[HN Gopher] Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse - hardware to...
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Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse - hardware to custom OS
(This was previously submitted as
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2246856) The Ravenna Ultra-
Low-Altitude Vehicle is a backyard rocketship treehouse nestled in
the Seattle neighborhood of Ravenna. Click the link to see a demo
video (http://rocket.jonh.net). The hexagonal treehouse is about
6.5 feet (2 meters) across at its widest point. The frame is welded
mild steel with riveted aluminum siding. It contains nearly 800
LEDs forming dozens of numeric displays spread across 14 control
panels, each with an acrylic face laser-cut and etched with labels
such as "Lunar Distance" and "Hydraulic Pressure". The pilot
controls the rocket using a joystick and panels full of working
switches, knobs and buttons. Underneath the capsule are three
"thrusters" that shoot plumes of water and compressed air under the
control of the pilot's joystick, simulating real positioning
thrusters. Takeoff and docking sequences are augmented by a paint-
shaker that simulates the vibration of a rocket engine. Sound
effects complete the illusion, with a powered subwoofer that gives
the rocket a satisfying rumble. When it was built in 2011, rocket
operations were controlled by three Atmega328 microprocessors on
custom-fabricated printed circuit boards, running a small operating
system, RULOS, built just for this project. A trench running from
the house to the rocket carries 12VDC power for the lighting and
electronics, water for the thrusters, compressed air, and several
data signals. Since 2011, the two-person team has upgraded it,
here is a recent update from the makers: One of the most visible
changes is replacing the primary 4-line display with a slicker
6-line display (i.e., 6 rows of 8 columns of 7-segment LEDs). The
audio synthesizer has been upgraded to a PCB that can generate
50khz, 16-bit audio. The interconnection bus, which had been flat
IDC cable carrying individual on/off lines, was upgraded to a true
I2C-based networked distributed system with over a dozen
individually addressable targets, all interconnected by standard
cat5 cable that carries both our I2C protocol and power. We also
moved much of the electronics from 8-bit atmega328s to newer,
32-bit STM32F3's. RULOS has been expanded into a pretty general
purpose embedded systems platform ported to 5 major lines of CPU
(atmega, attiny, stm32, nxp lpc, and esp32). We've used it for
dozens of other projects in the last 12 years, including a
nanosecond-accurate timestamper, a GPS datalogger, an air quality
sensor, various little electronic control boards for toys (e.g.
these, and this), and an autonomous boat (that sank). It is all
available on Github: https://github.com/jelson/rulos.
Author : david_elson
Score : 387 points
Date : 2023-04-24 17:41 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (rocket.jonh.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (rocket.jonh.net)
| [deleted]
| jtagen wrote:
| I'm in my 40's and want to go for a ride. I suspect I'd
| appreciate it for reasons different than a small child, but I'd
| appreciate it all the same.
|
| Just.... wow.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| If you're ever in Seattle, the rocket is open for tours!
| jonathankoren wrote:
| This is such a great project. When I was a kid, my dad made a
| "treeless treehouse" (basically an enclosed platform on some
| stilts) that was kitted out with various control panels made from
| switches and gauges harvested from cars, along with some flashing
| leds and buzzers.
|
| It was great.
| localtoast wrote:
| I immediately thought of Ray Bradbury's imaginatively titled
| short story, The Rocket:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rocket_(short_story)
| yellowapple wrote:
| This is the coolest fucking thing I've ever seen.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's a whole bunch of fractal awesome here:
|
| > Well, that logo's so classy, it needs to go on a patch! I could
| have had it done for maybe $80 at some web vendor. But why do
| that when we can spend $200 on craigslist for an old embroidery
| machine, and learn to do it ourselves?
|
| > The embroidery software I used to do the patch was pretty
| awful. In the spirit of do-do-it-yourself-yourself, I wrote my
| own embroidery software for inkscape.
| susiecambria wrote:
| Came to say how fab it is that they bought an embroidery
| machine! As a quilter who uses two stitches on her not
| inexpensive sewing machine, I think that's so cool!
