2015.01.31 - 3Development

Category:Log
The day is a clear one, albeit a bit on the cold side, at 34 degrees the Junkyard is a bit on the quiet side as Augustus mans the front of the junkyard a dry erase board behind him speaks of the going price per pound for various metals, as well as Lot junk prices. Fiddling around on a computer that looks to have been kludged together from scrap the bored teen sits on a chair that creaks when he moves, the only action today having been when someone called asking about computer parts.
Jane arrived at the Junkyard on foot, her duffle bag on her back. She had called to check on the availability of electric components, and as she arrived, she did enter the compound with a wary look. Ringing the bell on the counter, she announced her presence before calling out. "Hello? I had called about spare parts."
Augustus stands up, the very tall bearded lad having looked up as someone passed into the front office. "You're the lady I spoke with earlier today about computer parts?" he asks curiously "ok, let me grab the key to that part of the yard and I'll take you over there. "You mentioned wanting older components, how old? I've got the warehouse sort of separated by technology type. You've got your Sassi stuff, your Skuhzee stuff, IDE, I might even have some SATA but that's going to be just a small inventory." he explains as he grabs a key off a hook, grabbing a radio he speaks into it in German for a moment "My dad'll be up here to look things over, come this way." he says in friendly tones.
Skimming through a list that she never had printed but read out of the storage of a flash drive in her pocket by touch, Jane smirked a moment. "I need about half dozen Lithium-ion batteries set up for 14.4 to 14.8 Volt. If you have one with a fitting for a Sony notebook I can fit the others to it. 3 hours battery life are by far not enough for some purposes if you ask me." The next item on her list appeared just for her like an overlay to reality, a little Trick of mind with herself. "Well, Older parts as in capacitators. As long as they are dielectric and 20k µF or larger, they all work. You know, salvaging them isn't the hardest if you are careful. If you have some larger ones separated already, that'd make it much easier, but weight is an issue here. The more capacity per pound the better." And then another line appeared just for her, in bold amber letters hovering in air just for her. "And if you have, some 8 computer hard drives from the same manufacturer and production line would be perfect. No need for the file system to be intact, but the motors and chips need to be."
Augustus nods as he listens to the list, "Some of that actually doesn't have to be from the computer part of the yard." he says simply "Capacitant circuts are easier to pull out of old CRT monitors, and Microwaves" he explains simply as he motions for her to follow him. Opening the door for her to walk past "Ladies first." he says before he's walking intentionally shortening his paces to keep in stride with her. "We'll get the stuff needed from the computer area first, and then go on to the other bits." he explains simply as he thinks over the list of items. "What're you working on if you don't mind me asking?" he asks pausing near by "one second." he adds as he turns to look over at a camera "Tweedle, we're going to need a mule over by the computer storage, task the nearest one and get another to go replace it." he says the camera itself turning to focus on the talking teen for a moment before returning to doing it's general sweep of the area. If one were paying any sort of attention one would notice that the camera actually bobbed up and down in a nod.
Jane followed, however as Augustus spoke to his server, she didn't looked at the camera, but the change of the electric fields from its movement was barely noticeable to her. Just a ripple in the background though. "Well, take some capacitators in a linear circuit as capacitator bank, Load them with a quad of double A bats and you can create quite a high electric pulse. The applications for this are numerous obviously. From erasing data on a hard drive and burning out small electrics with a coil to using them as the basic element of a taser." "Your computer system listens to audible input, does it? Mind if I test something?" Jane didn't wait for the answer though, asking directly. "Computer, what is the number pi's 100st digit after the point?"
Augustus's system is pretty rudimentary, a pair of personal computers and a little bit of programming, but not enough to understand questions it's not familiar with. Jane would see that the server simply doesn't do anything "It knows a few things, but it's not really setup to answer questions like that it doesn't even have a text to speech program." he says simply albeit a little embarrassed, the thoughts about what the equipment can be used for getting past him. "It is programmed to help move things, and keep track o of the electric carts we use for moving smaller equipment." he explains..
