telnet to oculus
News update: Oculus can now be purchased via RobotShop.com in most counties. As a follow up to the blog on using good old telnet to control oculus, I’ll give a few examples of how you can test your own scripts. A standard telnet session from my OSX machine follows, note the password can be plain...
new battery and chair mount
From drawing board to being ready to install in single day? Colin, same guy that is now selling wifi robots, salvaged an old power drill to go with the new Lithium-ion battery pack for my chair. More Ardiuno and IOIO protects are possible now that I have a power supply I can remove and charge...
oculus developer
New updates to open source projects this week. You can get from SVN Trunk. Basically this is a developer API to control the bot. You can send commands and get notifications about changes. This lets a 3rd party application hook in even without the web based GUI. So, you are free to write your own...
oculus ROV
My friend Colin has project that I’ve been helping him test for the last few months.. and now oculus finally ready for market! Colin has made bikes and my custom climbing rig in the past, but he has always wanted to make affordable wifi robots. The key to oculus is the low cost but fully...
aldebaran robotics’ nao
Solid state sensors and high torque servos are getting cheaper all the time, but it is the software methodologies that needed to change for walking to be considered a “primitive behavior”. Any kids learning about robots would, and should, assume that we have walking sorted. Getting back into standing from an unknown state, say on...
have a go day
Update: see photos here. Summer is in full swing and we are going to set up the climbing rig in Squamish on August 21st. We have done this route several times, but with everyone in different jobs. I’m going to put all the details here because much of the planning is buried in email and...
better text entry for disability
In past posts, I’ve ranted about resistive vs capacitive screens for typing. Apple’s phone and tablet are great, but as a quad with poor hand function, most will prefer to use a finger nail to type. On my Nokia 5800 this works well and the new firmware has better smooth scrolling (inertia in the flicking...
between a rock and a hard place
Between a rock and a hard place — no problem. National Post Life Style Section I really dislike this photo, but seems that editors like it.
power assisted wheelchair project
Early days on this project, but will be testing all winter on the icord ramp.
observations from an outlier (csep slides)
As part of the Annual CSEP Conference, I was invited to give an hour talk on our rock climbing efforts. Presenter 2: Brad Zdavinsky (VerticalChallenge.org) •Overcoming Obstacles: The Story of a Tetraplegic’s Drive to Beat the Odds and Challenge Beliefs in His Pursuit to Climb (15:00-16:00) (not my title) My slides as a PDF (NOTE:...
dangers of boosting
I’ve seen “Dr K” at his clinic and recommend him to anyone dealing with Autonomic Dysreflexia (AD). I’ve copied an article here to make sure it doesn’t disappear. http://www.webcommunications.ubc.ca/ubc2010/2009/04/28/researcher-aims-to-end-paralympic-boosting/ Dr. Andrei Krassioukov wants the International Paralympic Committee to change how athletes are evaluated – Photo by Martin Dee If Dr. Andrei Krassioukov gets his way,...
windows 7 for the disabled
I never thought I’d say it, but Windows 7 is good, great even! I got my hands on a Beta copy and installed it.. and it all worked. Yes, everything worked first time with no snags. Admittedly I had low expectations thinking of past installs and driver nightmares, but not one dialog box asking for...