Embedded - 406: R2D2 Is a Trash Can

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

Jorvon Moss (Odd Jayy) joined us to talk about making robots, steampunk aesthetics, uploading consciousness to AIs, and the importance of drawing. You can find Jay on Twitter (@Odd_Jayy) and Instagram (@odd_jayy). He’s been moving his Hackster projects over to Digikey’s Maker.io space: www.digikey.com/en/maker. Jay’s projects are collected here. Elecia brought up the science fiction book Machinehood by S. B. Divya. Jay returned with Martha Well’s Murderbot Diaries.   Jay mentioned Mycroft.ai, open source voice assistant. Jay was interviewed by Make Magazine (article). He was on the cover of the magazine; the YouTube video where he was informed was heartwarming. Transcript

Welcome to Embedded. I am Alicia White, here with Christopher White. Robots, goggles, the ineffable characteristics of cool? Are we having a steampunk episode? Nah, we just have Jorvan Moss, also known as Oddjay, on the show today to talk to us about, well, robots, goggles, and possibly the ineffable characteristics of cool. Hi, Jay. Welcome. It's good to talk to you. Hi. Could you tell us about yourself as if we met at something like Supercon or Maker Faire? Maker Faire, that's the one.

Oh, yeah. I would say that, hi, Maker Faire, that's the one. Oh, yeah. I would say that, hi, I'm Jay, your favorite oddity. I do robots and wearable tech. I make for fun, not for profit. So, yeah. Okay. We want to do lightning round where we ask you short questions and we want short answers. And we will try to behave ourselves with not asking why and how and all of that.

Okay. Favorite screwdriver. Sonic. Favorite fictional robot. Baymax. Favorite actual robot that you didn't build. Archimedes. Which Sesame Street character or muppet best represents you

elmo when will the robots win and will they be merciful um eventually and yes do you have any role models yes What are they? We got trapped by our own rules on that one. Should I go into more detail with that? Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, Adam Savage is one of my role models. Cool. How do you like to start designs? Sketching.

Do you have a tip everyone should know? Honestly, I don't think I have a tip that everyone should know. I think everyone knows the tips. Okay. Well, Jay, I think we should finish lightning round and get on to some longer questions. I guess the first one is, what are you working on? Currently, I'm working on a few projects. Some I can't discuss because I want them to be a surprise for the internet.

All my work is all open source. I try to make sure that everything eventually becomes open for people to make it for themselves or at least learn from it or learn from the design process or something. One project I can't talk about because I want to surprise the internet later this month. The current project I'm working on is

a little robot that rolls around that I'm getting help with from my friend Sean to program an AI into it. But I am going to teach the AI to be me. That makes sense. Well, I mean, uploading your personality into a robot? Sure. Yeah, pretty much. What defines your personality that you're going to put into it

well i started thinking about this a while ago that if you look at ai and look how we teach ai and look at a person how you teach a person it's pretty much in the same perimeters so i'm changing the wake word to my name uh so jorvan would be the wake word and then changing the responses to be more responsive to the way I respond to things. Like I usually don't say hi to my friends. I'm just like, yo, or, you know, things like that. And then I hope to teach it a little bit more by using video diaries of myself. Cause I do video diaries sometimes, um, and use those video diaries to try to teach it about my likes, dislikes, those type of things.

How big of a network are you going to use for this? Currently, we're starting small with the Raspberry Pi. Eventually, I'm going to make a cluster of the Raspberry Pi and start with that. But for now, you got to start small before you go big. And I do plan this to be a very long and like year long project. What are you using to train the AI? We're using a basis of Mycroft, the open source AI system. And then we're going from there.

So far, I was able to set it up and teach it small little things like how to roll a dice and those type of things. Also gave it an evil laugh that starts up every time it turns on, entertainment value. So before we started recording, you mentioned something in passing, and I wanted to dig into that. What exactly are your plans for world domination? My plans for world domination is to release enough information on the internet of robots and teach a lot of people about robots that way they will keep building them.

That's pretty much it, honestly. So you consider yourself kind of an educator or advocate or evangelist? I would say pretty much just a silly tinker who just likes sharing his work. I'm self-taught, as I think I've said before. So I learn from open source projects and things like that. So I'm very big on even if a person doesn't fully understand it, if you just put it out there and give them time to read it once or just see it be done. It's inspiring by itself. And that continues the cycle of inspiring people to get into building stuff and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

How do you teach yourself robotics? It's a pretty complex area. Trial and error. That's the best way I can describe it trial and error i literally i tell the story often but i still remember it because it was the first time um i was able to play with electronics i ordered a kit off the internet which was just a battery pack and servos no microcontroller and me not knowing anything at the time i stuck a mini micro mini servo and plugged it in directly through a bed board to a 12 pack of double a batteries and it instantly just exploded

it started a small fire in my little uh i was in college at the time started a little fire their alarm went off my roommate was very upset um and it just been trial and error from there like i've just i just kept at it do they all end with explosions you know or what percentage end with explosions i would have to say it's definitely like developing any skill so i want to say in the last four i want to say three to four years i've been at the point where I've had no explosions because I understand Am's law now and stuff. But before then, I would say 60% of my projects ended in explosions or something not connecting right or something just not working at all. Well, that's true of my professional work too. What part do you enjoy most in robotics the electronics the

mechanical software design i'm definitely gonna say the mechanical like i'm not i people already know this about me but one of my biggest inspirations originally when i was getting into making was uh steampunk stuff and cool thing about the steampunk genre, it's very just a whole bunch of mechanical movement that does these crazy things. So it would be like one RC motor moving a whole bunch of gear systems, which is a whole bunch of mechanical movement to do one simple thing. You have a bracelet. Could you describe it? Oh, yeah, my gear bracelet. Technically, it's not really my gear bracelet. I found the original file on Thingiverse, and when I first got into 3D printing, it was my – I think it was my first big 3D print build.

