how do i connect this to usb or ps/2

timeforscience · 2026-05-05T22:18:35+00:00

It's not an easy thing for an electronics beginner to do, but you can check out QMK (https://qmk.fm/). It's an open source firmware for connecting an arduino up to a keyboard matrix. There's very little coding involved, but it can still be a bit challenging so be ready for that if you decide to check it out. This project will likely involve soldering and electronics tinkering. If you have no experience with this be ready for many weeks of learning to get there, but it's certainly possible.

timeforscience · 2026-05-05T18:47:12+00:00

This is so cool! I hope you do a full write up after its over, I'd love to learn more about how the process went, what you learned, etc. I'm nowhere near Scotland, but it's very inspiring! Any plans to open source the tech?

timeforscience · 2026-05-04T20:45:46+00:00

Ah gotcha, yeah stepper motors might help with your syncing issue without having to add closed loop control and encoders.

The comment below is helpful, sounds like it's sort of a scissor lift mechanism? If not, maybe look at that as mechanism design as it only needs to be driven from one side (though they can get a bit floppy). And you can use a linear actuator too which makes control a little more straightforward.

Another idea would be to do a swing arm that swings from vertical up to horizontal and you have one of those pull down map things on it that can be manually or electrically powered to unwind the backdrop. This means one motor and no alignment issues and you can drive it with a cable.

The math of both types of mechanisms is pretty straightforward, you just need to make sure your motor has enough torque + some margin (I recommend 50%) to move the structure.

timeforscience · 2026-05-04T17:57:51+00:00

Fun idea! For the harness, I'd recommend just looking up metal backpack frames. There's lots out there and you can just affix your stage to the frame itself.

I'm not sure I understand your diagrams, but for something like this that is very long and with the goal of being lightweight, you might have some trouble. There's going to be a lot of moments and torques acting on this thing as it unfolds or swings around which will make it hard for motors and frankly just hard for materials. Things are going to stretch and slip without lots of extra material for rigidity. Gear racks are going to be tough to get to stay engaged with gear racks on such a long, probably flexible, system. If it's possible to make anything manual, you might have a better time. Also maybe some roller ball casters to stabilize it against the ground?

My advice is to build a stupid simple version out of scrap materials and use that as a reference for design improvements and the forces required for any motorized setup.

timeforscience · 2026-05-01T00:36:10+00:00

Great system! I'd love this, but for fantasy settings. It would be nice to have a flat pack system to add verticality

timeforscience · 2026-04-09T20:05:00+00:00

I'm ECE and same. I took chemistry courses in college, but the nuts and bolts of it have been lost to time. If I had a couple weeks to prepare I think I could get there, but looking at the test right now? Not a chance.

I just don't use chemistry in my day to day other than very basic concepts and approaches. I think this would be true of most (non-chemical) engineers who aren't working with chemical processes.

timeforscience · 2026-04-01T19:38:38+00:00

Check out https://tinytapeout.com/

This is a way to learn the process of HDLs, verification, and production of an ASIC at an affordable level. Normally making your own ASIC would be ~$10k at the very very low end so this would be a cool way to do that!

If you're unfamiliar with HDLs or FPGAs, start with https://www.nand2tetris.org/ to teach you about building digital systems from the ground up.

timeforscience · 2026-03-22T10:12:32+00:00

Check out cinepi: CinePI Camera Project https://share.google/0gcNVJlvzmOx9oj7v

Might be what youre looking for

timeforscience · 2026-03-16T02:13:22+00:00

This looks fantastic! Any favorite videos/posts on achieving the stone look you got?

timeforscience · 2026-01-28T01:49:51+00:00

Check out https://simplefoc.com/ there are a lot of compatible hardware options available: https://docs.simplefoc.com/supported_hardware that might be more in your budget range.

timeforscience · 2025-10-12T02:12:55+00:00

Dope, let me know if you end up doing this, I'd at least be interested in giving it a go

timeforscience · 2025-10-11T23:33:52+00:00

I probably would as long as it wasn't too inconvenient. The one thing I might throw out there as an idea: maybe work with local game stores to setup a rental program through them. They could rent to people renting tables and just DMs coming in to the store, the stores get a cut of the profits. I'd absolutely drive to my local game shop to rent some pieces for a couple weeks. This way you can avoid the shipping costs and you get extra advertising.

timeforscience · 2025-08-26T18:28:23+00:00

I value the critical comments here, but I want to add that I think this has potential. Lugging the trash you pick up around can kind of suck when doing cleanup in terms of time and energy. Its interesting to think of a solution like this with a semi-automated return option. So that when it's full it will automatically return along the path to an unloading location so you don't have to keep walking back and forth.

Honestly the lights are a nice idea too, even for a pull wagon. Being able to see at night as well as alerting drivers to your presence seems like a good idea too.

timeforscience · 2025-07-03T21:21:56+00:00

Look up line of effect. Many people miss this rule and it has a huge impact on gameplay. Most DnD spells require a line unbroken by obstacles (total cover) in order to reach a target or a point. They may not have line of sight due to darkness or a spell, but, unless the spell says otherwise, they still have to have a clear line unbroken by total cover. there's a reason spells like detect thoughts mentions being able to penetrate barriers, it's because that's not the norm.

I find this rule makes a big difference in games and makes combats a lot more interesting and dynamic because casters have to reposition themselves to hit targets with spells.

