Teen Business Idea: Polishing Portables

Background

Any computer guru will tell you that being good with computers comes with the onus of being "the fix-it guy." People know I'm into computers, and I'm frequently called upon to resolve problems. Sometimes I do this as a service, sometimes for pay and sometimes in trade. I recently fixed a laptop for a friend, and in return got an iPod. I'm not much of a music buff, so I decided to sell it for cash. The iPod had been well-loved, and despite being perfectly functional, the signs of use were quite evident by way of scuffs and scratches.

I did my best to polish the case with the materials on hand, but I know I could get a better price with a better polish job. Buuuuuuuut, it wouldn't be worth buying the stuff needed to get a professional finish. What I really needed was someone who already had the polishing equipment...

I often find myself wanting something that just isn't common. And when that happens, I see an idea.

The Idea

Cell phones, tablets, laptops, MP3 players, etc. - These things are a part of our everyday lives. We have come to depend on them for nearly every facet of our electronic requirements. One device that does everything tends to take some abuse over time. This means people get annoying scratches, scuffs and worn out screens and cases. It would be nice if there was an accessible way (which is just my way of saying "cheap") to get rid of these scratches.

But this the United States, where manufactured items are cheap, and services are expensive. This is a job for moderately-skilled, cheap labor...aka Teenagers. I think there are better jobs for teens than flipping burgers or working at the movie house. Not that there is anything wrong with those...but learning an uncommon skill or providing a unique service can improve your earning potential.

So here's what you do. Get mom, or dad, or rich uncle Ted to loan you enough money to buy a polishing wheel, some pads, discs and compound. Educate yourself and learn the art polishing plastic and glass. You should be able to find everything on Google (if your Google-Fu is good). If not, try asking a local jeweler for a pseudo apprenticeship. You could also go to the library. Heck, if you're that bad off you can send me an email and I'll get you started.

The last bit is all about marketing yourself and getting business. Start learning on your family and friends. Offer your business for free until you build some skill, and possibly a reputation. Then build your clientele. Make up some business cards, flyers and leave them at independent cell phone stores. Maybe they'll let you setup shop around the store. Go door to door if necessary. And good luck.

Kids Project: Vibrobots

It's pretty cool what you can do with stuff you already have laying around. Once again, Lewis showed me a book of robotics that had some pictures of vibrobots. These are small robots that move using vibration. All it takes is a "AA" battery, a vibrating motor, some wire and hot glue. We used other junk electronics I had laying to add features to our bots. You could use motors from a pager, cell phone or RC car, but mine came from a pair of defunct Xbox controllers.

Lewis was the traditionalist and went with a vibrating bug. Nate and Corinne went with animals near and dear to their hearts, a dog and cat respectively. Lydia pushed her creativity and came out with a dancing frog. All told this took us the better part of a Saturday morning.

These don't stand up well to abuse, and I've re-glued the precious cat multiple times. I dread the battle that awaits when the battery dies...

Kids Project: Rubber-Band Cars

Here is a project we did several weeks ago that put huge smiles on the kids' faces. One day Lewis brought home a book from the school Library called, "Amazing Rubber Band Cars" by Mike Rigsby. He was very excited about making some of the cars from the book. So one Saturday we sat down and copied a basic template from his book and came up with our own design. Below are the results.

We used hot glue for nearly all of the construction, but found that you needed glue on both sides of the tires to make them durable enough for kid use. We also had to play around with the rubber-band size and spacing since our rubber bands obviously differed from those used in the book. The cars withstood quite a bit of abuse and got used periodically throughout the following weeks. I love projects that keep the kids entertained for more than an hour.

Teen Business Idea: 3D Virtual Tours

Background

We want to do more camping this summer than we have in the past. I'm not into the glamping thing, but I've learned that I'm picky about my camping. Part of this is because my parents did such a fantastic job finding awesome campgrounds when I was a kid. Part is because I've gotten soft.

I prefer to camp spontaneously on a Friday, and that's REALLY hard to do in Utah. As a result you'll often get the dregs or nothing at all when it comes to campsites. So I usually try to plan in advance, and when I plan, I over-think everything.

