End of a very nice weekend.. fished painting the belltower.. then headed to the Haunted Forest to finish rebuilding the project-x pumpkin robot.. This is year 3 (or 4 ?) of the 21 foot tall beast. ( bidi rheumatic pistons. a 20 foot pneumatic sheet rock jack, 4 bidi pneumatic solenoid valves, 3 arduinos,2 monster servos (for the mouth) , leds, a bunch of switching electronics, a ton of urethane goo)  an it’s an adventure every year to reassemble the creature an get it working. You can see it working here.  The big change this year is that I made a radio control setup to control his arms.. that and some other changes reduce the wiring harness the creature lifts by about 15 wires.. .. As always.. it’s a big adventure tying to install, debug and test electronics in the woods.. this year my freind John S is helping. john actually worked on the creature about 3 years ago when he was an intern at IBM.. now he’s been hired.. and is helping me on a this project.. and I hope many more to come.. Homer met us a few hours later and together we integrated the electronics and pneumatics.. i love working with these guys…

As always.. we underestimated the time we needed.. so we ended up swapping air hoses and wires in the dark.. lots of cursing.. but it was worth it.. it seems to be working… (cross your fingers. )

got home around 7:30 .. to find a big bowl of dianes homemade borscht.. yummmmmmmmm

Gabe gave me a great lesson in photoshop today.. I’ve never mastered’ ‘layers’ before .. gabe taught me to use them to mix animals.. like this gorilla-eagle  (goreagle ?) we made.. fun !

ok.. time for sleep. big and interesting week coming up.. wish me luck on that..
more as it happens..

nite all, nite sam
-me