I been using my VR (Virtual Reality) setup more. Having brought it several years ago when Bitcoin was at a peak I could cash some in and purchase an expensive item without authorisation from my wife. Having used it with around 30 or so purchased games, and more I’ve come to realise what works best in Virtual Reality.

Toys.

Toys, or more specifically miniature models in a VR environment, work well because they are unreal. In those games you act like a sort of ‘giant’ that manoeuvres an environment to progress the game, perhaps by removing obstacles for your mini protagonist or remotely causing them to battle or manipulate something around them. It gives the experience of a space where your expectations are that you’ve never been there before, so you are not prepared to compare what you are seeing with what you are feeling. Nothing clashes.

Compare that with games that mimic an environment. Having played a fair share of standard PC games ported to the environment there are quite a few that fall flat. Take the space exploration genre, for example – this is replete with with efforts where you physically move through nicely depicted environments and float along by grasping handholds, or using jet packs. While that’s nice, it can be nausea inducing and actually the contrast between your actual body experiencing gravity and the visual simulation of your eyes makes it less than enjoyable. ‘You’ clash with you, as seen through your eyes.

I’ve just prepurchased the game Alyx from Valve to try on my setup when it releases. I did this for a couple of reasons – I like Valve games such as Half Life and enjoy the immersion of it all, and also I am reassembling my VR set up into a better room. Take a look at Skyrim in VR – it is also outstanding! Others that I like that use the idea of ‘toys’ are ones like Moss and A Fisherman’s Tale where the environment is unreal or fantasy. For some reason my immersion is better in those environments than when they try to mimic real life.

Perhaps we should be happy and say VR ≠ real life.

I’ve a new phone, and that means a new phone charging stand.

Although the EU standardised on a common external power supply for small electronic consumer devices in 2009, followed by many international and national standards bodies, my new phone uses the USB-C plug. This isn’t a problem as I use a USB charger that has five slots from which I can run either micro-USB or USB-C cables, depending on the need.

What is far more interesting is the charging stand.

For every new phone that I purchased either for work or leisure, I had to replace the charging cable and get a new one for my work backpack, buy a new phone cover, get a new desk charging stand plus a new car holder while driving. This added considerably to the cost of a new unit but was often overlooked. Since retirement I’ve done away with a lot of these distractions and instead:

1. Use a universal car holder without active power. The reason I can do this is that new phones:
   • hold their charges for much longer, up to 3-5 days for some Huawei phones, and
   • I don’t drive as much, and journeys are shorter.
2. I still get a new, custom fit phone cover.
3. Buy a generic desk stand which I adapt using Sugru. These stands are much cheaper than the branded ones and with some plastic magic easily adaptable to the shape of the new phone.

This is how it is done.

First you need the phone to be in its cover, as the dimensions will fit exactly to the outside of the holder. Place the Sugru into appropriate areas of the holder – for me it was the rear kickstand which supports the phone at a correct angle to engage with the USB connector, and the bed of the USB connector. Depending on what generic stand you get this may be different.

Using cling flim, Saran wrap or whatever it is called in your country then cover the back of the phone and press it into the bed of the stand, engaging the USB connector and allowing it to rest gently on the back of the stand. I then leave them for a short time, perhaps several minutes, and gently remove the phone and cover allowing the cling film to stay for some while longer.

Once the Sugru has gone ‘green’ (easily able to be cut but not so hard that it is difficult to work with) then I trim off unneeded parts and neaten. The photos show a couple of examples of a micro-USB and USB-C stand for specific phones. The overall fit is tailored and exact which reduces the strain on the power connector and prolongs the life of the phone.

The first egg robot was hatched when Bruce Shapiro in 1990 dreamed up the Eggbot™. Bruce published it as an open-source design for both software and hardware however the name is trademarked. While it is available for purchase as a whole machine, I wanted to see if I could 3D print one myself since the initial cost was large.

I found another design by Probot that seemed to do a reasonable job, and although many of the other ones such as the SphereBot are larger this one seemed to produce reasonable quality and I had most of the parts:

• 308zz bearings
• 3D printer to print parts
• Arduino
• silicon egg cups moulds
• stepper motors
• stepper motor controllers

… and that was about it. Most of those I had, the rest I could order easily (for example, I had Nema-17 steppers and this only required 28byj-48 ones, either 5V or 12V). So, in a fit of decision I launched into building it and surprised myself with how quickly it came together.

The base and cover are easy to print with the sides of the cover bending into a living hinge. The ends are bolted shut and there is a sliding swing arm and end stanchion. The living hinge is an interesting design choice which leads me to believe that the designers were very familiar with 3D printing as it avoids overhangs in the upright sections of the print. It does make a very neat and attractive package when finished.

The challenge comes because of the interaction between different things which were not designed together: hardware and software. The original hardware has an actual PCB created to control the movement, whereas the design I am using replaces that with an Arduino running software called EggDuino. That software has to emulated the responses and obey the commands expected from the original PCB so that it can print things. All this is controlled by an extension to the open-source software called InkScape that sends commands to the egg-robot! Lots of moving parts in this design and 3 different things created by different people does give lots of room for error. So the process goes like this:

Inkscape → Eggbot extension → Arduino running EggDuino → egg

The ‘tail stock’ – if this were a lathe – is based on a printed part with a 308zz bearing inside. The 308zz are a very common type of bearing, sometimes called ‘skateboard bearings’ as they are ubiquitously used for skateboard wheels.

