In 2009, I was enrolled in a mechanical engineering program at EWU and was absolutely miserable. I had just spent the previous decade as a proper marine mechanic “engineer”, and found the stodgy environment fostered at the school to be antithetical to practical creative thought (come at me, Engineers). There were no social programs or outlets past the generic “computer club” (who were useless beyond snagging a student copy of Windows 7), quadrupled as a married parent. So I built a robot. It’s stupidly simple, just the groundwork to try the Yellow Drum Machine project. It’s some Tamiya bits bolted to some Erector bits bolted to a IR blaster all wired into a Picaxe controller. I still have it in a box around here somewhere.