"So it's a sophisticated RC controller, like they use it in some ports to move containers from A to B. Do you control the position via GPS, Induction coils in the floor or camera position and a label on the carts?" Obviously each had their ups and downs. And Jane seemed to know at least a bit about them. "Adding more capabilities shouldn't be too hard, if you base it upon a PC setup. Starting with Voice output to note acknowledgement or errors would be easy I guess. Just would have to place speakers all over the place."
Augustus nods and smiles "yea.. Mom and dad don't want me doing that, they don't really use Tweedle all that much, just me." he explains as the two move to a steel building an electric cart pulling up as well, a small two seater with a little truck bed. "They prefer to do things the old fashioned way, but don't mind me making their lives a little easier." he explains "Essentially the computer can visually recognize most things, and it uses the cameras to do it, it knows what cart is where and the whole junkyard is set up in a grid pattern based on the poles and cameras. Tweedle then just does what I ask it to do as long as it's something I've already programmed into him. I've got a few automated little movers that when the junkyard's quiet like this, Tweedle activates and sorts through things using remote cameras on the movers, if he doesn't recognize or know what something is, he sends me a picture of it and I can classify it for him." he explains opening the door into the dark warehouse that comes to light as Tweedle turns on the lights for them..
"Did you write it up from scratch or did you use something preconstructed?" Jane asked, letting her eyes wander over the area and the racks "Picking up stuff and all is already pretty nice to program into an RC and you seem to use quite some fuzzy logic to work with picture recog. Do the cameras carry microphones or do you use lip reading?" Jane knew her PC. "So, what fitrst? laptop batteries, capacitators or old hard drives?"
"microphones, the camera's are wired for audio, if Tweedle hears something strange he can move the camera's towards it." he explains "You're wanting same manufacture hard drives, so lets start there, you said you're wanting them for their motors and not for their memory right?" he says as he guides the girl through the 7 foot tall shelves. "about five years ago, a local elementary school junked all of their old PC's, monitors, boxes the whole nine yards." he explains moving towards the back. "I've probably got somewhere close to five hundred identical two gigabyte harddrives by the Lexcorp, they might even be from the same production run. That good enough for you?" he asks starting somewhere.
"Same production line is neat, because they run in the same offset area roughly. I guess they are good if storage didn't wrecked them. An Oktett of them should suffice." Jane answered, smiling a moment "So your PC doubles as alarm system or did you not implement it to ring a bell if noticing unknown people?"
Augustus smiles "CAn't really go into the security of the junkyard, there's an alarm as well as night time security employed." the teen explains pulling out a shelf of identical hard drives. quickly excusing himself he grabs a push cart and eight drives are set on it. "They all look to be within a hundred of each other on the serial numbers, that close enough?" he asks "Next are the batteries, I've proabably got the sony laptop battery, as for other lithium-Ion batteries, do you want other laptop batteries, or would a handful of cellphone batteries work?" he asks starting back down the racks of parts heading towards another shelf that has laptops stacked like playing cards.
"They need to be in that 14.4 to 14.8 V range or math up to that in a paralel connection, so I can link them into a serial to bundle up the charge for a longer runtime. I'll strip all but one of its casing and cnnectors anyway, so I can put them into a nice and clean casing yet to build, but at least one needs the standard Sony connector, so it fits the slot. If you have plastic and aluminium sheets, that could save me quite some trouble to get them... Wait, as we are here, I think I made some mistake.." A moment Jane grabs into her pocked, sighing as she reread the instructions mentally. "Ok, I did misread my note... I need only 2 Harddrives, but 4 CD or DVD readers and 2 Floppy drives. The Floppys need to be step drivers."