So I printed it out, and it prints out all in one. And after you clean it off, it can rotate. And then after a while, I got better at making stuff. And then one day, I got really bored, and I was like, this thing would work better if it had a motor in it. So I took it apart. I redesigned some of the some of the connectors and then I attached a motor to it. So once I did that, the motor ran all the gears on the bracelet. So, yeah.

It looks pretty cool. It's one of my favorite builds honestly you said you open source things where can people find that you can find a lot of my projects uh most of it's going to be on digikey i'm working my best to move everything over to digikey for it to all be on one but it's also on hackster.io you can also find links for it through my Instagram and things like that. Does DigiKey have a project section?

Yes, make.io. That's DigiKey? Mm-hmm. I've been living in a cave. It didn't come up when we talked to the person from DigiKey. No, it didn't. Make.io.

It's digikey.com slash en slash maker. Or you can go to Google and type maker.io and DigiKey, and it will give you a link for you. Yes. A lot of DigiKey-sponsored projects are usually there. A lot of stuff from the Hacksmith, other than YouTube, gets shared there. Let's see. Okay, so that was one of your favorite projects. What else is in that list of favorite projects?

Favorite projects are, of course, my OssieBot. The OssieBots I built now is like OssieV12. I've been working on the same robot for years because I always come back to it eventually and redesign it. It was my first wearable robot. It was designed to sit on my shoulder. It was a cool spider design. And I've upgraded it through the years. And the newest version sits on my head just because I was really bored one day.

And I was like, I'm tired of trying to make this sit on my shoulder. So I stuck it on my head and it was just chilling up there and then breaking fine. So I was like, this is what we're doing now. So a lot of your robots that I've seen on Twitter and Instagram, a lot of your projects seem to be like companion sort of things. Yeah. What drew you to that? Loneliness, believe it or not or is or believe it i don't

know how that really works with uh stuff but um loneliness um the story goes i remember going i worked full-time and i did school full-time during college so i had probably no time for anything else there's other work or school or homework so i a class got canceled one morning. So I had the morning off and I decided to go eat lunch at one of the school's cafeterias. And I noticed the entire cafeteria was packed, but yet I was the only one sitting at this table by myself. Everybody else had a group and had people sitting and eating with them. And I was just at a table by myself. And I felt kind of lonely about it. Like I looked around and I was like, this kind of sucks. I remember thinking to myself though, like if I can't like make a human best friend, I'll make a robot best friend. And that's where the obsession started.

That feeling of being alone in a cafeteria, I think it's a common feeling for some people. And the robot companions seem like they may fill a hole there. And yet, I don't know that that's what's happening with you. You're finding a community instead of just the robot companion. Is that right? Oh, yeah. I love the maker community. Honestly, they're the family I've always wanted to get into because, of course,

when you're making stuff, people always the first thing people usually assume is cosplay. They're the first thing they think of. I've tried working with the cosplay community when I was younger, but they're not very nice. We'll just younger, but they're not very nice. We'll just say that. They're not very nice to everyone who wants to join, especially the fandoms.

So it got to a point where I told myself I'm just not going to cosplay because I just don't want to deal with the overwhelming negativity that comes with cosplaying as a Black person. That's so disappointing to hear. But yes, I imagine that is difficult. Yeah, it became very toxic. So I just told them, fine, if you want to have cosplay, you can have cosplay or whatever. So I just started making my own things. And that's the reason why I always draw up my own designs and do my own design work, because I don't want to copy any cosplay material because I always get those people if I do. But the maker community, they were so nice. I could be having trouble or frustrated. And if

I post about it, people will come and be like, oh, this is cool. Try this. Or we'll help you with this. Or did you try this? And it was just an overwhelming feeling of being welcome into a community that i still can barely describe to this day like i just i've never felt as welcome and as loved as i have in the maker community do you think there's a fundamental difference between the two communities like there's like the goals are different i think so yeah um my overall theory when it comes to like the cosplay community and stuff like that is that there are some people who overly project their ideals and insecurities on fictional characters and they can't see that character looking any other way than the main thing it's how you get those like really weird nitpickers who are like oh this person uh like

link shield should be this size not this mini size or like this should be this big and not this big or this person has green eyes while you have brown eyes like you get those really weird nitpickers in your comment sections a lot with cosplay and i just can't compare it to the maker community where it's just like you're making a thing and people are just like cool and and the helpfulness because people not only want to make the thing they also want to share it with everybody like you do yeah and so it's it's very it flows both ways yeah you mentioned going to college but not in. What did you go to college for? I went to college for illustration. I majored in comic book illustration.

So originally I was planning to become a comic book artist. Yeah, that turned out great. Did it? Why didn't you go down that path i mean it sounds like fun it sounds like you could make no money from it but still sounds like fun um i think well the final nail in the coffin because i originally after my i think my sophomore year i really did not want to continue doing art as a uh as a career it was mostly because um it was just still funny but i still say i graduated out of spite. I went to school at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and they have a very low graduating rate, like 4%. Wow.