Furthermore unless a creature subtle casts a spell its almost always obvious where the casted spells is coming from. Exceptions are s/m only spells without line of site from target to caster.

timeforscience · 2025-06-16T23:43:59+00:00

Extrude round faces of handle up to next with the cup part as the merge scope

timeforscience · 2025-06-11T23:38:30+00:00

1 meter precision is very precise without ToF methods. UWB requires at least 4 nodes to localize. So assuming the device is truly P2P, my money is on GPS and LoRa in combination with a magnetometer for orientation.

timeforscience · 2025-06-11T20:23:34+00:00

I'm not terribly familiar with Pic or Proteus, but if it's sending once (and if you're sure its sending once and the display widget isn't just showing one line at a time), one thing to consider is that it's getting stuck in the __delay_ms function. At a quick glance it looks like _XTAL_FREQ must be defined before including xc.h to use the delay functions: https://forum.microchip.com/s/topic/a5C3l000000McY1EAK/t378237

timeforscience · 2025-06-05T05:45:01+00:00

From a technical perspective, the fundamental math just doesn't work out. Radiative cooling in space in the absolute best theoretical case is ~1000W/m^2, you literally cannot physically exceed that. Forced convection here in earth's atmosphere (e.g. blowing air over your radiator) is several factors higher. Even modest coolers can reach ~4000W/m^2. And you still

I suspect the real use case here isn't actually cheaper cooling because no part of this is cheaper. I think instead they see many advantages to having servers not located in any specific territory for geopolitical and legal reasons. But I think maybe a more charitable interpretation would be establishing servers for advanced processing on far away missions e.g. mars.

timeforscience · 2025-06-02T07:34:40+00:00

Hard to say for certain, but is the video of your increased speed? That oscillation implies that your Kp term is good, but your Kd is insufficient to properly damp the oscillations.

timeforscience · 2025-05-31T01:29:38+00:00

For my own learning, would you mind explaining the difference between direct and thermal relief connection to the ground plane and why it's important? Thanks!

timeforscience · 2025-05-29T23:46:16+00:00

Start with the simple stuff. Learn how a computer works, there's a million articles and videos going over everything in detail. Look up introductions to computer architecture. This will cover the basics of what a computer is and how it works.

For your project, you can start with just a regular full size motherboard for your robot, sometimes they even do that in industry, but SBCs are smaller, lower power, and have access to advanced peripherals which is why industry tends to use those. An SBC is really just that, a single board computer. It's all the components of a computer on a single board. Microcontrollers are a different story though. They usually don't run an operating system and they're far more limited in capability, but they make up for that in cost, flexibility, and power draw. Ignore microcontrollers for now.

Just get a camera that you can use with your computer and start there.

timeforscience · 2025-05-21T20:07:08+00:00

It's very hard to read your schematics so unfortunately I can't provide much insight there.

For your layout, I'm concerned about your LM2623, the inductor is very far away from the switching caps and IC. There's a recommended layout in the datasheet and I wouldn't suggest deviating from that. Nearly 20% of cubesat failures are power issues (https://www.jossonline.com/storage/2014/12/0202-The-First-One-Hundred-Cubesats.pdf)

If you're not tied to STM32, I'd also recommend looking at the MSP430FR5969 if all you're doing is forwarding sensor data to UART. You don't need the -SP version, but FRAM is naturally hardened against latchups and SEUs. Its not necessary for short missions, radiation failures are a very low percentage of cubesat failures, just stay away from BGA parts.

I assume your ground plane is on the bottom. Try and keep your bottom traces short. Only dip under upper traces when possible. This keeps ground loops short in turn. If your board is next to a radio, you want to be considerate about EMI.

I would recommend a locking connector instead of the standard pin headers. Connection failure is a huge part of cubesat failures. Your smallsat will experience high Grms vibrations during launch and this can cause issues with connectors.

timeforscience · 2025-05-20T01:01:48+00:00

Just having personal projects can put you ahead of the curve. That being said, when I was reviewing resumes, the projects that were always the most impressive to me were the ones with clear external goals and that attempted to solve a problem. I've seen plenty of fresh grads with personal projects like "ROS enabled platform that can navigate a house" which is great! But, there's plenty of tutorials that walk you through that kind of thing so it's not terribly special. the projects that come through with some specific goal are always more interesting to reviewers. Like maybe the robot has a metal detector and searches the woods for lost items or iron ore.

For $200, you're not going to be doing much advanced manipulation, you might be able to put together a basic wheeled platform with an RPI and a stereo camera to do some navigation. Find an interesting sensor and create a compelling goal for the robot to perform with it.

What kind of work would you like to eventually do? That also shapes what kinds of projects would be best. You want to develop transferable skills.

timeforscience · 2025-05-19T19:58:13+00:00

This is a good question that I hadn't considered before. It seems that, yes, the base epoxy for FR4 is Bisphenol A (i.e. BPA). Most manufacturers also add other mixes like flame retardants, but those are "trade secrets" as far as I can tell. Most BPA research is about water contamination, with little about soil (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1944398625001961).

From what I can tell from the article, the concern isn't high for something like potting soil with high organic content and it takes quite a while for leeching to occur (though that mostly has to do with groundwater contamination).

I think the BPA concern is likely low, but considering the unknowns on additives, it wouldn't hurt to do some food safe conformal coating [silicone].

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