 So while planning an upcoming outing I was looking at campground sites and wondering which site would have the best grass, fewest rocks, play areas for the kids, etc. The picture snapshots of the sites just didn't cut the mustard for me and I was wishing I could virtually fly through the campground. I'm not complaining, really, just being super-picky. Even though we have Google Earth, and campground maps, and even pictures of individual sites I was still wishing for more information.

The Idea

I'm sure there are plenty of places where people would like to get a better look virtually before they visit physically. This happened with the real-estate market with virtual walkthroughs and 360 degree views in MLS. For outdoor venues it would be nice to have the same type of option to navigate through a campground, amphitheater, theme park, etc. from any perspective.

It would be a nearly trivial matter to fly around the venue using a quad-copter with a mounted camera. At the very least you could take still images and create a step-by-step option like Google street view. With some clever mix of visual odometry and image-capture you could make a live 3D fly-through.

I'm certain that the technology already exists, and I'm sure someone out there is already offering services. But you'd have to sell the whole package: record, create and host the data. Maybe it could be done simply enough to be integrated into their existing websites. I'd do it if I got free camping for the weekend wherever I went.

Progress

06/12/2015 - Existing Businesses:

http://hdtowns.com/brazil/rio-de-janeiro/ -  Aerial 3D from a single point.

http://aerialxpressions.com/  - They use a point to point system and a 360 degree aerial view at each point. That is good enough and a reasonable compromise between movement and data storage.

https://www.pixilink.com/70965?opentab=3dtour - They use the 3D model with mapped image color, but they also use a point to point w/ 360 degree view approach. Mostly restricted to homes. There's more business there. I think it's pretty aggressive for the application. An aerial view would be a little easier I think.

Kids Project: Pop Pop Boats

This weekend we decided to make our own pop-pop or putt-putt boats like the one in the movie Ponyo. We followed the directions from Science Toy Maker: http://www.sciencetoymaker.org/boat/

It took a couple hour-long sessions to make the pop-can flash engines. Luckily all four engines worked on the first try. Some were obviously more powerful than others. We also learned that the smaller, lighter boats go faster. The foam used for the hull is rigid extruded polystyrene made by Dow that we picked up form Lowe's. Thick, but stable enough to hold the boilers without additional weights.

Missing Ingredients

Today's theme, Missing Ingredients, seems to be best summarized by a section heading in an article I read today by Kenji Crosland called, "The Rise of the Generalist Part III: How to Thrive as a Generalist." It relates to my continued search to understand my personality and how I can shape my career to deliver satisfaction for myself, my family and others.

The urgency of my personality search has increased over the last year since my employer announced the closure of our plant. I've been looking for jobs but finding conflict trying to match my personality to a job description. I've also felt stagnated in my personality search, not sure why I haven't made more progress. Finally, my unfinished projects at home still haunt me. Here's how they all relate to missing Ingredients.

Missing Ingredients for Employers

With two months left until the factory shutdown, everyone is in full job-search mode. Only a few people have reported much success; they are the ones looking for jobs in semiconductors or electronics manufacturing. Many of us are looking to change industries. Manufacturing is a difficult industry, and job satisfaction often rates low. This seems counter-intuitive because the products we make improve lives, and the pay and benefits are respectable. My personal experience leads me to believe that the dissatisfaction comes from the extreme pressures that arise from the volatile nature of the business. Companies are run extremely lean, and the most obvious places to reduce costs are areas that are correlated with happiness but not the bottom line. In fact, since the pressure on our site has been reduce people are far happier lately and our performance is at record levels.

So trying to change industries / careers is difficult, and some days feels impossible. Even when I have contacts inside a company, it seems I always have too little of the right experience, and too much of the wrong experience. I can't get an entry-level job because I'm "overqualified", and I can't get a mid-level or senior job because I'm "under-qualified." I foresee this being an ongoing problem throughout my life if I stay in traditional career roles.

I've burned far too many calories just trying to find roles with a potential fit, and it has really limited my options. Companies are looking for specialists. So I've found myself looking through online certification courses for computer hardware, data analysis, Microsoft support, Linux support, networking, programming, etc. I just don't have time right now to do them all. How can I possibly pick just ONE?! It's about this time I start getting depressed and thinking, "Why can't I just be happy being a specialist?!"