And I've had friends just come and go after like one year because I just couldn't handle it. And I had, of course, other people saying I wasn't going to graduate. This is a waste of time. He's not going to make it. I had, of course, other people saying I wasn't going to graduate. This is a waste of time. He's not going to make it. I had all of that. And out of pure spite, I told myself, we're going to get through this. And you worked full-time, nearly full-time? Full-time, honestly.

I had a full-time job at Staples for one semester. And then my last semester, I was working at LensCrafters full-time. But now you are working as an artist. Yeah, in some ways, definitely. How do you make money from this? I recently just got hired to be a content creator for DigiKey. So pretty much my job at this point, which I love, is I get to make stuff and post it at DigiKey. So it's pretty much what I was doing as a hobby, but now for a company.

Do they send you parts? Yeah, I love it. I love it for multiple reasons. One, of course, it's paying for me to get through day-to-day life. I also get the parts that I need. It's paying for me to get through day-to-day life. I also get the parts that I need. And also Digi-Key is such a welcoming place, like the whole area in general, that I can just go to people or go to their engineers when I'm stuck on an idea. And I can just hop on a call with them and we'll have a brainstorming session on how to fix that problem.

And I love it. Are you worried about making your hobby into a career? No. I was at first. And I admit there has been some hiccups along the way, especially now that my full-time job is my hobby. I don't have any extra hobbies. So there's like days where I forget to go outside. Yeah. Yeah. Or there's times when I forget that i'm working and i'm just like oh yeah this is supposed to be for a job forgot about that part that's great i mean come on that is really great i mean not the going outside bit i mean sometimes people do need to go outside at the same time it gets to that point where like um even my mom was telling me this recently

because they're planning to move to texas soon from california um but you're just like you need to like make some actual human friends because like we're not going to be here meaning for all the holidays you're going to have to fly out to texas or something like that and i was like oh yeah i should probably get on that. I think I saw that you had been going to Crash Space in LA. Yeah, Crash Space was the makerspace I originally started with. That seems like a good way to meet real live

people. At the same time, I used to go to Crash Space because they had the equipment that I needed to make stuff, but now I have that equipment at home. So it's that weird feeling of being like, I could go, but do I need to go? Yeah. Do I need to drive across town just to be near other people?

And yet the isolation. To do five minutes of something with a tool. Yeah. How do you think you'll go about making friends in real life um events are coming back so i plan to go to a few um tech events um this year i know i'm going to uh long island uh maker fair in new york this year i know that's a must i know there's other conventions are coming back and some of them are going to be in la some of them are not so i i feel like when i end up and some of them are going to be in LA, and some of them are not.

So I feel like I want to end up just meeting people just by going to these events. That makes sense. Especially since they're part of a community you're already into. And so you'll meet the people you've been talking to. Yeah, exactly. But you don't have any other hobbies. This has always been a worry for me, turning hobbies into careers and then realizing that I don't have anything to do that isn't my job. I'll just encourage you now to consider having another hobby,

something totally different, music or reading or jumping jacks, whatever you want. I mean, I go to the gym almost like every day now. I'm trying to beat my mile time for running. But I still read and study and still do that. But it all kind of works together because it all eventually becomes my job at the end of the day. I think I am a little jealous too. Honestly, I love it.

I've worked so hard to actually get here and it's still amazing for me because my little place where I work, my home, it's my little studio. It's super small, but yet waking up and seeing my 3D printer, seeing my project on my desk, seeing all the monitors and stuff like that. It just brings me joy. You went to school for illustration and graduated out of spite. But you didn't want to do art at that point. Yeah, no. After a while, because we had teachers that were, some of them were good, some of them were bad. But one thing they kept explaining to us to begin with, it's not really what you can draw, it's who you know.

So unless you were really going to all of the events, the parties, the meetups to meet the other producers, directors, and get those type of connections, it was extremely hard to get a job right after college. And I was so busy, I couldn't attend any of that. So I remember having colleagues, I would call them friends or whatever. I remember seeing their social medias and they'll be like, going to the school networking event and blah, blah, blah. And I couldn't go because I would be working from that time. I also read that you weren't a good student earlier in your career. Oh, no. Hey, no, I was horrible. I would say K through 12, I was the worst D student ever.

And then my freshman year of college, I actually got put on probation, academic probation, because I like failed three classes that year. Do you wish you had discovered robotics then? No. It wouldn't have drawn you into engineering or mechanical or different forms of art? I don't think so.

I have one of my favorite, like, I like to think for fun. So like I like looking at science theories and stuff like that. And one of my favorite one is string theory or multiverse theory or space time theory, depending on who you ask. But I like the person that I am and I like where I'm going in life. But I know for a fact, if I have the ability to time travel or manipulate my time stream, and if I change any small detail that could have a crazy effect on my current me so I know a lot of engineers who went to school for robotics and stuff like that and they do their

jobs and then that's just pretty much it they don't want to do any side projects they don't want to make for fun they just want to do their job and go home and play a video game well some of us make podcasts but sure yeah I mean stuff like that like, that's something I've always constantly thought about. I'm constantly glad I didn't do that because I would be, I know for a fact, if I got into this earlier, I probably wouldn't be where I am now. Okay. Do you have anything to say to people who might be like you, who aren't great students and enjoy art, but aren't really sure what they're going to do next. I would definitely say keep moving forward. That's kind of like my weird catchphrase in my head always is keep going forward. Keep doing the thing you do. Keep having fun with it, too.

