Just another day
Today has me finally swimming to the surface after drowning with some bug or another. It never seems to fail; every time I go to the ER department at the VA, I get sick within 36 hours with a cold or flu or conjunctivitis. It’s always something. But today I’m feeling a bit better.
It may be short lived, I have a new appointments at the VA tomorrow, and a long day of it so it appears. I’m taking a Zometa infusion and have an interview and status update with my oncologist, a scan of my cervical area and perhaps pelvis, and an interview about the possibility of sending me to Seattle for further radiation treatment.
The good news in all of this dark and dreary times is that I completed my first self-designed and self-programmed robot. It tears around my room doing a darn good job at object avoiding. I let it scamper about for a half an hour and it did everything right. Lately, everything going right is quite unusual, so I’m marking on my calendar so I can reminisce about it with things deflate to their more routine levels of depressing events.
My robots have become important to me. It’s not like I’m building something that will continue after I’m gone. But as I become engrossed in my designing, coding, and building, my focus is so tight that I haven’t the time to think about my woes. I enjoy the challenge of creating the perfect solder joint, and love it when I have an idea and try it out. I love it even more when the ideas work out as they did today.
But even robotics has its pratfalls. I purchased a sonar sensor. An ultrasonic device that sends out “pings” and measures the time they take to echo back. The idea is stolen from the way bats navigate. So I go to Maxbotix and pick up one of their MaxSonar UT sensors. Oddly enough, in a world where you can find assistance for almost anything in robotics Maxbotix chooses to deny assistance for the use of their products. So using similar examples from similar units, I did some experimentation and managed ti kill the defenseless little part. So I order another, figuring that I’ll just ask Maxbotix for a little help. After all this is a commonly advertised product so support should be available at least from the company, if not the forums. So I wrote to them and asked for a minimal push in the right direction to use this device.
They said no. Actually, they told me that it was their one item that wasn’t patented and they encouraged everyone to purchase one of their more expensive EZx products. That smacked on the old bait and switch gambit where you get brought in with a low price only to be redirected to a different product that’s somehow always more expensive. I don’t think Maxbotix are a bunch of crooks, but I think they do a great disservice to their field of interest (and customer base) by failing to provide simple support. That should not be a feat for any maker of anything.
It just so happened that I’d purchased a Devantech model SRF05 ultrasonic sensor, and the company and the forums have oodles of info and tips on using this device. That is the reason that my robot lives today. Soon I will put photos and maybe a video of him for you all to see. I’m kind of proud of succeeding so well on a first attempt. But the most of that credit goes to companies like Arduino, Sparkful, Adafruit, The Robot Shop, Pololu and Trossen Robotics. Good companies with good equipment, decent pricing and a healthy respect for their customers, even the noobs. (A noob is slang for NewBee, or someone only just starting out. I’m a noob.)
Of course, I’m suffering a lot of stresses at the moment as my doctors are wont to say, and the reason for my frightening episode the other day that took me to the ER. The appearance of a stress symptom, the optical migraine reared its ugly and unwanted head for a few hours after digesting the blow-off I got from Maxbotix. Definitely a greater reason to go on avoiding them and their peculiar and self-serving policies. It’s what I think anyway.
Many parts for my next and much more sophisticated robot are in transit as we speak, and I’m kinda hoping to see them show up so I can get at it all. I’m excited and looking forward to the challenge, win, lose, or draw. When something extracts you from the humdrum existence of the disabled it’s, a favor and a big one.
Update:
I complained about the Maxbotix lack of support in one of the robot forums on the Internet. I was surprised to discover that Maxbotix contacted the forum operators who were also vendors of their products. They used their influence to have my post censored and removed in order to hide the comments of a dissatisfied customer. They claimed that I had not given them an opportunity to respond and so my comments were unfair and failed to show their willingness to “make things right.”
This was a total fabrication, of course. The truth of that is that I was commenting on their replies to my complaints about lack of support. Maxbotix could have just as easily posted a response to my complaint and made their offer to satisfy me. This would have shown to the public that they did care and want their customers happy. But instead they chose censorship, which reinforced to me that they aren’t a very ethical company.
I won’t be using any of their products in the future, nor will I be patronizing The Robot Shop who readily complied with their supplier. I only deal with companies that conduct themselves in a forthright manner.
