This one is silly. This is 2012, and I needed this dumb Maxon motor driver to be quickly reversible, etc., for mocking up BLDC motor assemblies. This thing was a major PITA... but it worked.
Manufacturing guy-at-large.
Ai & Paint
Top: Illustrator artwork by yours truly. Bottom: Paint by Keith Anderson.
The funny thing about this is:
- I had so little experience with Illustrator! The whole Creative Suite is still pretty opaque to me, but back then... I was making it up *seriously.*
- I still really like this design. The customer didn't want any graphics, but I told him that I needed something on his frame. This was a pretty good compromise - I made it just for this one bike - and I think it holds up.
- It was *impossible* to photograph. Damn round tubes.
Not ready for the Spotlight
I ordered my Quirky Spotter on 2013.11.29. I received it on 2013.12.09, and plugged it in immediately. It remained plugged in but mostly inactive for all of December.
On 2013.12.23, I looked at the "Light" settings and noticed that Spotter had *never* seen any light, even though it had been sitting in my room - next to a window that gets direct sunlight - for about two weeks.
I noted the weirdness, but didn't change the alarm setting. I then went out of town for a few days, and was surprised a few days later to see this:
It looks like I've got a few issues here. First, I'm guessing that the light sensor and its supporting hardware are indeed functional. The first problem would then be somewhere on either the firmware of the device, or on Wink's backend, or possibly on the Wink iOS app (though that seems unlikely).
Second, Wink obviously has no idea what it means for a light to be turned on. All of these notifications happened when nobody was in my house, and I'm betting that ambient light at the Spotter was pretty consistent across these readings. So why is Wink sending me multiple notifications?
The net effect is that Spotter is pre-MVP - it's not really viable. I am the owner of a highly sophisticated piece of hardware, which can communicate with a slick iOS app, but whose supporting system infrastructure (the firmware and/or backend) simply isn't mission ready.
For obvious reasons I find this really disappointing. I had been hoping that Spotter would offer a few big improvements over Twine, which I also own. But Quirky is a fast-paced company, and they've sold me a product that - despite the encouraging anecdotes on their blog - just isn't trustworthy.
Lastly, I give you this:
Here, the organizational differences between Apple and Quirky strike me. Quirky thinks that the product stories will validate crappy execution. Apple, instead, has an ingrained (if delusional) belief in the superiority of their products, and that belief is shared throughout their company.
Home Depot, on the other hand, has neither story nor supposed superiority. They sell commoditized products and low-spec tools to a customer base that either doesn't know what they're buying or doesn't care. Their employees usually lack the training to give reliable recommendations, and their store layout - something that Apple spends a lot of time thinking about - is totally non-imageable (cf. Kevin A. Lynch, The Image of the City).
Just because Home Depot sells "smart" products doesn't make them an advanced retail operation. And as I've experienced, Wink's "smartness" is questionable.
Note: Prior to writing this, I posted some photos on twitter and got a response - on Christmas Day - from Quirky Help. While I appreciate their assistance, I am nonetheless disappointed with the out-of-the-box performance of this high profile product... and its performance has remained, er, consistent. This taken today:
Phew
My notes from a few years back, when I took MITx 6.002x - Circuits & Electronics.
If I recall correctly, this particular path was a wild goose chase - there's too much guzz here for it to have been the right solution.
Most recent revision: Dummy Headset
I realized that I never posted photos of the most recent revision of my dummy headset. Here it is:
The major difference is that I removed a bit more material from the inner diameter of the part. The result is that it's lighter and less expensive to produce, while still holding a fork steerer gently & securely.
The updated version is on Shapeways - please check it out and send any feedback my way!
PS - it's also available in black :) With more colors to come!
This is a well documented quote.
Most quotes on MFG - whether from the US or overseas - leave a lot to be desired. This one is pretty good, though.
Note, that doesn't mean that I'm going to act on this quote. But I like the comments a lot - they show a lot of foresight and care on the part of the supplier.
Mailing List v1.0
Mailing list: LIVE!
This is the best of the best of the stuff I've read in the past month or so. Check it out here, or subscribe!
Pathing.
- Wikipedia: "Hedonic Treadmill." Basically, humans aren't very good at getting happier.
- Wikipedia: "The Planning Fallacy." People are also terrible at planning, even when they're primed to be aware of that fact.
Developing.
- Seth Brown/Dr. Bunsen: "Building a Weather Station." A great rundown of a smart guy's process in building a remotely accessible weather station at his home.
- Bloomberg News: "UPS Crunches Data to Make Routes More Efficient, Save Gas." UPS's navigation systems are fascinating.