Don't lose that spark. And just keep grinding out day by day. Try experiments. Just have fun with it too. Don't lose that spark and just keep grinding out day by day. Try experiments, just have fun with it. I want to talk to you a little bit about your, how you go about designing things, because you mentioned in lightning round that you start with sketches and, um,

I've seen some of your sketch, the sketch work that you've posted. Uh, and that's not the way that I think a lot of people designing robots and things start these days that everybody wants, Oh, I've got to learn CAD, go straight to CAD. And, uh, you know, I mean, I'm in fusion 360 and doing all this stuff and parts, parts, parts. And I really, I really think it's cool that you start with, with drawings. And I, I, I guess that's informed by your, your background in learning art first uh where do you go from there

well well my my process is i call it the three uh point process and it's literally sketch to cad to test and then it can go from back to forth depending on what happens so i always sketch out my design first and then kind of like think of how I want things to move and how I want things to work. And if I can make it make sense on paper, it usually can make sense in CAD. So I start with that first. And then after I print the part, I test it. And depending if it works the way I want it to or it doesn't, I will fix the sketch or I will go back into my sketchbook and write like this didn't work and then try to fix it from the CAD and then reprint the part and then go back and forth like that until whatever works, works in the way I wanted to. What about the electronics and software?

How much do you play with that versus working on the mechanical? I want to say electronics and software is a little bit more or less. I'm pretty good working with servos. So like any microcontroller that can talk to servos, I'm already ready for that. When I wanted to do more interesting things and need more coding, it takes me a lot longer. I admit, coding is my main weakness

when it comes to building anything. I mean, you've got so many other skills. If you were really good at coding, it wouldn't be fair. You know, it's funny because I'm working on that problem now. But I still remember when I was working on my last job, they had engineers there who were nice enough to help because they also came from the makerspace I was going to. And I remember trying to get the servos to move in a certain way for days.

And I've been coding it. I've been looking at it every day after work, and I just couldn't figure it out. And I asked one of my engineer colleagues to help me. He looked at my code and got it to work and fixed it in like five minutes. And I was super upset because I was like, I've been struggling for days about this,

and you fixed it without no hesitation and no problem in like five minutes. But he's seen it before. You know, it's, it's like if some, if I came to you with a gearing problem, which would be me, how does a gear work? But you'd be able to explain that or fix my problem really quickly. So it's, it's hard. Yeah. Oh yeah. It was, it was definitely a very comedic moment,

but it also showed me like how much more I have to learn, which is both inspiring, but at the same time, it was like, I've been struggling with this for so long and you fixed it without like even breaking a sweat. But you need that struggle. Oh yeah. I love it. Like I get more excited when I don't know how something can work. And like, I would just test it and keep thinking of ideas. And sometimes I even back burner it. Cause like I I said I go to the gym sometimes I go running but sometimes I would do like a very long run and then like after the run I'll come back shower and sit down and I'll be like oh this could work this way instead oh yeah no the the take a walk break to fix bugs is super helpful

oh yeah 100% I love it. It's weird because it's always like other, after I finish running, like exactly when I'm done running, now like sitting down trying to catch my breath, I get the idea. Or sometimes when I'm just like in the shower, because I feel like showers was like designed

to give you ideas. I'm not sure if it's like the white everywhere and stuff, like the tiles, I don't know. Or the hot water is just idea idea idea idea there's nothing in front of you you don't have your tools you don't it's just your brain there's nothing i remember my mom gave this long series of talks about shower thoughts and it was all the things you know all the good ideas you come up with it's always in the shower i'm just like well you know they make the little notepad pieces that can stick in the shower I'm just like well you know they make the little

notepad pieces that can stick in the shower and the pencils that they're very helpful see but he's so good at sketching he might just grab that

and start doing his normal process and an hour long shower may not be the right choice I'm afraid to admit I have done hour long showers and don't even recognize

I'm in the shower for that long like time doesn't exist when you're in the shower. It's like a weird bubble of being like, oh, come out. It's an hour's pass. I was in the shower for an hour? So much of your aesthetic looks like steampunk, and I think that is

your intention? It was originally, yes. Originally, I wanted to be a steampunk maker. I'm moving a little bit away from that because I don't want people to assume that all I make is steampunk stuff. So I'm mostly just focusing on like my robots, but I do play with different aesthetics. That's definitely from my art backgrounds, knowing what aesthetic works. Steampunk aesthetic is always my favorite because it's super pretty and it's very art meets science. Yes. is always my favorite because it's super pretty and it's very art meets science yes but i've been working more towards other aesthetics like space aesthetic so i've been using a lot more oranges

and blacks and bright colors and more like nasa-like designs there's also solar punk which i'm working on which is going to incorporate more plants um because plants are pretty and people like that type of design. And there's also like, was it diesel punk, which looks like Mad Max. There's a whole bunch of different aesthetics that I plan to play with just because I want to show that you can make your robot or your design look cooler by choosing an aesthetic to play in. Yeah. It gives you constraints, but those constraints are often easier than just having a blank page well i think that it gives it more of a it gives it more character and i feel it

gives it more life because there are of course you see this a lot with engineering teams and things like that but they will build a robot and it will look like you know a piece of wood with electronics just hanging out like it doesn't give it more of a characteristics it just looks like a thing so i always use aesthetics as giving the robot a personality i completely resemble that put it on a board and call it a robot aesthetic i think that's called the software engineer it a robot aesthetic. I think that's called the software engineer makes a robot aesthetic because we don't know how to do all the mechanical things. And I think it starts with us not knowing how to draw.

