Robots and Potatoes

Let’s start with today’s potato reading.

potato reading

Looks to be settling now and hasn’t exploded (not that I thought it would, though I kinda hoped) so I’m getting bored and ready to go big.  The problem is that I still need a lot of potatoes etc.  Does anyone know if that toxic gas that potatoes can create requires high dosage or low?  Just kidding.  I’ve been unwell recently and my colleagues have suggested it’s potato brain and it’s fatal.

While I wasn’t feeling well last night, I thought I’d do something to distract myself and threw together some little bots to use up my servos I have laying spare.  So here’s some pics from last night

The Claw! Repaired
The Claw! Repaired
The Draw Bot
The Draw Bot
Kitty Ears!
Kitty Ears!

2 comments on “Robots and PotatoesAdd yours →

  1. Have you looked into other fruits and vegitables to try? Lemon might be too expensive, but apple can also be pretty acidic, and can core pretty well too. I guess part of the point is to use potatoes though…otherwise you’d just make a car battery.

    Wikipedia suggests you should try boiling your potatoes first. Not sure what that does but it’s worth a shot, I guess. But, you’re the expert, not me! 😀

    As for sourcing them, try to find your local farmer’s market, and buy direct from the source instead of through the grocer. I wonder if you can get potatoes on Alibaba…

    1. Hi! You’re spot on about it having to be potatoes. But I have wondered how much easier it would be if I could use any fruit or vege.

      Actually you just reminded me about the boiling thing. When I was first playing with this, I microwaved the potato to see if it made it any worse or better. There was no noticeable difference (although I wasn’t exactly being scientific about it) but no difference is the good part. This whole thing could be much easier to manage if I could mash cooked potatoes into a paste I can create higher quality cells due to a reduction in clumsiness.

      I do feel kind of bad wasting food. I mean you can’t eat it after the experiment. So if I buy from the farmers market at least I’m supporting someone and not corporation. I think my biggest expense is the copper and zinc.

      Thanks for your interest! I would have forgot the cooked part. I’m thinking galvanised square tube with a copper pipe running through the center of that and then in the center of the copper is a zinc cable or rod of some sort. Like the russian nesting doll of potato batteries. If I leave them uncut and just smoosh cooked potato goodness in the spaces, I should have some long twin cell potato battery rods. That would work out nicely as the casing of each cell acts as the wiring harness as well. My other idea was to just bang a butt load of copper nail and zinc nails into a single potato and wire them all up in parallel/series as needed.

      Oh how I wish I could justify a kickstarter for potato research. But that one guy had one for a potato salad and it was a worthier cause.

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