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Fun story: jonh's package for doing embroidery for inkscape was
| forked years later to become the excellent and much more
| comprehensive InkStitch extension (https://inkstitch.org/)!
| debatem1 wrote:
| Hey, amazing work! It'd be awesome to see this in the solstice
| parade, or as an installation at the end site for Solstice or
| Luminata. I help run both events and we would be happy to help
| move it and put it back if you're open to it.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Thanks, that's a kind offer! I think we don't have another move
| in us for a temporary display, but once Jon's kids are grown
| it'd be great to find someplace to donate it to permanently.
|
| We actually did haul the rocket hundreds of miles to Maker
| Faire years ago:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/ESRsJChacRbvpqZU7
|
| Here it is taking on hydrazine:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/1tcRasHpkVJUHq9s7
|
| We had a line of kids waiting for "rides":
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/gV9p6a8cVjWqeWgg9
| debatem1 wrote:
| Looks like a great trip and with all that disassembly I can
| imagine it not being an easy one, especially for a one day
| thing. Still, if you change your mind or want to chat about
| someday relocating it with all the other space-themed art in
| Fremont feel free to reach out to
| parade@fremontartscouncil.org or my username at Gmail.
| Awesome build!
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Thanks, I'll get in touch!
| zoom6628 wrote:
| Best treehouse ever. Made my day seeing this.
| Felger wrote:
| How the heck do those makers find the time and energy to make
| such insane projects ??
|
| I'm about wasted after a day of work and in/outdoor house chores.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Projects like this make life magic for little kids.
|
| I don't have the time/skill/patience for something of this scale,
| but I love doing little projects that make life magic for other
| people.
|
| So far I have created multiple kids gaming tables.
|
| I made a lego play table that had storage drawers underneath and
| stuck big baseboards on the top.
|
| I made quite a few kids playtables using model railroad stuff
| like grass mats, trees, houses, roads and given them to my boy or
| to the kids of friends.
|
| I've converted old radios into custom music players for friends
| birthdays including birthday greetings on various "radio
| channels".
|
| I converted an old rotary phone into a present for mu mum where
| you dial a number and hear people tell you their birthday
| greeting.
|
| I made an alien adventure game in the park for my 8 year old boys
| birthday party with a story and sound effects and treasures to
| find.
|
| I created a beach adventure for my boy when he was 6 years old in
| which he dug up a model sailing ship in the sand which contained
| a treasure map and a key leading to a little wooden chest wrapped
| in chains and padlocked and full of costume jewellery and
| trinkets.
|
| My boy is now 14 years old and the current project is to utilise
| his interest in robotics to convert toys to robots with the
| objective of raising his self esteem and making him believe he
| can do amazing things, give him something to show his friends
| because he did most of the work.
|
| The older I get, the more I find that this is in fact all I
| really want to do - be a modern day Gepetto.
|
| It doesn't take much to create magic for other people.
| jaxr wrote:
| Just curious about the reusing old radios. I have a similar
| project and could use some inspiration:)
| mdorazio wrote:
| Is it really a "treehouse" if it has nothing to do with a tree? I
| would call this an awesome rocket playset, and really wish I had
| something half this fun and sophisticated when I was a kid. I
| think the shaker/rumbler synced with the lights is my favorite
| part.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| You're right, it's technically more of a fort than a treehouse.
| The original concept was a treehouse and we kept calling it
| that even as the plans changed. It's _near_ trees, though :)
| elihu wrote:
| This is probably a completely unrealistic goal for a wide variety
| of reasons, but it would be amazing to have something like this
| in a public park.
|
| I could also imagine going on tour. Like, you get permission in
| advance from some random park in some random city, and you just
| set it up with no public announcement and just see what happens.
| I mean, when I was a kid I'd think it was awesome if some random
| spaceship just suddenly was there, and then a week or so later it
| was gone. Even if it's clearly not a real spaceship, it'd still
| have been a great experience.
| debatem1 wrote:
| I do public art and events all the time and that looks pretty
| feasible to me. At least, I'm pretty confident we could have it
| roam around Seattle.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| We're really hoping we can find it a home in a park somewhere!
| Jon's youngest is getting to the age where the rocket is
| becoming old hat so we're trying to find a place where people
| can enjoy it, rather than letting it sit unused (or scrapping
| it, the horror!)
| greenonions wrote:
| You could probably have this travel around to children's
| museums and make a space themed event out of it.
| jksmith wrote:
| That is just precious and lot's of redemption given all the other
| crap going on in the world. I approve.
| detrites wrote:
| This is incredible. Is there any more recent photos/video of how
| it looks now?