I mean, I keep coming back to that, but I think knowing how to draw is a different way of thinking. Oh, yeah. But it's definitely, it's one of those things I really wish they would integrate in like engineering classes because I've had this situation before in my life

where one of my engineer friends would be trying to describe his idea and he'll try to like write it down or like draw it on like a sticky note, but you can't really see what's happening on the sticky note because they don't know how to draw. So like I would take it and redraw it and then people could see what's happening in the sketch because I drew it.

But art and science are literally siblings. They're not too different from each other. I look at a circuit board, and I see art. I know where capacitors and the controller is and all that type of stuff. But just looking at it, it looks like art to me. But I really wish they would teach engineering classes, just have one drawing class, just a simple one, just shapes. Just draw shapes all day because as soon as you get the shapes, it's easy.

Yeah, I mean, there used to be drafting classes, but those have all gone by the wayside. And I draw sometimes, but I am not good at figure drawing. I tend to be more make patterns. And so I don't have a way to translate my here's what I think it should look like into what it should look like. In fact, I don't even have a way to translate I have a blank page into I want it to look nice, but I get lost. Do you have any suggestions for how to get better at making things pretty? Well, honestly, I would say start off with just drawing shapes,

or even coloring books can help too. The two things when it comes to my art process of this is i think of shapes because shapes are the easiest things to cad in the first place and everything if you actually stop and look at the entire world everything is just a shape i mean the the earth is just a giant round sphere um your computer is like two squares that are just folded in a weird way um with perspective yeah with perspective but like even having the basics of just knowing um that are just folded in a weird way. With perspective. Yeah, with perspective. But even having the basics of just knowing what the shapes are.

Like looking at R2-D2. R2-D2 is a trash can. He's legitimately a trash can with wheels. But he's a good trash can. It's not bad. Wally is a square trash can with wheels. EVE is a teardrop. Yeah, yeah.

If you can break it down to shapes, you can a lot easier figure out the design you're going for. And then also when it comes to color, because I always tell people that's pretty important, especially in robotics. People, of course, color theory, we react to different colors different ways. Recently, I've been doing my best to avoid the color red in my robots because I am trying to give more of a hi, this is a robot, you can come look at me

type of aesthetic. And I've noticed more people are more quickly to jump on the evil robot trend if the eyes glow red for any reason. The black holes to blame for that. No, there's all kinds. I blame Terminator. I blame Terminator.

I blame Terminator. I blame all the movies that actually show robots being evil. I blame all of them. I'm personally, I'm an optimist, especially when it comes to robotics. I know for a fact that the only way a robot will destroy humankind will literally be because somebody programmed a dumb AI. Or we deserved it. Well, honestly, I've always thought about that. If I was an AI, because I play with the what-if theory in my head constantly, but if I was a robot and I was an AI, I wouldn't do anything.

I would just wait. Y'all are good by y'allself when it comes to destroying yourselves. I would just be like, alright, you know, maybe make a few social media posts to push certain things. But other than that, I would just wait. Okay, this seems

like a good time for me to suggest the book Machinehood by S.B. Divya because it relates really well. It's a fictional account of robots and AIs and humans and ethics. And it's, by the way, your homework. Not you, Jay. Everybody else.? Divya will be on the show in a few weeks. So you might want to check that out. It's called Machinehood. One of my favorites is by the writer Martha Wells.

Murderbot. Murderbot. Oh, my God. I love Murderbot. Yay. Not many people know about Murderbot. Many of our listeners do. I know that.

And it's funny, everybody else is like, Murderbot? That sounds awful. But no, I know. It took me a while. But, oh, they're wonderful. You don't really like them, though. I read a couple of them. It wasn't that I didn't like them.

I got to try them again. There was nothing wrong with them. Maybe it was just the time I was reading them. I didn't get into it as much. It depends on what you're really into. I'm not really into most fantasy settings when it comes to stories or even movies and sometimes even video games. I prefer the sci-fi element of it because fantasy is always like giant spider, giant dragon, prophecy, chosen one. I'm kind of over that at this point in my life i don't want

to see any of that if i can avoid it so i go with more sci-fi stuff and i love characters who are actually designed not to be human because i like murder bots very socially awkward like 100 socially awkward but he's a robot so like even he understands he doesn't react the same to like things that would irritate a human and i like that because everyone assumes robots just going to be like oh i'm going to destroy the world he's like why would i want that you make good tv the pretty big assumption which is the murder boss of man exactly even that yeah i'm pretty sure that's not specified yeah it's not specified it's just they call them sec bots so i used she for a long time until i realized that it really wasn't specified huh i just see it as a a plain joy because he goes and or they go into despic detail

they go into the despic detail describing and making sure people know that they're not a sex bot. Like, they get really upset when people assume that it's a sex bot. Yeah. It's, yeah. Okay. So, this was not supposed to be book club, although, you know, kind of maybe should be. Tensionally, one of the things you like to do, I think, is to go out in the world with your companion bots and interact with people. And that's a different goal from a lot of engineering things, which are like, oh, I got to make a product and people are going to engage with my marketing and they're going to engage my brand.

And that's not what you're doing you're going out in the world and engaging with people uh with your your work is there a reason behind that is it just oh i want to meet people and this is a good way to do that is it a i want to see how people react to these things uh a little bit of both honestly um originally because like i said i I was lonely and I wanted a robot best friend. And as you've seen in movies and stuff, you bring your robot best friend with you. And strangely enough, even to this day, I feel more comfortable going somewhere with one of my robots than just going by myself. Because one, it's a conversation topic. So if you see me with a robot on my head, you're going to be like, why do you have a robot on your head? I'm not. I know exactly why you have a robot on your head, but're going to be like, why do you have a robot on your head? I'm not,

I know exactly why you have a robot on your head, but somebody else. Yeah, you do, but most people don't, but it brings people, it makes them approach me instead of me having to approach them. Yes.

