ROV's, Tugboat accessories, Makerspace Membership, and more!

This past week has been great!  Aimee had her first day of graduate school at Rush University on Thursday, I joined a sweet Chicago Maker/Hackerspace, and I have continued to apply and interview for cool manufacturing jobs here in the Windy City.

Accomplishments for this week:

1. Installed fenders around the deck of the tug boat, and made "bow pudding" on the...bow.  This is a new phrase to me, but apparently it is what is used to describe a bow fender that is made of line.  I had some spare twine of a scale size laying around, so I did a total hack job (certainly not a tallship-worthy) of knotting it together into a sort-of bow-pudding form.

2. Researched ROV (tethered submarine) designs in hope of building a functional RC dive barge with an ROV that has a video feed and a grabber arm.  I learned that many hobby ROV's use un-protected, "wet" motors for thrust, that voltage drop is a big problem on tethers of any real length, and that the build complexity on these things can range wildly.  I've purchased a handful (literally) of small dc motors to use as thrusters, and ordered some DPDT momentary toggle switches to handle the topside motor-reversing commands of my first (likely bathtub-only) ROV.  Ethernet-tethered Arduino's with motorshields, or Pixhawk ArduSub systems will likely be in later versions.  The object of the computer-controlled units is to allow for serial/ethernet/I2C communication with the surface, which will allow for proportional motor control (not just "On" or "Off" at full power) and also keep my options open for adding sensors for depth, attitude, voltage, etc.  Just for kicks, Aimee and I watched the pilot episode of "SeaQuest DSV" on NetFlix....only to realize that Jaws was a far better endeavor for Roy Scheider (R.I.P.).

3. Joined the Maker/Hacker Space "Pumping Station: One" in Chicago.  PS1 (because pumping is just a little too.....pumpy...for me) is a freaking awesome workspace collective housed in an old two-story building to the North of downtown Chicago, about a 18 minutes from our house (at 2am....more like 30 minutes during normal hours).  I've been working on getting one of their CNC routers up and running, a ShapeOko2 (pictured below, after receiving some love).  Their tool inventory includes a huge CNC laser, a small CNC laser, a 4x8' Shopbot CNC router, a small CNC Carvy (small, enclosed RTR router/engraver), every wood tool imaginable, TIG/MIG/STICK/Plasma hot-metals area, a 3D printer area, textiles shop, electronics space (with billions of tiny components, and piles of hackable/discarded electronic assemblies), test equipment galore, and all sorts of groups of people who use all these things.  Membership is $40/month for 24/7 keycode access to the space and ALL of it's toys.  Oh, and I forgot to mention the full manual-machining shop with lathes, mills, presses, shears, brakes, etc.  Totally freaking awesome.

4. Had some excellent Thrift-store finds:  I found a really cool stainless-finish arc lamp ($20), an infant bathtub stool for cradling my RC sailboats ($5), and a Craftsman workbench ($5).  I'm pretty stoked about all of these purchases, as they all help to make our home that much more fitting.

Lastly, Aimee started school this week, and there was a moment that happened this morning that put the biggest smile of the week on my face...   I had made my coffee, fed Charlie, and walked with him to the dog park to play some fetch.  A few minutes after 8am, I was sitting on a bench sifting through job postings when I spot a pretty lady walking by the dog park on her way to the El train (pictured below).  Both Charlie and I jumped up and rushed over to take her picture and give her a kiss.  It was great.  : )