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Thanks! Yes, many new photos though we've been derelict in
| updating the web site ever since the big 2019 makeover!
|
| Here are some of our end users enjoying our efforts:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/8zca5kXXbAf2vcJh6
|
| Here's disco mode, though I think this is with the old audio
| synthesizer:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/vkenYZKATyDRB1386
|
| The original rocket's primary display was 4 rows of 7-segment
| LEDs. It was actually just 4 of our 1-row boards all stacked on
| top of each other. For the makeover we replaced it with a
| native board that had 6 rows:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/Dtiv5dN8FfrBAkDK7
|
| Here's a video of it playing pong on my bench before
| installation:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/bWfQkTaF3eUyacb78
|
| The old display boards were controlled by bit-banging latches
| over long parallel cables. This turns out to be a very bad idea
| (any EE could tell you this, but we're computer scientists). In
| the 2019 update we changed the remote display control from bit-
| banging to proper networking using I2C-based packets. We didn't
| want to remake every single display board, so we came up with a
| shortcut: we designed little snap-on "dongles" that speak the
| new I2C protocol and translate to bitbang commands that just go
| a few cm to the display board below. Here's the dongle
| installed on one display board:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/z9e6z6p4vXgb5j5aA
|
| Here's a side view showing how they stack:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/tAzF4Aeq1dWVHFxE6
|
| And here is one of the new dongles in situ with the new
| STM32-based primary controller, and the upgraded 32-bit audio
| synthesizer:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/oQxEZKRUZsK4Ry6W7
|
| We're both pilots so of course we had to put in a Hobbs meter.
| The rocket has over 600 hours on it:
|
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/ydecF3q8VkdnJB1JA
| detrites wrote:
| 600hrs: 1hr/week for 12 years!
|
| Amazing thank you. Very classy engraved cover for the boards.
|
| And love the Pong game, it's a cool effect the way the "ball"
| cascades through the segments.
| evilstark wrote:
| Honestly, if that video, et. al. is 11 years old, then Eliot is
| old enough to participate here -- I'd love to hear HIS side of
| the story and I bet the HN crew could find him an engineering
| internship in like 30 seconds!
| BoxOfVoxels wrote:
| Eliot Here, I'd be happy to talk about the rocket and man I
| really could use one of those engineering internships it's been
| surprisingly hard to find things to apply to.
| dcminter wrote:
| I have a lot of questions :D
|
| What did the rocket mean to you growing up?
|
| Were you the envy of all your friends at the time?
|
| Do you remember the original trip to scout for parts? How did
| the plan and execution take part from your point of view &
| recollection?
|
| Was the rocket always a rocket in your imagination? What else
| was it if not?
|
| How about for your siblings and friends?
|
| Any other rocket-related anecdotes?
|
| Do you think it influenced your choice of career? Or was that
| just destiny?
|
| Where, ultimately, do you want to go with your career?
| Genuine rocket scientist?
|
| I'm agog. Also more than a little envious; my own father's
| home-built treehouse for me and my brother was little more
| than a plank in a tree with a rope ladder to get up to it.
| But that was plenty and, in my imagination, so many other
| things...
| BoxOfVoxels wrote:
| Growing up the rocket basically meant I had a place to
| chill out and definitely would hang out with my friends in
| it at one point my friends and I made a movie about going
| to an alien world with it as a central plot.
|
| I don't know that envy was the right word but everyone
| thought it was pretty cool.
|
| I do but only that I was really interested in the rivet
| guns as it was a tool I'd never seen before haha.
|
| I'm kinda weird in that I don't have a mental eye so it
| wasn't like in my imagination like most people would think
| of it but it was definitely something that I spend a lot of
| time thinking about as a child.
|
| My siblings are a lot younger than me so I don't know
| exactly but they definitely seem to think it's cool
| especially my younger brother.
|
| I remember that when we went to maker fair with the rocket
| I could not be less interested in it and spend as much time
| as I could looking at the other displays because well I had
| the rocket at home.
|
| I don't think the rocket specifically influenced my carrier
| choice but I got to participate in lot of projects like
| this with my dad for all of my childhood and so that
| definitely is a big reason I'm in college for mechanical
| engineering right now.
|
| As a mechanical engineering major I really would love to go
| into robotics especially like conveniency things like home
| automation systems.
|
| It definitely was one of those things that was just around
| when I was a kid and as I started on my own projects I look
| back at that project as my first.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I'm torn between feeling like a bad parent when I see stuff like
| this and thinking that if I actually ever did something like
| this, my kids would end up ignoring it in favor of the $40 saucer
| swing, as was the case after my wife and I rehabbed and set up a
| playground set for them last summer.
|
| Regardless, awesome work.
| dang wrote:
| As david_elson pointed out, this incredible project was
| originally submitted back in 2011:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2246856 - and got zero
| comments.
|
| An observant HN user (dcminter - thanks!) ran across it the other
| day and suggested it as a candidate for the second-chance pool
| (explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308). I
| enthusiastically agreed and we got back in touch not only with
| the original submitter but the project makers as well. I hope
| they'll comment in this thread!