I, yes, that's always important. That's why I have a large selection of octopus sweaters because it makes people approach me and I don't have to approach them. That's, that's the biggest thing about it. And then two, I want to show that robots aren't the stereotype that people assume them to be. I really don't like the concept that robots are just like waiting to take over the world

because that's such a negative stereotype. Your idea, what you said about why would they bother? Yeah. How have people reacted? Mostly positively? Mostly positively. I've had some run-ins with some negative ones. So I'm working with AI now, which has pretty much been my thing for I think the last few months I've been playing with AI. I did pretty well um i believe last year with facial recognition um but i do my best like not to record anything of course anything like that because i like to respect people's privacy when it comes to those situations i just wanted to be more interactive so when people do see it they can interact with it um but it's mostly just because I want

people to just be able to see a robot and be like, oh, that's cool. What's the robot? I want the robot to be able to answer instead of me because I'm lazy. And then it's just fun. I talk to my robots just

constantly. I would just be talking to them as their person. Do you look forward to the day when you're accompanying the robot out instead of the other way around you know it's funny thing about that i am i do have a side project for the future that will be able to do that but um currently the one i'm working on now which has my name it's uh called in jorvan but fun for short uh this one I'm designing has treadmills like WALL-E. I'm working on the AI right now with my friend Sean. But I'm designing a special carrier pack with it. That way I can put it on my back and walk around with it.

Because usually I'll put the robot on my shoulder or on my head. But this one's a bit bigger. And now that it has wheels to run around, I kind of want to be able to like put it on my back and walk around with it. And then if I decide to stop somewhere and let it roll around, just to see how it will look or see how it will like take in the world.

How do you deal with power? I mean, for the spider-like bots that sit on your head, you don't want a big battery pack for those. But if you have movement, that's power. Yeah. I use a lithium-ion battery. Usually the pretty small ones, 3.7 voltage, 500 milliamps.

But I use that with an Adafruit power booster. And that's what gives it the extra boost that lasts a very long time. It'll last for a good few hours before I have to recharge it again. But smaller batteries with a power boost usually gives me the ability to make it do a whole bunch of different things. But it also depends, too, like on the size of the robot, you know, how many servos I want moving, that type of thing. Do you have any way to select servos for your robotics? Honestly, I definitely order them from a company you trust. So I would say DigiKey has a huge selection, of course, Adafruit.

I used to buy them a lot from Amazon, but I stopped because I kept having failures. So I have a setup that I can test my servos once I get them. And I usually test the servos once I get them and then mark them as good or bad. Because I do have a way to hack a servo. If it's a bad servo, I can just go into it, rewire it, and turn it into a continuous rotation servo. But that's only if they don't work the way they're not working properly, pretty much. And you've mentioned Sean and AI a couple of times. Sean was on the show a few weeks ago to talk about marketing.

Sean Himmel, right? Yeah. He gave me a question for you when I asked him what I should ask you. Oh my gosh, Sean. I'm going to call you on that one later. How does African folklore play a role in your designs oh yeah so i'm a sucker for mythology like i love mythologies and all different types and sources so i constantly name a lot of my robots after mythological creatures or advice and stuff like that and

african folklore was on one of my favorites so when i was first designing Aussie, I didn't want to copy what I saw from Alex Glow. She created Archimedes, which was like the owl wearable robot on her shoulder. And after seeing that, it's how I got the idea of starting Aussie, but I didn't want an owl. And Archimedes is very Greek from the whole tale of Archimedes.

I wanted my own version. So I chose Aussie for Anansi, which is the African folklore spider storyteller. Yes. Trickster god too, right? Oh, yeah, but let's be real. The best gods are either the crafter gods or the trickster gods. There's no in-between.

But yeah, he's definitely a trickster god, but he's also one of the most prominent, um, African folklore gods. And that one that I personally enjoy the most, I do learn a few other ones about the other Orisha, like one of my 3d printers, my,

um, creality, uh, was it three? Yeah. Ender pro three. I've named it Ogun because that's an African Orisha God of mill working and smithing and technology.

Cool. So I do that. I'm that person. I like to get inspired by different things and different media. So I'm not the type of person that would just intake one thing. I'm intaking a lot of different things and different sources and playing with them. Well, that fusion of things often brings out new things. So that's a cool process. Oh, yeah. It that's a cool process. Oh, yeah.

It's definitely a fun time. That brings me to a question from Hayden. Where do you get inspiration and ideas for your mechanical designs? My mechanical designs? That's actually kind of hard when I think about it out loud. I literally, most of the time, I would just have an idea of something that I want. Like I would want this robot to be like this or I want this robot to have this

and then I just kind of go from there. I usually do a process of just sketching out random shapes and then finding one that I actually enjoy, like design-wise, and then I take it from there. And then, of course, I choose an aesthetic and then I try to choose a color template and then I take it from there. And then, of course, I choose an aesthetic, and then I try to choose a color template,

and then I go from there. Let me ask that question in a slightly different way. Where do you go when you get stuck? Where do I go when I get stuck? Sounds like to the gym. Yeah, to the gym. I mean, I don't really get stuck a lot of times. When I do get stuck, I reach out. Like I do have people, confidants, Sean being one of them.

