery to run it all. I control it all with a Linux laptop that also has a Xbee module and a wireless joystick hooked up to it. I had written some very nice code a while back for controlling the SSC-32 with a joystick over a bluetooth serial link and it was very straight forward to modify it to use the Xbee modules. I have dubbed it Turtle Bot because it frankly looks like a turtle with its plastic shell on and it is sloooowww. Now I just need to find a use for it! It’s not like I have any lawns to mow. Leave me any suggestions in the comments.

Battlebots this year

Matthew Tavares — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:25:05 +0000

Long story short, I can’t seem to justify the cost of both time and money of attending Battlebots this year with no robot. So unless someone wants to pay my way, I won’t be attending. It is a real shame too because I have a high speed video camera now.

On a separate note, I have delved into several projects in my free time. I got my hands on an old friendly robotics lawn mowing robot that I am retrofitting to do some interesting things. I am also gathering supplies to make a coffee table with thousands of controllable LEDs in it. In addition to those projects, I found myself playing with salt water batteries and electroplating last night. Only time will tell if any of these things will come into fruition.

Where is Matt?

Matthew Tavares — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:46:31 +0000

Need to know where I am? Check out where.TavaresLabs.com! It should update every half hour or so unless my phone runs out of batteries.

Thank You Sir James Dewar

Matthew Tavares — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 23:24:35 +0000

I bought a 2 liter dewar flask on eBay today…

Pretty much their only use is to store liquefied air. What does that tell you about what I am up to?

The Workshop

Matthew Tavares — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:54:18 +0000

So I moved into my own apartment a couple months back. That wouldn’t be worth mentioning here except for the fact that I now have two garages! One for my jeep and the other for my tools! I took advantage of Black Friday and got myself a huge shiny new craftsman tool box. Of course what use are tools without a place to use them. So I then proceeded to get some workbenches and stools. I will get my CNC mill and possibly my CNC lathe out of storage when I can get a buddy over to help me move them. This is going to be a serious workshop when everything is said and done.

For anyone wondering about Blender Mini, it is not going to happen this year. A massive redesign (you will see) coupled with the trouble of getting sponsors in an economy like this gave me the excuse I needed to take this year off. As for RHS’s robot, I am not going to be the one to spoil any surprises they have in store.

For anyone related to Battlebots who has been living under a rock, the air dates for last years competition start december 10th at 9:00 PM ET on CBS College Sports according to the official battlebots twitter.

Projects on the Horizon

Matthew Tavares — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:33:42 +0000

I have not updated in a while so I figured that I should probably break the silence. For anyone that is interested, I got a new job this summer at Vercét LLC. As for what I am working on right now, I have a couple projects in the idea and early planning stages right now. I have some ideas for some smart house systems, flying robots, and possibly a new liquid fueled rocket engine swirling around in my head. I am going to leave the details for another time, mostly because I haven’t figured them all out yet.

Battlebots 2009

Matthew Tavares — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:39:56 +0000

The UTDallas Battlebot Team

We got back from the Battlebots on Sunday. Blender Mini turned out to be phenomenally durable and robust however it likes to flip upside down. We are attributing this to it’s high center of gravity and low moment of inertia. Once it flips, it goes into what we started calling the Spinning Top of Death Mode. Due to this, we got knocked out of the tournament pretty early on. We lost our first fight. It was against the team that went on to win the competition. Our second fight was a one hit victory and our third and final match was a loss to the UTA robot. Even though we ended up walking away without any awards, I was pretty happy with the robot’s performance this year. Unfortunatley I am not aloud to say anything about how well Blender did until Battlebots airs on TV.

Blender Mini Update #9

Matthew Tavares — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:15:30 +0000

This is my first semi-stable test with both spin motors. I had to limit both motors to 30% power because of the obvious stability issues. I am planning on taking my shell over to the auto shop tomorrow and seeing if they can hook it up to the tire balancing machine.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=INdSvt5a6tM

Everything in this test goes smoothly until I try to attack the Dewalt Box! Foolish Me! I should have never messed with Dewalt!
This test is limited to 70% with one spin motor.