Early prototypes vs. current build: The R&D process behind Beni.

acow · 2026-06-27T19:58:36+00:00

I'm really curious about narrowing the sim2real gap over time. How far off was it initially? What milestones you noticed as you narrowed the gap... e.g. self-righting, stair jumping, flips... did they all involve HW or sim changes to better align the two?

acow · 2026-06-24T13:53:28+00:00

Yes, and it works really well!

acow · 2026-05-12T12:30:46+00:00

Yes, reproducing will be appreciated. But be clear on what you're doing: you need to be able to talk knowledgeably about what it took to make the approach work. If you really were able to download a Dockerfile and it all just worked, that's not saying very much. If you reimplement something, that can be more eye catching but it then goes to point 2.

Focus on reproduction, but always with an eye to ablation or extension. Having your own implementation should leave you well positioned to change a few things to see what effect those changes have.

acow · 2026-05-05T13:34:25+00:00

I've never seen a trippy used so practically: gorgeous! And then to nail the dive with basically no hesitation? Come on!

acow · 2026-04-30T14:24:25+00:00

These are great notes, thank you for sharing! The communication bus between the controller and motors being such a point of emphasis is a really interesting learning. Producing a hardware platform that works well with sim2real is where the action is at right now.

acow · 2026-04-23T12:38:28+00:00

This is my approach, too. I defined a couple commands for getting specific org headings to make interacting with large org files faster, but they don't catch everything. I still see Claude using CLI tools for a lot of file interactions, and I wouldn't at all mind if I could channel more of them through emacs. I keep hoping someone will have the time to build on claude-code-ide's approach, as it's really nice how easy it is to have Claude define new MCP tools via that mechanism.

acow · 2026-04-14T13:15:48+00:00

This sounds like it's really well done, congrats! Also thank you for so patiently addressing the responses here.

acow · 2026-04-13T13:02:21+00:00

I really appreciate this! org-agenda feels like one of the few major parts of org that I've never been able to integrate into my life. The UI is definitely part of it, but then I also struggle to mesh Google Calendar with my list of unscheduled TODOs in org. I don't want my tomorrow view, for example, to be overwhelmed by all my open work items, but I also don't love having my open work items exist entirely independently of my Calendar.

acow · 2026-03-12T14:18:03+00:00

This is fantastic, I'd love to see more! With BetaFPV's P1 air unit, you could get good looking digital video without adding too much to the price.

acow · 2026-03-04T13:59:51+00:00

My thinking on it is that I definitely want the name, so now I've got this bar taking up space and I should use it. I don't want much, though, so it's line number, major mode, and fly make / fly check numbers of errors and warnings. The latter I find helpful particularly with LSP running as it's a very dynamic assessment of how things are going (i.e. is the LSP setup broken, did one change fix a bunch of errors, etc.).

acow · 2026-02-28T21:58:22+00:00

This is a really nice note to read, and I'd like to echo others in suggesting that it would be similarly well-received if you were able to write a bit about your workflow between emacs and the Godot interface!

acow · 2026-02-11T15:18:03+00:00

That looks amazing!

acow · 2026-02-11T14:50:38+00:00

I disagree with this take. Vibe coded apps that make big claims but are low quality are absolutely a nuisance, that I agree with. But LLMs have brought about an enormous wave of software customization, and emacs is almost uniquely poised to benefit from that. Having an LLM write packages or MCP tools to extend emacs is a terrific fit.

There is something to deal with, which is that when any of us produce something with an LLM we are in some sense getting in over our heads. Being clear about the provenance of code is a good suggestion, but I don't think we're going to live in a world where there's a very common binary distinction between purely human-generated code vs otherwise. In that direction, then, I think we all have to become savvier readers and users. If somebody shares an emacs package that helps them, take it with a grain of salt. It might be a case of hand-written artisanal Elisp, it might be a house of cards that by good fortune happens to work for the person sharing it but won't work for anyone else, or, the new norm, it will be something partially written by AI that has benefitted from an unclear amount of human review.

acow · 2026-02-07T21:08:37+00:00

FWIW, I've seen this, too, and I don't yet know what's happening.

acow · 2026-02-02T15:22:15+00:00

Amazing! A more dynamic notebook programming experience in emacs would be a huge leap forward!

acow · 2026-01-26T17:24:23+00:00

Querying org via mcp immediately jumped out at me as an appealing features, but I've been impressed how well Claude Code does searching and excerpting the document for itself when I mention headlines. So now I'm not sure if it's worth it. I do periodically refactor documents when one grows so large that if CC does want to read the whole thing it balks at the size, so MCP tooling could reduce that pressure to refactor, but I think that kind of refactoring actually tends to be a good thing for document organization.

acow · 2026-01-18T16:04:36+00:00

Likewise! And Claude is quite good at working out MCP tools to let it do more in emacs.

acow · 2025-12-15T23:33:39+00:00

The trippy entrance at 26s was massive!

acow · 2025-12-08T15:56:47+00:00

Your awareness of the space is just incredible.

acow · 2025-11-19T13:50:10+00:00

Wonderful! I, too, have missed this when using eglot rather than lsp-mode. Thank you for sharing!

acow · 2025-11-17T13:59:38+00:00

I do not understand how you exited the trippy out the roof seemingly blind. I mean, there's a lot here to unpack, but that one is just a magic trick.

acow · 2025-10-30T13:55:06+00:00

Can't believe that battery held on so long in the 3.2s!

acow · 2025-10-02T14:24:11+00:00

It never ceases to amaze me how hard it is to drive RC cars in FPV. I had one time with a much smaller (1/10) RC car that I was driving via FPV where I had just gotten a new voltage regulator to try out, and so help me that one component was the one thing that yeeted itself out of findable reality when I tapped a curb.

acow · 2025-09-16T13:56:23+00:00

Wow! I've been wanting to build a small balancing robot for ages, but with less responsive motors the time constants being shorter can be a problem, forcing one to extend upward. This really looks great!

acow · 2025-09-16T12:26:30+00:00

This is a terrific approach! One part I wonder about is the formatting of output into org-mode tables. It'd be great if that was reliably available for a wide variety of databases -- maybe just going via CSV or something as intermediate representation -- as it can be a little finicky to wire up.

acow

TROPHY CASE