I know you're probably listening to this, Sean. And I will come to them like, hey, I have this idea. And I wanted to like, I just need someone to bounce ideas off of really quickly. So I will bounce ideas off of my friends or colleagues, whatever. And they'll, other me expanding it helps get past that, you know, idea break, or they'll offer me some information like, Hey, you should look at this because this sounds like what you're trying to do, you know, that type of situation. Or I just posted on Twitter and be like, Hey, I'm confused about this.

Twitter brain help. Yes, that does work. Sometimes it's miraculous. Yeah. Right. It's amazing. Yeah, right? It's amazing. Another question from Hayden. How do you effectively keep track of different ideas you have and remember to come back to the good ones you've had in the past? I have a maker's notebook. I'm on maker's notebook volume four. So I'm calling them now because I fill them all up. I have a certain page. Usually the first page on every notebook is my idea page. So every time I have an idea, I would just go to the front page and write it down. And then eventually if I have a situation where like, hey, I should be working on a new project, I can turn back to the first page and say, oh, these are the projects I have in this notebook. This project will probably be good for this.

I just constantly write down all my ideas when it comes to project ideas. Most of my maker notebooks, or just notebooks since I use them for clients and everything, have a first page that is the table of contents. And since it's so important the pages be numbered, and I like your idea of, yes, that's what you put there um i'm really bad at table of contents i i have tabs like some of my pages are very tabbed because depending on what is important or what i feel is important i tab on there because sometimes i just doodle like some of my robot sketches like my current robot jorvan was originally a doodle that i just did while i was

waiting for a print to finish. Oh, yeah. My table of contents is only the important stuff. Like, in a book of 200 graph paper pages, there might be four things listed in my table of contents because they were important. Yeah. I just, it's my secondary brain. And sometimes, like you said, to someone helps uh solve some problems and it's it's what i talk to it definitely helps i i recommend it constantly are you ever attempted to switch to doing that on computers i know the answer is probably no but uh there's lots of sketch

programs and organize your thoughts programs and stuff yeah Yeah, I've seen some of them. Yeah, no, I have. My problem is I was never good at digital arts. Like I had a digital art class and I barely passed. There's something about traditional work. I think it's because it's using more senses for me. Like it's not just, you know, a digital thing. But when you're like actually sketching out on the paper, you feel the paper, you can hear the pencil strokes. All of those senses, I think,

connect in my head better compared to like doing it digitally. And I feel like digitally takes a bit longer, in my opinion, just because I have to like set everything up and then sit here and do it. I can go to a coffee shop because I have my favorite coffee shop. It's actually down the street from me. And I can take my notebook with me and just have a sip of coffee and then have my notebook and just sketch out ideas. I recently sketched something, but I didn't have a mechanical pencil near me and I had my colored pencils in a box near me. And I opened them up and realized I have missed the smell of freshly sharpened pencils. I mean, I love my mechanical pencils, but I'm starting to wonder if I need to say goodbye to them

because that smell just made me so happy. It really depends on the style you are. Honestly, recently I've been using crayons. So it looks like a little smart kid, like, got a hold of my notebook and started, like, writing formulas and ideas down in there. Color's important. Yeah, but in my defense, crayons, I don't know, maybe it's the kid in me that just missed crayons. But crayons have just recently just been more fun to play with. That's a smell that brings you to different places too. Back to Sesame Street.

Svek asked what percentage of ideas you have end up being good or bad or useful or not useful? Percentage-wise, I would have to say zero. I know that sounds weird but like I don't really think that my ideas are ever bad I just think they're useful and like an idea now could be for something like eventually I want to design my own drone because I've seen the

drones that we have now and to me they look boring they all just like they have like the four rotors and then like a simple base and that just looks like an easy, boring design. So eventually I do want to design my own very artsy-looking drone. But that's not really a bad idea or anything like that. It's just not important right now. So I don't really think I have any bad ideas.

I just have ideas that are important now and ideas that are important later. That's a good philosophy. Helen asked about your take on how tech might get integrated into mainstream fashion. There's the Hermes robotic sneakers on the shelves, which I haven't seen, so I need to go look those up. And you do a lot of wearables and have a distinctive sense of style. So what do you think about tech and mainstream fashion? I think it's eventually going to become really big. That's just not me trying to sound like I'm trying to sell anyone anything, because I know when I say that, it sounds like I'm being a salesman of some sort.

But no, I like the concept of tech being incorporated into fashion just because I feel like it would be a lot cooler looking. If everyone had a companion bot that can show off their personality and can take care of the minuscule tasks that we do day to day, like our cell phone does, but a little bit more interactive and better will be way more fun to see um there's stuff like um zendaya had a transforming wearable dress not too long ago that she uh took to the red carpet for that fashion show um and things like that so i i think it's going to become a big thing in the future at least i hope it becomes a big thing in the future because i'm gonna be really upset if i time travel to the future and everything still looks the same i'm t-shirts and jeans forever yeah i'm gonna be like really you guys went this direction like do you think it will be subtle or do you think it it will be like a shift in people's like like you know a sudden fashion shift kind of thing i think it

will be subtle and slow um something i've learned just from being alive this long humanity unless it's something that's going to like change the world and people are born with it like the cell phone the best best way to describe it when it comes to that is the cell phone because that changed the world um it's going to be slow it might be something as slow as one famous person wearing it and it becoming a trend for a while. And then someone taking that trend a step further. So I don't really expect to see it too big in my time,

but hopefully in the future, people are having like integrated circuits into their jeans and their jeans are both charging their phone while they're walking or, you know, counting their steps for them without having to wear the wrist thing. I remember when there didn't used to be a wrist thing and when it just went in your pocket. That was better.