- Adrien Lucas Ecoffet/Quora: "Answer to Is it true that when translating from/to any language other than English, Google Translate translates to English (in the backend software) before translating to the language I've chosen?" Interesting both for linguistics and also for the method he uses to solve the problem.
- Horace Dediu/Asymco: "Bundling and Pricing Innovation." Dediu argues that cell carriers will never unbundle their services, which makes me a bit sad.
- Seth Brown/Dr. Bunsen: "On the Future of Statistical Languages." I know next to nothing on the topic, but Brown's argument is interesting and accessible.
- Kyle Vanhemert/Wired: "How Apple's Lightning-Plug Guru Reinvented Square's Card Reader." A great piece on embedded systems design & physical product development.
- Terry Wohlers/Wohlers Associates: "3D Printing Metal Parts in Space." This kind of thing could be really cool.
Evaluating.
- Elon Musk/Tesla: "The Mission of Tesla." Musk is a pretty crazy dude. This mission statement is a strong defense against the seemingly crazy claims that Teslas are particularly susceptible to fire.
- Michael Hochster/Quora: "Answer to What is an intuitive explanation of Bayes' Rule?" Bayesian probability is *everywhere* these days, and really interesting.
- Benjamin Morris/Skeptical Sports: "The Case for Dennis Rodman." I'm not done with this whole series, but I like it.
- Khoi Vinh/Medium: "What Streaming Music Can Be." I'm old fashioned - I own my own music files. But I like this take on streaming, which is obviously the future.
Reflecting.
- Juliet Waters/NYTimes: "The Code of Life." A journalist learns a little programming, and discovers that it's not all bad.
- FastCo: "Digital Cameras are Messing With Your Memory." This is great, but you really need to read to the end - I suspect that the way that many of us deal with digital photography avoids some of the pitfalls.
- John Dickerson/Slate: "Note to Selfie." Dickerson gives an excellent, and heartfealt, defense of mobile technology and its place in our everyday lives.
And.
Love... your friendly host.
Batteries
From Wired's (great) recent piece, "How Apple’s Lightning-Plug Guru Reinvented Square’s Card Reader."
But ditching the battery meant more than saving space. It was also a huge step towards that simplicity Dorogusker set out to achieve from the start. “With a battery, you have to somehow connect the battery to your circuit board,” he says. “You do that with two little wires. They have to be cut to length, stripped on both ends, tinned on both ends and hand soldered to the battery and then to the board. It’s a huge amount of labor.”
In my robot door life, we were lucky enough to have someone aboard to warn us of the physical danger of lithium ion batteries; we ended up finding some very powerful lead acid batteries to do the trick instead. But we spent a *lot* of time configuring our battery pack, which was a PITA to assemble and mount. Wires suck, and batteries often require them. Avoid if possible.
Marc Barros
From his very good post, "What Can We Learn from Beyoncé?" Emphasis mine.
Having a purpose in the startup world is hard. The culture is built around ideas instead of meaning. Which is best exemplified by everyone’s two favorite questions: What do you do? and How big can this be?
Surround yourself with creators who first ask why you do it.
I've been asking this question of more and more of the folks I come into contact with when discussing a possible collaboration. I'm always surprised how few people seem to question why they're doing what they are, though I can relate - I've spent much time pursuing things for totally backwards reasons. I explored this a few months ago in relation to my experience building bikes, and have spent a lot of time in the past year thinking about how I want to address the Why of the next steps in my career. I certainly don't have it all figured out, but I definitely want to work with people who are thinking along these lines.
IRL Crowdfunding
Every few days someone asks me about one of the projects I'm working on. Most often they've seen something I've put up on Instagram or Facebook, but didn't have enough context to really understand what it is I'm working on or even whether it's for sale.
Most of my projects will eventually be crowdfunded, and I expect to be able to convert some of the folks who I've talked to during development. But I had a thought the other day: Why not start taking orders immediately, whenever someone asks?
The thought is this: If you ask me about The Public Radio, I'll give you my little pitch and then (assuming you've acted enthusiastic) ask for $20, cash, now. I'll then whip out my phone and email you an informal receipt, and will deliver you a v1.0 when it ships (probably the pre-Kickstarter version).
This would help me in a few ways. First, it locks in a customer. Second, it lets me know whether I'm actually onto something - if everyone says "no," then maybe I should pivot. Third, it gives me a little cash to help keep the project moving forward. And I can be pretty sure that you'll ask me about the project status in the future, which is the most thrilling parts of building a product like this.
I think this is a decent idea. If you're reading this, ask me about what I've been working on the next time you see me - we'll see how it works :)
Crane
Taken from a crane almost a half-mile above Shanghai. Via twentytwowords.
