Definitely … technically … distracted.
Stepper motors
My kids were playing “Cookie Clickers” on their iPods. You know, that silly game where you click, click, and click to get cookies. Fortunately, the addiction is short lived. The game is actually an object lesson in labor and investment. Early on, you have to click to get points. Once you get enough points, you can start to buy automatic clickers. At some point, through enough investment, you don’t even bother to click. Your score grows exponentially. I look at this and think, “ah! automation!” You don’t want to dig ditches? Then go get an engineering degree, design a digger, and hire someone to drive it. Hopefully you’ve created more jobs in the process. But, I digress.I had this idea I was going to build a laser engraver - it could happen. Along that path I got some small steppers out of an old printer and bought a CNC shield and stepper drivers for an Arduino. There’s a G-code interpreter for this unit so you can drive the motors using standard a development chain (e.g., SVG to STL to Gcode). I cobbled together a cheap (free) x-y table and tried it out - turns out the motors weren’t strong enough. I should have realized it wouldn’t work so well given the steppers were about ⅓ the size of those on my 3d printer. So here’s where I detoured. Automate the cookie clicker.
I designed and printed my own NEMA-17 bracket and a holder for a stylus. Instead of using the G-code software, I wrote my own pulse generator to trigger the driver. That and some finagling with the iPod orientation and I could click much faster than my kids. They were actually impressed with this one! Turns out the faster you click, the more bonus you get. My kids could only get +3 and my contraption got +5. They’d never seen that. So here I thought I’m on my way to unlimited wealth. Alas, periodically they game opens a pop-up offer you purchases. Oh well, it was fun, I learned to use the stepper drivers, and most importantly I had a good laugh with the kids.
This is long enough … I’ll do