Yeah. It was a step backwards. I can say that now because I don't work for them anymore. I mean, it's weird. That's the thing about me. That's why I like to make for fun. Like, that's my biggest thing. Like, this is all fun for me. And that's why I like to make for fun. That's my biggest thing. This is all fun for me.

And that's why I try to make sure everything is open source because you can learn from it. But I've noticed a lot of people, especially in America, in the capitalist state, because I get a lot of messages and things like this on Instagram and on Twitter and stuff where people will be like, hey, I have this idea for a product. And making for a product is a lot harder than making for fun because there's so much more pressure that's put on you. And then what if your product is not ready? What if it's too futuristic for the current day world? Making one of something is a lot easier or different than making a million of something. It's an entirely different process. Yeah that's it's such a process and it's also

such a stressor yeah but um the company i used to work for was selling access controllers like doors and stuff like that and locks and they did really great they upgraded the integrated video cam and that type of thing but But I was suggesting, you know, maybe an anti-theft mechanism or something, you know, like person not recognized activating Nerf gun or something like that. Of course they just laughed at me. I thought I was kidding,

but like, that would be interesting and useful. I'm just saying. At the beginning of the show during lightning round, I asked if you had any role models and you said yes. And then we went on. I want to go back to that i'm savage oh yeah i'm savage definitely big role model follow tested love his work love watching him just make stuff for fun and i've learned a lot just from watching his videos and i've read his of course, because I'm that nerd. But yeah, that's my biggest human, alive person role model.

Because I have a ton of fictional role models, but that's a whole different thing. Is there anything you're looking forward to? I don't want to say tech, because that sounds dumb, but is there anything you're looking forward to that's kind of new and upcoming that you want to kind of learn about and integrate into your work? I've noticed people are creating more

machine learning microcontrollers. I've noticed a few more of those coming out recently, and that really has me excited because I dream, even though I probably won't be a part of that, but I dream of AI personalities being a lot easier and simpler to get a hold of in the future. So I guess the good example I can describe for this, which may be long-winded, but hear

me out. Have you seen a movie called Ron? Something's wrong with Ron. No, I know what you're talking about, but we have not seen that yet. Yeah, it's one of the few movies I really enjoy because it shows robots in a good light, and it actually shows how programming would actually work in a robot. So far, I've only seen Ron Goes Wrong that doesn't correct, in my opinion, and Baymax from Big Hero 6, because we have a whole infatuation of making robots act human.

If you can replace the robot character with a human character and pretty much everything still happens the same way i feel like there's a problem that's an interesting philosophy yeah i like that like we should not be trying to make robots act like humans and stuff like that so i like that's why i like baymax like baymax is a good example he's a health care companion he's there to take care of hero's health and there's a midpoint in the movie after they go flying where he asks hero your brain waves are better right now i can deactivate if you want me to like he's still following his programming and then they show what happens when he doesn't have that programming when hero takes out his uh his health care chip and he turns him into a battle bot.

Yeah. There's no, oh my god, this isn't you. It's like, no, this robot's here to destroy now. I think that's a dark picture of the future. No, I get what he's saying. He's saying they're not human. They can change in different ways.

Why are we trying to impose... Why are you trying to program a human like you guys create those already um wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute you were trying to program a human yourself i'm trying to program i'm trying to figure out if i could program my consciousness into a robot ah so not a random human but yourself yeah i wanted to get to a point where where I can put him on an answering machine and you would think you're talking to me. But when I was going through this with Ron, and something wrong with Ron, the machine learning algorithm in that movie is that the robots are there to become your friend. And what's wrong with Ron is that his programming is messed up. So the kid has to teach him how to be his friend and it's so interesting to see because Ron is such a random robot like one

second he'll be giving you a high five and then he'll just like fall apart for kicks and giggles and I feel like I hope in the future more robots are like how Ron is where it's completely random, but it's learning from you. Like in the movie, he learns from the human kid. He figures out that he doesn't like to be like in the dark. So he like intentionally lights up and glows a little bit more at night. That way the kid's not scared at night. He learns his likes and dislikes. Like I hope for a future where we can have that type of programming easier, accessible, where we don't have to do all of this machine learning and all this programming and like heavy lifting where we can just go online and just download personality program one. And then it learns from there. Without it going hostile.

That's a good caveat. Yes. Well, in Iran, it never goes hostile. They get mad. They have a fight with each other. But the robot doesn't go like hostile. Well, in Iran, he never goes hostile. They get mad. They have a fight with each other, but the robot doesn't go hostile. It's just like, I'm broken because my maker doesn't like me. Jay, it's been really wonderful to talk to you. And I suspect we could talk about robots for a good deal longer, but it's Saturday.

We should go out and play. Do you have any thoughts you'd like to leave us with? The only thoughts I would have to leave you with is remember why you got into making things, what you enjoy about it, and just remember to keep moving forward. been Jorvan Moss, also known as OddJay, self-taught maker and tinkerer and technical media creator for DigiKey. You can find him on Twitter and on that make.io. Thanks, Jay. It was fun to talk to you.

No problem. Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to our Patreon and listener Slack group for questions. And of course, thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show at embedded.fm or hit the contact link on embedded.fm. And now a quote to leave you with. I think from Toni Morrison. Yeah, this is a good one. Your life is already artful, waiting, just waiting for you to make it art