Touch-stuff
This system is super awesome. It's a haptic interface that uses a camera + a projector + spacial recognition software. Way cooler than Leap + a flatscreen display, if you ask me.
NoHeadSet on Shapeways
After a couple of revisions, my 3D printed dummy headset is on Shapeways!
It still probably needs a few refinements, but I'm hoping to get a little feedback on it before I make them. I did try it out in my shop recently (NYCVelo also has a prototype), and I can confirm that it looks great and works damn well.
The headset is two parts. The top half has two 3.3mm holes "drilled" in it; they need to be tapped M4 in order to make the assembly really work well. I would recommend using brass tipped set screws for aluminum or steel steerers, and nylon tipped set screws for carbon fiber. You can also experiment with thumb screws or plain old socket cap screws if you like.
This may seem like an obscure part, but for anyone who has spent any time handling bike frames & forks, it'll come in *really* handy. If that sounds like you, grab one on Shapeways and let me know how it works!
Estimates
I've been really lagging on my rack ends project, but I wanted to post a quick update.
A few months ago I posted drawings and a STEP file to MFG.com. MFG is a sourcing platform for manufactured parts of all types, with suppliers and buyers from around the world. When I was building robot doors, I used MFG to source probably $50k worth of parts, mostly from contract machine shops around the US - but also from mainland China. MFG is a great place to get a *lot* of quotes quickly, and I've developed a few long-term relationships with great suppliers from it.
My current project is a small one - there are certainly hundreds of job shops around the country who could handle it. I'm hoping to spend $2-3 per part in quantities in the 100s, though it remains to be seen whether that's possible.
I got about twenty quotes back, though I scratched a few outliers off the bat. The remaining sixteen are below. Note that the 1st quantity is for 1000, 2nd quantity is for 100.
As it happens, I've received samples from a few of the cheapest suppliers on this list... they were pretty rough, with a lot of hand-finishing (presumably to cover up low quality machining).
Note also that I requested all pricing to be DDP, which means that the supplier is supposed to include all duties and shipping to my doorstep. From my past experience, a lot of Chinese suppliers either don't understand or don't care to quote these terms, though a few of the quotes here actually specify EXW, meaning that the supplier boxes up the goods and then leaves the rest for me to take care of. For a box of stainless steel in Guangdong, the cost of shipping could easily add 25-50% to some of these cheaper quotes.
For a part like this one, I could probably pick one of the lower bids and go with it. The part is simple enough; the worst I would deal with would probably be a bit of slag on some of the drilled holes. I want to be careful about material selection, though - I need the part to be 304 stainless, and the risk of a supplier using a different grade is nontrivial.
The fun thing to do is to order the small quantity from one of the lowest bidders, and see how it turns out. For less than the cost of a used PS3, you can get a batch of parts that's probably ready to sell or use - *and* you might learn something interesting.
In reality, I'm more likely to buy the parts from a supplier I know (and found on MFG a few years ago). The quote I got from him was under $4 per, which is competitive with many of the Chinese suppliers here. He quotes EXW, but shipping UPS for these parts won't be more than $50. I would also follow up with all of the reasonable US firms here and see what their responsiveness was - especially if I can find someone local-ish.
This particular part is low priority right now, but I'll probably follow up on this early in January. Expect updates.
The Algorithms that became the Google Car
Robert Scoble, in a good post on Quora about keeping up with technology.
I saw self-driving cars in 2007 at Stanford University, for instance, and interviewed the guy who built the algorithms for what became the Google car.
This may seem non sequitur, but I think it's remarkable. It really illustrates how much software is eating the world: a car ceases to be a thing with an engine and four wheels, and instead becomes an bunch of software.
Pretty cool.
In the jar
When we started The Public Radio, we planned on making it look sleek and functional. My design aesthetic tends towards midcentury modern, and brushed aluminum is kind of the standard bearer for that class of objects. But after an hour or two of talking, we realized that the type of customer that we wanted to appeal to would probably never pay the kind of pricetag we'd need to charge for the product we wanted to build.
Plus: If cuteness allows you to be effective, maybe you should get over yourself and just do it.
So it's a radio in a Mason jar. It's cute, and it allowed us to iterate quickly and inexpensively.
A few months ago, I put an MVP together (an iPod + a simple amp) and threw it in a jar with a speaker. Since then, The Public Radio has been mostly an idea, or at best a breadboarded, hacked-together mess of wire. While cool to the two of us, it hasn't been much to look at - iPhone headphones and all.
