[HN Gopher] Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse - hardware to...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse - hardware to custom OS
(This was previously submitted as
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2246856) The Ravenna Ultra-
Low-Altitude Vehicle is a backyard rocketship treehouse nestled in
the Seattle neighborhood of Ravenna. Click the link to see a demo
video (http://rocket.jonh.net). The hexagonal treehouse is about
6.5 feet (2 meters) across at its widest point. The frame is welded
mild steel with riveted aluminum siding. It contains nearly 800
LEDs forming dozens of numeric displays spread across 14 control
panels, each with an acrylic face laser-cut and etched with labels
such as "Lunar Distance" and "Hydraulic Pressure". The pilot
controls the rocket using a joystick and panels full of working
switches, knobs and buttons. Underneath the capsule are three
"thrusters" that shoot plumes of water and compressed air under the
control of the pilot's joystick, simulating real positioning
thrusters. Takeoff and docking sequences are augmented by a paint-
shaker that simulates the vibration of a rocket engine. Sound
effects complete the illusion, with a powered subwoofer that gives
the rocket a satisfying rumble. When it was built in 2011, rocket
operations were controlled by three Atmega328 microprocessors on
custom-fabricated printed circuit boards, running a small operating
system, RULOS, built just for this project. A trench running from
the house to the rocket carries 12VDC power for the lighting and
electronics, water for the thrusters, compressed air, and several
data signals. Since 2011, the two-person team has upgraded it,
here is a recent update from the makers: One of the most visible
changes is replacing the primary 4-line display with a slicker
6-line display (i.e., 6 rows of 8 columns of 7-segment LEDs). The
audio synthesizer has been upgraded to a PCB that can generate
50khz, 16-bit audio. The interconnection bus, which had been flat
IDC cable carrying individual on/off lines, was upgraded to a true
I2C-based networked distributed system with over a dozen
individually addressable targets, all interconnected by standard
cat5 cable that carries both our I2C protocol and power. We also
moved much of the electronics from 8-bit atmega328s to newer,
32-bit STM32F3's. RULOS has been expanded into a pretty general
purpose embedded systems platform ported to 5 major lines of CPU
(atmega, attiny, stm32, nxp lpc, and esp32). We've used it for
dozens of other projects in the last 12 years, including a
nanosecond-accurate timestamper, a GPS datalogger, an air quality
sensor, various little electronic control boards for toys (e.g.
these, and this), and an autonomous boat (that sank). It is all
available on Github: https://github.com/jelson/rulos.
Author : david_elson
Score : 63 points
Date : 2023-04-24 17:41 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rocket.jonh.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (rocket.jonh.net)
| [deleted]
| yellowapple wrote:
| This is the coolest fucking thing I've ever seen.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's a whole bunch of fractal awesome here:
|
| > Well, that logo's so classy, it needs to go on a patch! I could
| have had it done for maybe $80 at some web vendor. But why do
| that when we can spend $200 on craigslist for an old embroidery
| machine, and learn to do it ourselves?
|
| > The embroidery software I used to do the patch was pretty
| awful. In the spirit of do-do-it-yourself-yourself, I wrote my
| own embroidery software for inkscape.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Fun story: jonh's package for doing embroidery for inkscape was
| forked years later to become the excellent and much more
| comprehensive InkStitch extension (https://inkstitch.org/)!
| debatem1 wrote:
| Hey, amazing work! It'd be awesome to see this in the solstice
| parade, or as an installation at the end site for Solstice or
| Luminata. I help run both events and we would be happy to help
| move it and put it back if you're open to it.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Thanks, that's a kind offer! I think we don't have another move
| in us for a temporary display, but once Jon's kids are grown
| it'd be great to find someplace to donate it to permanently.
|
| We actually did haul the rocket hundreds of miles to Maker
| Faire years ago:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/ESRsJChacRbvpqZU7
|
| Here it is taking on hydrazine:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/1tcRasHpkVJUHq9s7
|
| We had a line of kids waiting for "rides":
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/gV9p6a8cVjWqeWgg9
| debatem1 wrote:
| Looks like a great trip and with all that disassembly I can
| imagine it not being an easy one, especially for a one day
| thing. Still, if you change your mind or want to chat about
| someday relocating it with all the other space-themed art in
| Fremont feel free to reach out to
| parade@fremontartscouncil.org or my username at Gmail.
| Awesome build!
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Thanks, I'll get in touch!