"eidetic memory?" the teen asks curiously when he watches her 'remembering' her list. "ok, 3.5 or 6 inch floppies?" he asks heading back to where the hard drives were and setting six of the drives back before grabbing the cd drives, all identical in make and manufacture. "Pretty much for all tech now a days, they can be worked up, you might want a voltometer to help manage things, I can whip one up in my work shop in about thirty minutes if you want to wait for it." he explains before motioning back towards the door "Sheet plastic, sheet metal, you can even grab a couple of large computer cases to make what you want. Do you have a machine shop to make the casing you need?" he asks
"3.5 will do, the description of the item I want to build is not /that/ old." Jane answers with a chuckle. "Actually a NEMA 17 Stepper and a MK7 or MK8 drive gear are on my shopping list too. As well as some oddly shaped parts which I'll have to either shape out of a piece of plastic or buy at some 3d-printer shop. Ok, one of the PC's CPU coolers and power supplies would be helpful too. As far as a machine shop goes... I have my electrics kit, so a multimeter and a soldering set and some tongues, tweezers and cutters as well as screwdrivers, that's it."
Augustus nods "I know of a couple of machines that have similar motors, we can harvest, with a small circuit board for a controller you can step them down to where ever you need them power wise. That is unless you're needing that specific form factor." he explains putting two each of a cd and dvd drive on the cart and then heading to another rack he soon has a somewhat bulky heat sink. "Big enough, or too big?" he asks as he holds it out for her inspection. "There aren't many 3d printer shops in the city that you won't have to wait a month or more for the part you're looking for." he comments. "I've got a 3d printer, and a machine shop, if you've got the specs of what you need made I can probably crank it out in the afternoon."
"The plan uses the NEMA 17 stepper motor to move something, but I guess space is not an issue. As long as the other specs are correct. The heat sink looks a tad big, it just has to be the fan to cool the extruder nozzle and product. But as you ask, specs are here." Getting out the stick, Jane smirks a bit "It's gonna be a set of twinned 3D Plotters, one of them printing a mirrored image of the other. To manage that I just wire the mirror ones X/Y axis in the other direction and calibrate 0 to the upper right instead of upper left, so I get hopefully perfect symmetrical objects as each command is given to both machines the same time."
Augustus ahh's and grins "come this way." he says as he grabs the cart and starts to push it towards the door that the two had originally came through. Leaving the cart at the door he motions to another building looking to be made out of six shipping containers that have been welded together. pulling out a pair of keys and unlocking the reinforced steel door he moves to hold the door open. "Ladies first" he says still grinning that the cat that ate the canary
Jane spins the flashfrive in her hand, on which the plans for the stands and the 3 special shaped parts were. "What's so funny?" she asked, her face going a bit nondescriptant as she closed the eyes a second, inhaling while she prepared herself for possible sensory deprivation from lack of EM fields in the massive steel box, for it might be a Faraday Cage. Only then she stepped in.
Augustus's workshop is if nothing else /more/ filled with EM fields than is in the ambient background, Wifi, cable TV, and more than two dozen computers beowulf clustered together against one wall each with several TB of hardrives plugged into each. The last third of the facility is taken by what part of that computing power controls, a massive 3D printer cobbled together from dozens of bits and pieces from the junk yard. "Simple parts can be mirrored with the right programming, but if you do something a little heavier duty you can /really/ get some intresting stuff made." he says proudly. "my control console is over there if you want to plug that on in." he says motioning to a set of three computer screens with a small bank of USB slots in front of them. "Meet Tweedle." he adds in introduction.
"It's to create them simultaneously, so you always get a mirrored copy. The design is a bit limited in height, but that comes with being transportable." Jane explains as she walks over to the console, letting her fingers run over the ports a moment before she plugs in the stick. "You got internet in here?" she asked, working through the file structure on the flash drive towards the right folder and opening the correct one within seconds. It seemed like she really just use only the keyboard to open the stuff, but in fact the commands were given into the keyboard without pressing all the right buttons - some of them were never pressed but still went into it. "So Tweedle is this array of bastardized computers with a thick rack of drives?"
Jane glanced at the screens. "You see a casing in your inner eye already= Well, if you can make it smaller.... it needs to be transportable, best in a standard issue case. If you can make it better, even with the scraps... Do it. My limit is really money, which I have almost none of to spare. That's why I planned with scraps. The plan itself s designed with 60 USD parts to buy." "But don't make it with no tolerances, that makes transport and re-setup a PITA".