Missing Ingredients for My Path

Because when I think about being a specialist it makes me depressed. There's no career path and no head hunters looking for a "generalist." This means I've got to make my own path. I still feel like I don't know where to begin. It's a long way between having some vague ideas and charting a new course. That's why I keep falling into the same rut of browsing existing job listings. But every time I look at a listing I can't help but feel so confined. They all feel wrong.

Today I realized that I still haven't finished my soul-searching quest yet. All the jobs feel wrong because I'm looking at the wrong jobs, and I don't know which jobs are the right jobs. I don't know which jobs are the right jobs because I still don't know what exactly I need to be doing to fulfill my career. I'm missing ingredients to know which direction to go.

So today I vowed to begin again, to delve more deeply than before. I got side-tracked with the practicality of trying to feed my family in a few months. Chances are that I will take yet another partially fulfilling job while I evolve my self-concept into something actionable. I will probably never be happy working for a corporation, maybe only working for myself. But I gotta figure out what it is I will be doing.

Missing Ingredients for Executing Ideas

Finally, it was this line of thinking that brought me back around to this blog. I've collected a few of my ideas, but they just kind of sat there. Barbara Sher said that once I get them onto paper they would stop nagging at me. The burden was lessened by writing them down, but they still nag at me. Maybe I need to actually finish (some) of my projects. But why did I stop?

Many of my projects require skills beyond my current abilities. The idea of getting some of them executed is daunting..."I don't know how to do that." I realized that those skills are missing ingredients necessary for fulfillment. I've been out of school for two years now and realize it's time to get back to the books. The most difficult time is deciding where to start. I get analysis paralysis.

So today I bought another book to help define my passion - my "Genius". Next I'm going to pick one of my ideas and gain the missing skills needed to bring it into fruition. I'm thinking about learning more programming first. So I'm looking for a job that will involve some programming and hopefully open the gateway there even wider. Eventually I'll need to learn some business and entrepreneurship. That's the scariest of all.

World's Smallest Sand Castle

Background

I was looking for some fun, clean, April Fools pranks when I found a printable joke about the worlds smallest sand castle, "carefully crafted by microscopic nanobots." What you really do is glue a tiny pinch of sand to the paper.

This might fool some gullible, elementary aged children, but in my line of work we can easily view objects on the micro and nanoscale. We have powerful optical microscopes, scanning electron microscopes, confocal microscopes, laser interferometry, etc. So I got thinking about what it would take to really build the world's smallest sand castle.

The Idea

I think it would be a fun project to actually build the world's smallest sand castle (if it hasn't been done already). To accomplish this I would build it from real grains of sand by stacking them one at a time like giant building blocks. Okay, they are actually tiny building blocks, but think about buildings that are made from huge granite blocks. I would treat each small grain as if it were a huge building block. That gives you a sense of scale of what I want to build.

There are many different types of sand, but the typical size distribution goes from 0.06mm to 2.0mm. To make building easier I would try to find a high purity silica sand with grains filtered towards the smaller end of the spectrum, around 0.10mm. I think the biggest problem with building on this small scale is that the building blocks won't be square. Unlike salt crystals, silica crystals take a much more random form and will be rounded on all sides. This means I'll need to be creative to get the grains to stick together. The most obvious answer would be to glue them in place.

The last, and I think most difficult / expensive, challenge to overcome is how to actually perform the building.  How do you move the sand grains into place and glue them there?! Really steady hands and lots of patience? I think not. I've done lots of work lately playing with servos, and motor controllers, but those just don't have micro-scale accuracy. After a little research I think I'll use micromanipulators. These are mechanical devices used mostly by biologists to work with individual cells under a microscope. If I can get my hands on one or two of these things then I might have a shot at a world record.

Progress

02/03/2015 -

Has it Been Done Before?