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Projects like this make life magic for little kids.
|
| I don't have the time/skill/patience for something of this scale,
| but I love doing little projects that make life magic for other
| people.
|
| So far I have created multiple kids gaming tables.
|
| I made a lego play table that had storage drawers underneath and
| stuck big baseboards on the top.
|
| I made quite a few kids playtables using model railroad stuff
| like grass mats, trees, houses, roads and given them to my boy or
| to the kids of friends.
|
| I've converted old radios into custom music players for friends
| birthdays including birthday greetings on various "radio
| channels".
|
| I converted an old rotary phone into a present for mu mum where
| you dial a number and hear people tell you their birthday
| greeting.
|
| I made an alien adventure game in the park for my 8 year old boys
| birthday party with a story and sound effects and treasures to
| find.
|
| I created a beach adventure for my boy when he was 6 years old in
| which he dug up a model sailing ship in the sand which contained
| a treasure map and a key leading to a little wooden chest wrapped
| in chains and padlocked and full of costume jewellery and
| trinkets.
|
| My boy is now 14 years old and the current project is to utilise
| his interest in robotics to convert toys to robots with the
| objective of raising his self esteem and making him believe he
| can do amazing things, give him something to show his friends
| because he did most of the work.
|
| The older I get, the more I find that this is in fact all I
| really want to do - be a modern day Gepetto.
|
| It doesn't take much to create magic for other people.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Is it really a "treehouse" if it has nothing to do with a tree? I
| would call this an awesome rocket playset, and really wish I had
| something half this fun and sophisticated when I was a kid. I
| think the shaker/rumbler synced with the lights is my favorite
| part.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| You're right, it's technically more of a fort than a treehouse.
| The original concept was a treehouse and we kept calling it
| that even as the plans changed. It's _near_ trees, though :)
| detrites wrote:
| This is incredible. Is there any more recent photos/video of how
| it looks now?
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Thanks! Yes, many new photos though we've been derelict in
| updating the web site ever since the big 2019 makeover!
|
| Here are some of our end users enjoying our efforts:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/8zca5kXXbAf2vcJh6
|
| Here's disco mode, though I think this is with the old audio
| synthesizer:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/vkenYZKATyDRB1386
|
| The original rocket's primary display was 4 rows of 7-segment
| LEDs. It was actually just 4 of our 1-row boards all stacked on
| top of each other. For the makeover we replaced it with a
| native board that had 6 rows:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/Dtiv5dN8FfrBAkDK7
|
| Here's a video of it playing pong on my bench before
| installation:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/bWfQkTaF3eUyacb78
|
| The old display boards were controlled by bit-banging latches
| over long parallel cables. This turns out to be a very bad idea
| (any EE could tell you this, but we're computer scientists). In
| the 2019 update we changed the remote display control from bit-
| banging to proper networking using I2C-based packets. We didn't
| want to remake every single display board, so we came up with a
| shortcut: we designed little snap-on "dongles" that speak the
| new I2C protocol and translate to bitbang commands that just go
| a few cm to the display board below. Here's the dongle
| installed on one display board:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/z9e6z6p4vXgb5j5aA
|
| Here's a side view showing how they stack:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/tAzF4Aeq1dWVHFxE6
|
| And here is one of the new dongles in situ with the new
| STM32-based primary controller, and the upgraded 32-bit audio
| synthesizer:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/oQxEZKRUZsK4Ry6W7
|
| We're both pilots so of course we had to put in a Hobbs meter.
| The rocket has over 600 hours on it:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/ydecF3q8VkdnJB1JA
| dang wrote:
| As david_elson pointed out, this incredible project was
| originally submitted back in 2011:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2246856 - and got zero
| comments.
|
| An observant HN user ran across it the other day and suggested it
| as a candidate for the second-chance pool (explained at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308). I
| enthusiastically agreed and we got back in touch not only with
| the original submitter but the project makers as well. I hope
| they'll comment in this thread!
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Thanks dang! I'm one of the makers and happy to chat!
| jacquesm wrote:
| What a fantastic project! It would be interesting to do some
| risk assessment to see how well it stacks up against the real
| thing ;)
|
| I'm definitely _not_ going to show this to my kids because I
| have other plans for the next three years...
|
| Edit: I love the GPS datalogger, it's like the random number
| generator doing '4' all the time.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| I don't have numbers so I'll just say that it has only ever
| been disassembled slowly and according to plan!
| jacquesm wrote:
| Many happy landings to you and yours :)
| Severian wrote:
| Man I love this. As a kid my dad had a friend that had some type
| of old industrial control interface, in unpainted sheet metal, he
| had wired up that just did blinkenlights. Had a bunch of
| 7-segment LEDs, light-up push buttons, switches, throws, dials,
| meters, and a bunch of other stuff. It had that tactile goodness
| that a touchscreen doesn't.
|
| Basically it did nothing, but man did it inspire my imagination.
| I remember spending hours playing with it as my parents talked
| and played cards. This must have been the late 70s as I was 4 or
| 5 at the time (if that tells you my age).
|
| These kids have it good.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Honestly, this thing inspired _my_ imagination more than I
| could have imagined. I had so much fun that I ended up building
| dozens more embedded systems projects, and eventually
| redirected my career more towards embedded systems, too.
| Embedded systems really let you interact with them in a tactile
| way, as you put it, that computer-based software does not. I
| found it irresistible.
|
| Jon's oldest child -- pictured on the web site as an 8-year-old
| -- is now a sophomore in college, majoring in engineering. I'd
| like to think the rocket had some small part in that, too.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think a big factor is that kids see adults do stuff and
| think that doing stuff and making things is normal. That gets
| them out of 'if it isn't store bought it isn't real' mode.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-24 23:00 UTC)