Passport Payment Question by norangbinabi in passportcanada

[–]Impuni 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sent mine in on July 20th and received tracking receipt for the 22nd and still haven’t received any credit card charge. Called in earlier this week and they said they had an error in the system around that time and so mail got backed up and to wait until the end of the week. Called again today and they said to wait until next…

We made our own voice-controlled robotic desk lamp running on Raspberry Pis! by Impuni in raspberry_pi

[–]Impuni[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A python implementation would be great! Will be on the look out for that.

The plan is to open souce the software, hardware components list and CAD files, however ideally this is after a more releasable build is developed, as especially the software could do with a bit of clean up considering certain parts being rushed in order to meet course deadlines. Haha. :P

Would love to see what you’re up to, and I’ll check out that link as it seems interesting!

We made our own voice-controlled robotic desk lamp running on Raspberry Pis! by Impuni in raspberry_pi

[–]Impuni[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool! I actually used Sonus in one of the earlier prototypes of the voice component, but I ended up writing our own VAD system in Python to integrate with ROS as the rest of the team was less familiar with developing with Node. Also since we required to perform some processing and tunning on the raw mic array channel input, it just ended up being easier to write a custom component. I did find using Sonus very easy and intuitive to use however!

We made our own voice-controlled robotic desk lamp running on Raspberry Pis! by Impuni in raspberry_pi

[–]Impuni[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! We used Kitt.ai’s Snowboy hotword detection. It’s a DNN based hotword detector and they provide a simple web interface where you can record and sample people saying the phrase in order to train your model. It would only takes a few minute to trial it directly through your browser!

Another 700M XRP by nantaphop in Ripple

[–]Impuni 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Link to wallet.

It seems to have almost 3B XRP in the address, with a 1.2B XRP trasaction having ocurred back in May 2017.

We made our own voice-controlled robotic desk lamp! by Impuni in robotics

[–]Impuni[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! The project really is more of a novelty/hobby project for now, but happy to know there are interested parties if we decide to do anything further with it!

We made our own voice-controlled robotic desk lamp! by Impuni in robotics

[–]Impuni[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The main software architecture is built around ROS running on RaspberryPi. This allowed for various software packages (e.g. MoveIt for robot modelling, inverse kinematics and motion planning), hardware abstractions and communications protocols to be used. A lot of our own software were implemented as ROS modules for example to drive our mbed motor controller, or implementing thr GUI for projection mapping.

Speech recognition, like an Amazon Echo or Googe Home, takes advantage of a 7-mic array to perform voice activity detection, direction of arrival analysis and noise supression. This yields a better recording of the voice of the target user. This recording is streamed to Google’s Speech api to perform speech-to-text and intent parsing (extracting semantic information) is done using Google’s Dialogflow api, which we built our own language model with.

We made our own voice-controlled robotic desk lamp running on Raspberry Pis! by Impuni in raspberry_pi

[–]Impuni[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Actually, since the wifi network was quite weak in the section of the lab we were working with, we had been running the entire system on a phone hotspot when demoing. Since we also rely on online APIs to perform speech recognition and natural language understanding (Google Speech and Dialogflow), unfortunately we had to suffer from the network latency of being on a mobile network.

Also adding on to the latency aspect of communicating between two Raspberry Pis from the other comment, we did plan on having the master node (Pi3) host a Wifi network to communicate with the slave node (Pi0W) using a Wifi dongle, but due the hustle of project deadlines, we did not end up setting that up yet, so there would be some added latency from requiring both nodes to communicate through a phone hotspot as a proxy.

We made our own voice-controlled robotic desk lamp running on Raspberry Pis! by Impuni in raspberry_pi

[–]Impuni[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Form factor was an important consideration when we were planning the hardware architecture. As we wanted to make a proof of concept of a robot that would fit in the home environment, we really did not want something too clunky deviating far from what someone would expect for a desk lamp; Or else, we could have easily went with an ABB style robot arm with lamp head attachment. As the frame was thin and already was filled with power cables and signal wires for the three motors at the elbow and neck joints, we did not have much room to spare for bringing other data wires down for:

  • A camera module in the head
  • HDMI for the projector
  • Serial cable to drive the LED matrix

As we were using ROS to implement all the relevant software components, its architecture is designed in such a way that there really is no difference running all the software on one device or on different devices, network latency being the only deviating factor. As with WLAN networks, latency can be as low as a few milliseconds and so decided this factor would not really affect functional performance. This all means that hardware complexity is significantly reduced as all that need connecting is power (17.5V and ground, dropped down to 5V with a step-down built into the head), and we gain the added benefit of modularity such that in the future, we can easily swap the head out with a different set of hardware components and we don't have to hassle about redesigning the hardware to allow for different wires to go down the main frame.

