On Fri, May 6, 2016 at 10:11 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Remember last week we discussed books about robots in the HOPE thread? Both books arrived today. One of them, "How to design & build your own custom robot" by David Heiserman, is very deep -- heavy reading. The other, "How to build a computer-controlled robot" by Tod Loofbourrow, contains a reasonable project that we as a group can build (but not in time for HOPE unless we really bust ass.)
In the preface of Loofbourrow's book, he wrote: "I want to thank the members of the Amateur Computer Group of New Jersey, whose suggestions have helped make Mike (that's what he calls the robot -EK) what he is today."
Googled the author. He went on to a nice career in robotics. I sent him an intro tweet via our official VCFed account. Apparently he lives in the Boston area. Maybe we can get him down to the museum for a talk one day.
I dug out some more stuff last wknd One is the SVI-2000 Robot arm I mentioned that was interfaced to the C64 And one of the motors I used to build my robot from the 70s in Tod Loofbourrow's book I don't know which storage box the other 2 motors might be sitting in yet But you can see from the pic, it's big enough break your toe - or your skull :) There are powerful enough to carry me, but before when I was skinny http://rogtronics.net/pics/robot/motor70s.jpg but I can ship this too if you'd like in time for Hope and Maker Faire, This was found at Herbach & Rademan, a very popular surplus supplier they were located in Philly back then, and it's still around to this date, they moved to Morristown http://www.herbach.com/ I already have a box for the robot arm and there's room left, with plenty of foam The robot arm will include a prototype interface so Jeff can run it on his C64 I'll just pick it up later when I visit again. Dan