Using my Google-fu I checked for any prior attempts at my idea. The current claim to the world's smallest sand castle comes from Vik Muniz. He has taken an individual grain of sand and used a laser to etch a picture of a castle. I think this is awesome, and a clever twist on the idea of a sand castle. However, it does not qualify as a 3D structure build from multiple grains of sand.

I also found a few photos of small castles built with more traditional techniques by J.W. Gruber. He makes a tightly packed block of sand then carves out the castle. Probably the smallest freestanding examples with extensive detail.

Here is a gentleman who does micro-sculpting by hand between his heart beats. He could probably do it without using any extra equipment. His pace is a little slow, but that's exactly the attribute that makes him successful: Willard Wigan TED Talk

Looking For a Micromanipulator

• New on Amazon: $1,500
• Used Industrial: $150 - $500
• 3D Printed Low Res: $100

The 3D printed version actually gives me an affordable way to research the feasibility of this idea. As soon as I get the nozzle on my printer repaired I may dig into this.

03/31/2019 - I still want to do this one. It just seems unique and fun. I've had the 3D-printed micromanipulator and VR goggles on my desk for at least a year.

I've been stuck on the optics. I'm trying to maximize both the free working distance and the depth of focus around the optimal magnification level for medium sand grains (about 0.1 mm). If you've ever used a microscope, you may have noticed that everything looks flat or out of focus. This is because when you zoom in to high magnifications, only a thin section of material is in focus.

With my design, I've been trying to overcome this flatness and give a sense of depth and dimension by using stereo 3D microscopy. This has been done successfully by Gary Greenberg, but he looks like an academic gone commercial. I can't afford his equipment, and he doesn't publish the design since he's selling them for over $40,000 on Amazon. From his websites it looks like he's relying on Z-stacking to get full-depth 3D images. In other words, the camera automatically takes images at different focal depths, then a computer combines all the parts that are in-focus to create a neat looking picture. So it's not REALLY real-time, live 3D viewing.

That depth of focus is going to really make this project a challenge. My problem is that I don't have the money to just play around with expensive optics, and I don't know enough optics theory to design my system on paper to know exactly what to buy and how that translates to a workable system. I've gotten a rough idea by studying scopes for soldering electronic components, and I found DIY stereo microscope that I might try.

Or maybe I should build the end-effector first and try to find a lab with a standard stereomicroscope and see if a standard mag like 65 or 90 is sufficient for what I need. Then I'd feel okay dropping the $250-$2500 for a standard lab unit.

Water Rockets

Intro

One day in the church parking lot, while waiting for an activity to begin, my step-brothers pulled out a bike pump and a soda bottle half filled with water. The lid of the soda bottle had a hole drilled inside with a bike tire stem poking out. They attached the pump to the bottle and pressurized the contents. Finally, one of them pointed the bottle up in the air and removed the cap. It rocketed out of his hands spewing water everywhere. That was my first introduction to water bottle rockets.

As kids we never took that principle any further. It wasn't until college when I learned that some people get very serious about building complex launchers and rockets. For me it has become a fun summer pastime, but not a serious hobby. I mostly enjoy launching rockets as a way to spend fun time with my children.

My Rockets

My first rocket no longer exists. I shot it so many times that the plastic got weak from landing and it exploded during pressurization. So unless you have a soft recovery system, I recommend retiring your pressure vessel after about 20 launches.

"Red Rocket", my second rocket, is a two-liter bottle with fins stolen from a firework. The nosecone is a Nerf football cut in half and hollowed to the correct weight. The fins and nosecone are attached by duct tape to allow fast repairs and relaunches. I've found duct tape to be very reliable and convenient in withstanding launch forces. These fins are too small to be really effective, so I'll probably replace them soon.

My family at the engineering competition, me holding "Red Rocket."

"One Night Wonder", my third rocket, was designed for an engineering competition at work. I procrastinated the build until the night before the competition. The nose cone was 3D printed, and I invented a circular fin that extends on launch. This system allowed the rocket to be fired from virtually any launcher design. With only a single good launch my rocket won second place for height, and first place for closest to target. The fin extension system used short sections of drinking-straw as linear bearings. The straws were cheap and thin and failed on the second launch. The design is sound and one I will duplicate with stronger materials.