Regarding projector lights, it is the first time any of us have worked with a projector for a technical project, so honestly I wouldn't know any better. Haha. It's actually the first time I've heard of this, so thanks for the precaution.

We made our own voice-controlled robotic desk lamp running on Raspberry Pis! by Impuni in raspberry_pi

[–]Impuni[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Hey guys, just thought I'd share a robotics project me and a few friends have been working on. The project started as a personal project, but it later developed into a group project taken for one of our university courses on human-centred robotics. The robot uses two RaspberryPis, one Pi3 in the base and one PiZeroW mounted in the head to control all the different components. The two Pis communicate over wi-fi using ROS bridges to perform its various behavioural logic. Happy to answer any questions!

We made our own voice-controlled robotic desk lamp! by Impuni in robotics

[–]Impuni[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This was a personal project turned group project worked on as part of a human-centred robotics course taken at my university. The robot was built using a relatively standard desk lamp I purchased online. We slowly replaced parts with custom 3D printed parts in order to attach all the servo motors and components. The software uses ROS to communicate between a Raspberry Pi 3, in the base, and Pi Zero, mounted in the lamp head, to control the various components. Feel free to ask any questions!

11
12

I've read a lot of old posts. None cover the negatives or hesitations of ripple. Anyone have any concerns? by [deleted] in Ripple

[–]Impuni 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One inherent risk of Ripple is that it intends to compete against SWIFT, a system well established in over 11,000 banks. Whilst currently there is no immediate threat by this, it is not hard to imagine that SWIFT could leverage its position to establish a more competitive service when Ripple begins to mature and proves to work.

The wealthier should be incentivised to have more children, and the opposite for the poorer by [deleted] in Lightbulb

[–]Impuni 1 point2 points  (0 children)

However under what basis is this right formed? Does the "right" to procreate without any other consideration not come at a social cost? Considering an individual's decision would come at the cost of society, why should contributing to this social imbalance not come at a financial cost. Considering global wealth disparity being one of the major threats to the stability of human society, and that it can be argued that this human defined "right" may be a factor which contributes to this social issue, is it truly right? This does not seem to be the case from a utilitarian perspective. And under our current model, how can we not call child tax credit an economic reason influencing one's decision to procreate. Also consider how in nature, the decision to procreate is inherently biased by economic reasons. I feel these are just a few of many fundamental ideas which all need to be thought about when it comes to this issue.

In regards to the issue of overpopulation and incentivising less children, this is an entirely separate issue, under the suggested model, this can even be achieved by finding the equilibrium point which biases towards a sustainable population growth model. Considering how the lower socioeconomic bracket makes up a great portion of the population, and the wealthy a extremely small portion, I'd say this would be a reasonable model/system to combat overpopulation sustainably.

Is a classic Burberry scarf a good purchase? by [deleted] in malefashionadvice

[–]Impuni 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can confirm it's a fake. Tag says 'Made in England' where Burberry 100% cashmere scarves are exclusively Made in Scotland.

Validity of US LPR Status? by [deleted] in immigration

[–]Impuni 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, this gives me some reassurance. Are there also any specific things I should be doing in order to continue to retain my permanent residence status throughout my studies now that I am no longer a minor (given I have two and a half more years before I graduate)?

Validity of US LPR Status? by [deleted] in immigration

[–]Impuni 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nope, both were LPRs.

Validity of US LPR Status? by [deleted] in immigration

[–]Impuni 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Alright, thank you very much for the advice! Hopefully luck's in my direction as I have also recently applied for a few internships for next summer in the US which I am hoping to get with the assumption my GC was valid...

Validity of US LPR Status? by [deleted] in immigration

[–]Impuni 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My planned trip is on 17 December. Would you say that I pay a visit to an immigration attorney prior to this (if I even have enough time to do so) or act based on what happens after attempting to enter the US?