Smart Fermenting Robot That Likes To Draw Pies
* Evil laugh!! *
I realized that after I wrote my previous post, The Curiosity Killer, that I didn't talk about all the things I am experimenting with, which has led to such an invention like this robot... kind of.
In the past ~3 months, I made a conscious commitment to just start doing things. It didn't matter if they would make money, be enjoyable, take a lot of time - I just had to have interest in it, try it out, and then decide what to do next. And so, I did! And it's been cool to look back at what's been created:
Gardening:
Partly thanks to @Tri from our team, he shared some inspirational garden photos, so I started mine as well :). We had strawberries for a little bit, lettuce, and now a HUGE tomato plant that I soon will take down. It was a nice summer of our first crop, and I learned a lot about the need to nurture the vegetables (I wrongly assumed I could plant them and leave them... until some died :D
Raspberry Pi:
I recently tricked my girlfriend by surprising her with a "raspberry pie" for my girlfriend. Oh yeah, I'm a big fan of geek humor!! Little did she know, I was beginning my work on some home automation projects. Thanks to @Max G on our team for guiding me on the best setups... I now have a fully functioning Home Automation OS setup with a smart fire alarm configured. Next up: hijacking [Amazon] Ring's camera system so I can cloud store my video feed without paying their ridiculous $10/mo fee.
Arduino:
In relation to my Pi, I wanted to get back into one of my most favorite (although novice) areas: robotics. By far the coolest thing I've done in this field was the robot bartender that my best friend Taylor and I made back in college for our senior project. We of course told the teacher "it was for lemonade". I bought Arduino's starter kit, packed with multiple projects that I can follow along with.
3D Printing:
I printed some dumb stuff (cool inspiration at printables.com!), but I had my first real-world, practical print! I made a plastic tube of sorts that went around Laura's parasail/umbrella in our backyard. The pole holder it came with was too big, so I had to make a sleeve to fill the gap and make it tighter. I designed it from the ground up using Fusion 360 CAD software. I never thought I'd be so proud of a tube of plastic :)
Drawing (art):
As a kid, I was really into drawing. I loved the chance to dream up something, and then see it come to life on a piece of paper. I don't know when I lost that fascination (sometime in my teens when I discovered computers I think), but I'm going to give it a go again. I introduce to you, the first work of art. I call it: "Cup" :)
Fermenting:
and lastly, I wanted to try another food experiment by fermenting some vegetables. 14 days later, I have to say: they're good, but not great. I think pickling will be my next choice...
In our busy lives, it's sometimes hard to come by the free time to try new things... or at least, that's always my excuse. "I have too much work to do", "I need to do these errands", "I need to exercise", "Laura wants to go for a weekend trip somewhere", etc. All valid things that need to get done, but what I found in trying these new hobbies: they don't take much time at all! I roughly recorded the end-to-end time I did for each project as I tested this theory and came away with:
- Gardening: for the full season of maintenance and planting (~3 months), about ~3-4 hours of total time (1 hour/mo~)
- Raspberry Pi: This 'ate' more time due to me not being sure what I wanted in a home automation system. I researched vendor-locked solutions for a while, and settled on building it myself. All-in-all, maybe 6-7 hours.
- Arduino: not started, more to come!
- 3D Printing: This was the most time consuming (and interesting). Researching what printer I wanted, learning about fire hazards (in short: they can catch on fire! Hence my new hobby from a hobby in my home automation), what plastics to use, and then learning how to use CAD software to design my own... all in all over the past ~4 months since I bought it I've spent around ~30 hours.
- Drawing: I drew that cup in ~40 mins, after 15 mins of looking at what pencil kit I would buy on Amazon
- Fermenting: ChatGPT is so wonderful :). It spit out exactly what I needed to do. All-in time was maybe 1-2 hours.
All-in-all, you can summarize my average hours per month on "new hobbies" to be somewhere in the 15 hours/mo mark. I make this point as a reminder mostly to myself: when I have the choice to watch another Netflix episode, scroll on social media, putz around in Asana not being super productive... I know that I could instead be building a fermenting smart robot that draws pies!
Do I still watch Netflix? Every week! (Laura and I recently loved "Seaspiracy" - quite eye-opening if you're looking for new recommendations) But, I also push myself to get up and get out there and have some fun with new ideas :).
I'd be super curious to hear (and be inspired by!): what's your hobby these days? (comment below)