Once completed the whole machine is connected to a computer by USB cord and you use Inkscape to create and print the eggs.

In the UK the major shopping district is colloquially called ‘the high street’. Other countries may call it the CBD (central business district – but more generally this is the office and skyscraper part of a city), downtown, or simply ‘the shops’. My local town here in the UK has one named The High Street and this isn’t unusual for England as it is the most common street name. With the advent of online shopping in the early 2000’s and the rise of Amazon there was much consternation at the plight of bricks-and-mortar shops on the high street. TV programmes that aimed to remedy the flight away (notably ones featuring Mary Portas – ‘queen of shops!’) were common, there were government grants and industry worked with academia to study the issues – I know, because in my professional life I took part in one such study.

But the shoppers continued to flock to the online retailers and everyone was puzzled. Discounts, robo-shoppers (research online, shop in store without browsing), price matching and all manner of techniques were put forward. Card networks offered to analyse patterns and events were held in target towns. Yet, from my personal and anecdotal experience I’d have to point at one major reason why people are turning away from shopping in person especially at the larger out-of-town warehouses.

Rudeness.

I’ve just come back from picking up some items from one of the large chain store brands here in the UK and my experience was infuriating. I struggled to the checkout with a large TV and no-one offered to help, whilst the store was mainly empty with assistants wandering the aisles. We had a gaming console plus assorted other items and our purchases were a sizeable part of £1000 – so not insignificant. At the checkout the assistant immediately started up-selling product insurance and when I declined insisted on asking why? He also wanted to know my street address and email, and when I also refused those insisted that the purchase would not go through without them. Actually, the store already had them as I have an account in their online shopping system and had reserved the console earlier. But what shook me was the general abusive approach taken to the sale; countering my every decline, challenging my refusal to take insurance, insisting on more personal detail and so on. As we struggled to lift the items from the counter he stepped back and turned away – not even offering to hold them while I took some to the car. Perhaps it was just me, or a latent racism on their behalf – but this retailer as a whole has a ‘bad’ rating on Trustpilot with five-figure negative ratings. I felt unwanted and used.

Recently another large out-of-town shopping warehouse has gone bankrupt and when I read forums on Toys-R-Us and their decline many people mentioned the shambolic store layouts and disinterested assistants. If shopping is all about experience, as many retail consultants believe, then it is important that shoppers feel great about what happens to them, not abused. I’ve spent long enough in the cut and thrust world of business and even time in retail as a IT consultant, so I understand the pressures and analytics which drive certain behaviours. Scanning time for checkout operators, forced meet-and-greet, up-sell and cross-sell all sound good on PowerPoint but in reality shoppers are looking to feel good and have an enjoyable experience, not just acquire goods out of necessity.

I’d have to identify rudeness as a major reason why the in-store experience puts off many shoppers in England in the larger chain stores. Contrast this to a recent bookstore – surely an endangered breed if ever there was! – and the utterly other experience of an assistant looking people in the eye, asking how they were and did they enjoy that type of genre, wishing them well with their purchases and offering to go the extra mile and lookup stock if needed. You felt warm and appreciated and even though I seldom purchase physical books now, I have repeatedly gone to that store simply to browse. I felt good, I felt human, I felt wanted.

I’ve started printing 3D vases which look really nice in metal filaments.

3D prints are prepared by making the shape in software and then ‘slicing’ it into layers which can be understood by the printer. Usually this means that several layers are placed on the bottom, the side walls are built up by multiple passes of the print head, the top is a repeat of the bottom and the middle bits which are not seen are filled by ‘infill’ in special patterns. All this makes for strong objects.

There is a special mode of slicing which ensures that the print head never lifts off the work being printed, and never ‘retracts’ the filament nor moves backwards. This is sometimes called ‘vase’ mode and makes the print into a long spiral all the way to the top. There are few objects for which this works properly since it makes the sides only one layer thick and there is no infill. On vases or drinking glasses, cups this is ideal however and with the proper sized nozzle and good filament the results are great.

One issue is that usually these are not waterproof. Filament and deposition manufacturing by their nature leave microscopic holes in the print and while tuning the slicing parameters and the printer can have some effect, generally it is just luck when things hold water.  I’ve decided to look into lining the inside of objects to see if their water-tightness can be improved and so far I’ve read or seen of a few ideas:

1. A wax or waxy substance rubbed into the surface then allowed to dry,
2. liquid latex, of the type used for face painting,
3. PVA wood glues of different types,
4. general purpose epoxy resin, sometimes used in the fibreglass manufacturing industries. One I have found is called ‘Epolam,
5. acrylic conformal coating used in the electronic industry for coating PCBs,
6. … or general spray paint coatings.

Of these, the conformal coating sounds good but is very expensive. I’m going to try some of the other ones first to see if they are effective and attractive, starting with the cheapest which seems to be the wood glue and liquid latex. I wouldn’t want to mar the appearance of a beautiful vase by having a thick visible coating, but I also don’t want that vase to leak.

I wish power cords and wall warts came with labels showing which things they were meant for; it’d save everyone a whole lot of headache!