"One Night Wonder" Maiden Flight

"One Night Wonder" Catastrophic Second Flight

My Launcher

I'll add a picture soon. You can find instructions on how to build a similar launcher from The King of Random. Or you can buy a kit from the Taylors. My current release mechanism uses a Clark Cable-Tie Launcher.

Useful Links

• Dean's Benchtop - Dr. Wheeler was one of my professors and bosses in college. He is the one who re-introduced me to the world of water rockets.
• Air Command Water Rockets - Lots of resources and tutorials.
• Clifford Heath's Simulator - I don't know Clifford, but he wrote a nice simulator for modeling different rocket design parameters. I've found it to be reliable for making design choices. It also allows you to change launcher and nozzle parameters.
• It's a Blast! - The Taylors were our neighbors while I was in college. They introduced me to the world of paper rockets. The pneumatic system I use for launching my water rockets is based on their launcher design.
• 3D Printable Rocket Parts - Here are some water rocket parts that you can print with a 3D printer. I used a nosecone in the engineering challenge.

3D Scatterplot Online, XYZ Plot in Javascript

Background

I'm an engineer by trade and by education. In my role I spend large amounts of time summarizing and presenting data to other people, usually engineers. Data comes in a variety of forms, and each form has a different way to be displayed. Information Visualization is an entire field of study on it's own. There are many software packages that have the ability to create charts and graphs. Some of them, like Microsoft Excel, are heavily used in almost every company. Other, more specialized, packages are often bought by a company to provide additional functionality.

One frequent type of data I use is called "xyz" data. I often just want to quickly chart a bunch of points in 3D space. Oddly enough, most standard software does a poor job of graphing "xyz" data. The default format for "xyz" data is a long list of rows where each row represents a point, and each point has three entries; one for each of x, y and z values. Excel won't chart this data unless you "pivot" the data into a different format. Other packages will chart the data from that format, but the chart controls to rotate, resize, zoom in and out, etc are kludgy at best.

The Idea

Since I need the xyz scatter plot so often, and sometimes in unusual places, it would be great to have an online interface to quickly paste some data and present a simple chart that can be rotated and scaled in real-time. Is that really too much to ask?! My Google-Fu is pretty good and I can't find anything online. How has no one done this yet? I've found contingency table calculators online that require a Chi table lookup. Most people in my industry don't even know what that IS despite it's usefulness. I don't want a free download, or an R script or an excel hack. I need to copy and paste my data and look at a plot in under a minute.

So I have to do it myself. Writing something server-side would be the fastest. I really like ColdFusion for this exact purpose, but that's not very common and I'd have to pay for some hosting. Maybe I will someday. My next natural inclination is to use JavaScript since it is client-side and available EVERYWHERE. But JavaScript doesn't have native graphics without using some kind of extension or additional package. Well, that was true until HTML 5, now we can use the canvas element to draw and display graphics natively in the browser.

Progress

01/27/2015 - First I created a static canvas of 2D points. Then I added the ability to import 2D points from a textarea html element. I added functions to project 3D points onto a 2D viewing plane then added buttons to modify the viewing angles. That took me a few hours. Next time I will add automatic scaling and chart annotations to give the chart some perspective. In the future I might add the ability for axis title and data labels, but that is a ways off.

02/10/2015 - Added automatic scaling and centering of chart, and the ability to make manual changes. Added corner points and XYZ reference lines. Once again it took me a few hours. Next I will add back-planes, gridlines and axis value labels.

02/21/2015 - Shading and grids are done. Shading helps a little, but perspective is needed to make the orientation clear. Also, drag to rotate would be helpful. I didn't want this to be a full-blown 3D project, so I'll probably stop here. I have what I needed; quick and simple 3D scatter plot.

Your browser does not support the HTML5 canvas tag.

Rotation Settings

Rotate By:				deg
X Rotation:				deg
Y Rotation:				deg
Z Rotation:				deg

Axis Settings

	Min	Max	# Intervals
X Axis
Y Axis
Z Axis

View Settings

Marker Size:				px
Zoom:				%

Paste xyz data below, separated by tabs, commas or spaces, then click "Import".