Over the past few weeks, I've gotten the lid design & potentiometer figured out. Meanwhile, each of us has been learning about register addresses & trying to strip our firmware of everything unnecessary. So yesterday, after much ado, we finally wired up the switch and speaker to the rest of the ratsnest and got the thing mocked up.
Quickly, then, the goal was to get it into the jar right away. So a bit of protoboard and a little more fiddling, and we were able to squeeze it in.
To backtrack a bit: It's worth noting that our current state - an Arduino Pro Mini and a couple of Sparkfun breakout boards - is a step backwards from where we were a few months ago. If you'll recall, there was a time that we were putting discrete components on our own PCB. But we had a few issues with our circuit design, and regardless we realized that we had aimed too high on our MVP. So we went back to off-the-shelf components and protoboard, with the intention of doing some basic product validation. Which I dare say we're getting close to.
The next step here is to make a few more of these things and start showing them off. I made some revisions to the lid the other day, and Zach has already ordered a new custom PCB (basically a breakout board with a few screw terminals on it) that'll replace the protoboard here.
We'll have three of these, plus a few more speakers & pots, in the next week or so. In the meantime we've been scheming about the next steps: having the lids die cut out of brushed stainless steel; getting rid of the Arduino and building the radio out of a ATtiny + the Si4702 + a class-D amp; world domination, etc.
It's hard not to get ahead of yourself sometimes, but I prefer to keep my mind at a point where I'm aware of which questions to ask just before I need to ask them :)
More Kahneman
Again, from "Thinking, Fast and Slow." Again, emphasis mine.
Reciprocal links are common in the associative network. For example, being amused tends to make you smile, and smiling tends to make you feel amused. Go ahead and take a pencil, and hold it between your teeth for a few seconds with the eraser pointing to your right and the point to the left. Now hold the pencil so the point is aimed straight in front of you, by pursing your lips around the eraser end. You were probably unaware that one of these actions forced your face into a frown and the other into a smile. College students were asked to rate the humor of cartoons from Gary Larson's The Far Side while holding a pencil in their mouth. Those who were "smiling" (without any awareness of doing so) found the cartoons funnier than did those who were "frowning." In another experiment, people whose face was shaped into a frown (by squeezing their eyebrows together) reported an enhanced emotional response to upsetting pictures - starving children, people arguing, maimed accident victims.
Simple, common gestures can also unconsciously influence our thoughts and feelings. In one demonstration, people were asked to listen to messages through new headphones. They were told that the purpose of the experiment was to test the quality of the audio equipment and were instructed to move their heads repeatedly to check for any distortions of sound. Half the participants were told to nod their head up and down while others were told to shake it side to side. The messages they heard were radio editorials. Those who nodded (a yes gesture) tended to accept the message they heard, but those who shook their head tended to reject it. Again, there was no awareness, just a habitual connection between attitude of rejection or acceptance and its common physical expression. You can see why the common admonition "act calm and kind regardless of how you feel" is very good advice: you are likely to be rewarded by actually feeling calm and kind.
These are lessons that I should fully integrate into my everyday life. All the time I find myself scrunching my eyebrows and pursing my lips, and I'm sure it effects my overall mood. I imagine that I seem to see my work as a curse to be endured, whereas I truly enjoy and relish it... Kahneman leaves me somewhat unsure, though at least he gives a clear remedy.
=> :-)
Kahneman
From "Thinking, Fast and Slow." Emphasis mine.
If you quote a source, choose one with a name that is easy to pronounce. Participants in an experiment were asked to evaluate the prospects of fictitious Turkish companies on the basis of reports from two brokerage firms. For each stock, one of the reports came from an easily pronounced name (e.g., Artan) and the other report came from a firm with an unfortunate name (e.g., Taahhut). The reports sometimes disagreed. The best procedure for the observers would have been to average the two reports, but this is not what they did. They gave much more weight to the report from Artan than to the report from Taahhut. Remember that System 2 is lazy and that mental effort is aversive. If possible, the recipients of your message want to stay away from anything that reminds them of effort, including a source with a complicated name.
Old & New
Christy and I have been making progress on the wallet :)
Center front is the latest version. On the right is one we made a few weeks back, but which needed a few modifications. In the back is the original version, which I made completely by hand in 2010 (it's been in my pocket for most of the time since then).
Throughout, the parts are vegetable tanned tooling leather. On the two new ones, we had the parts laser cut - but I'm not sure we'll be doing this for the production version.
We'll be finding suppliers of whole sides in the next few weeks, as well as looking into steel rule dies for making parts, etc. Expect updates.
SFO
San Francisco: I will be in you 12.24-12.26. Holler at me.
This photograph, of the Golden Gate Bridge, was taken by my parents sometime in 1976-1977.