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Thanks dang! I'm one of the makers and happy to chat!
| jacquesm wrote:
| What a fantastic project! It would be interesting to do some
| risk assessment to see how well it stacks up against the real
| thing ;)
|
| I'm definitely _not_ going to show this to my kids because I
| have other plans for the next three years...
|
| Edit: I love the GPS datalogger, it's like the random number
| generator doing '4' all the time.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| I don't have numbers so I'll just say that it has only ever
| been disassembled slowly and according to plan!
| jacquesm wrote:
| Many happy landings to you and yours :)
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Best use of time, money, and effort I've ever seen. Congrats
| on winning life.
| Severian wrote:
| Man I love this. As a kid my dad had a friend that had some type
| of old industrial control interface, in unpainted sheet metal, he
| had wired up that just did blinkenlights. Had a bunch of
| 7-segment LEDs, light-up push buttons, switches, throws, dials,
| meters, and a bunch of other stuff. It had that tactile goodness
| that a touchscreen doesn't.
|
| Basically it did nothing, but man did it inspire my imagination.
| I remember spending hours playing with it as my parents talked
| and played cards. This must have been the late 70s as I was 4 or
| 5 at the time (if that tells you my age).
|
| These kids have it good.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Honestly, this thing inspired _my_ imagination more than I
| could have imagined. I had so much fun that I ended up building
| dozens more embedded systems projects, and eventually
| redirected my career more towards embedded systems, too.
| Embedded systems really let you interact with them in a tactile
| way, as you put it, that computer-based software does not. I
| found it irresistible.
|
| Jon's oldest child -- pictured on the web site as an 8-year-old
| -- is now a sophomore in college, majoring in engineering. I'd
| like to think the rocket had some small part in that, too.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think a big factor is that kids see adults do stuff and
| think that doing stuff and making things is normal. That gets
| them out of 'if it isn't store bought it isn't real' mode.
| Severian wrote:
| I'm sure it did! I'm glad you provided this for them.
| krisoft wrote:
| When I was a kid I loved even just watching pictures of
| complicated interfaces.
|
| That is why I made a tactile "busy box" for my nephew:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BGSkwGI6BI
|
| Just a lot of fun buttons "doing nothing" as you say. :D
| robbles wrote:
| This is a really nice one! What did you use for the board
| itself? Is it 3D printed?
| theflyestpilot wrote:
| $350 per night Airbnb right there
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| I don't even have kids yet and I already feel bad for them!
|
| On a more serious note, what an incredible project. There's all
| the very obvious stuff -- the creativity, the learning
| experience, the sense of wonder and ways it can inspire both the
| adults and kids -- but above all what sticks out to me is the
| amount of time that it took to put this together could have so
| easily... gone to waste? Like, what a nice way to have a hobby,
| spend time with your kids, and have something to show for it at
| the end? I worry that with the increased ease with which you can
| just "doom scroll," things like this are tougher and tougher to
| achieve. I remember as a child I'd get bored so I'd be FORCED to
| get my toys out and make up stories. In a similar vein, as an
| adult, this is such a positive outlet for "free time," but I
| worry that the attention economy has made committing to projects
| like these even harder (at the margin).
|
| I applaud the rocket scientist (and astronaut!). Truly inspiring
| stuff!
| hermitcrab wrote:
| This is a really cool project. A serious amount of creativity and
| love obviously went into it.
|
| BTW If you kids are interested in space, consider trying some
| model rocketry. I bought my son an Estes kit some years back, one
| thing led to another and he is now competing in a UK national
| model rocketry championship (UKROC) and planning to do a degree
| in aerospace and astronautics.
| Raphael wrote:
| 7-segment is a popular display format on Earth, but for an alien
| spaceship, consider 5x5 pixel fonts.
| uscjeremy wrote:
| Hah, that would definitely be thematic!
|
| The aesthetic we were going for was more Apollo Guidance
| Computer, so 7-segment LEDs were perfect. It turned out to also
| be a great design choice software-wise because the entire
| rocket originally ran on an atmega328 which had only 2k of RAM;
| there really wasn't much room for frame buffers. But the state
| of a 7 segment digit (plus one decimal point) fits perfectly
| into one byte, so the entire rocket, which was originally 14
| 8-digit rows, needed only 112 bytes of frame buffer.
|
| By about 2012 we wanted to write more complex software, so I
| made new revision of the main controller that took an
| atmega1284, which has a lot more RAM (16K, vs 2K) and program
| space (128K, vs 32K).
|
| The big retrofit in 2019 went to a 32-bit STM32 which had a
| hardware floating point unit, making it possible to do fancier
| animations. The rocket now supports the classic "snake" game.
|
| But still just 7-seg LEDs :)
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