Algodoo

Excellent. Not only fun to watch, but instructive to other Algodooers.

Regarding "a couple of ideas", they are all good ideas, but I'm not sure I'll do any of them.

Regarding "If you decide to add sound", it was always there, you just need to click your heels (really all you need is to start AlgoSound and use headphones).

Regarding "I may tackle one or two of them", good idea. Use whatever you want from this scene.

P.S. I tried a black & white version and it's easier for me than the color version. I will post it in 24 hours if you don't post a similar scene or one that provides a selection between color & b&w before then.

Regarding "those tones nearly drove me crazy", (4) tones is a lot to handle, and the click at the start of each tone is annoying. The only plus thing was that beat frequencies would help give away the position. The two tone, left/right balance was a little bit better, but Algosound does not support it yet.

Regarding "that old 5-tube Zenith radio collecting dust", I used to remove the speakers and then hose down tube radios and TVs (and then allow them to dry) before fixing them. Cleaning with a vacuum cleaner or compressed air is probably a better idea. Tubes and capacitors seemed to be the first things to go. The volume control is a good test point since it is usually easy access and cuts the radio in half.

Regarding "machining", I haven't done much of that, but it sounds like fun.

It sounds like you were fixing customer TV sets while I was fixing TVs that were being thrown out. At any rate, you probably know more about that stuff than I do.

I started learning electronics around age 26. Before that I went to college 2 years, dropped out, worked roofing for a year, got an associate degree in mechanical engineering in 2 years, worked drafting for a year, got a BSME in 2 years. Bought my first car after roofing, and did all the repairs myself. I wanted to be able to fix anything electronic myself so I started in the kids section of the library and read all the electronics books there, then I bought a Radio Shack 150 in 1 kit for half price and did all 150 projects while taking notes and trying variations, then somebody gave me a free electronics course (based on tube technology) and an old tube oscilloscope. I read every book cover to cover. I then started getting TVs and radios from the dump and fixing them. I would get the SAM's photofacts from the library if I needed to. I bought college electronics textbooks and read them cover to cover. I designed an built a sampling oscilloscope that had a speaker for output (a square wave would be two alternating tones, a sine wave would sound like a police siren at that time). I modified the sampling oscilloscope for TV display using some ICs and a modulator from some early video game. I then got a z80 4 chip computer and started playing with A/D, D/A, digital inputs and outputs, and the counter/timer chip. After that I started getting into software. I wrote a shareware program many years ago for troubleshooting TV sets. It started by treating the TV as a single block with inputs and outputs (the first question was "Is the TV plugged in?"), and ended by identifying the section (usually associated with a single tube or transistor) with the problem. Even though I'm a ME, I did work a few years as a software engineer. I'm now employed as a ME, but also do software and electrical design.

Regarding "Why can't you be more like your brother?", it was meant as a joke, since that's something you should never say to your kids. The reason I suggested stating a solution along with the problem is because I was surprised that Xray did that in the comment before yours. "Why can't you be more like your brother?" isn't something that I would normally say, but seemed to be an amusing thing to say, considering the sequence of events. I apologize if it seemed rude.

You can criticize anything I do, and you don't need to give solutions. I rather get feedback, good or bad, than not hear anything. I did put a download filter on the AlgoSound program (the new version is not posted yet) and I do have the program check the AlgoSound site for missing sounds.

I like your elegant coding and design. Keep up the good work.

Nicely done.

Nice work.

I tried 15 runs. On the 14th run it got stuck for about 3 seconds in a corner, but then continued. I've made some changes that I think should improve the reliability, but it's hard to test, since now it doesn't fail on my machine.

Xray,

Thanks for making me aware of the problem and and checking after I fixed it. I've run it continuously for 13 hours now with no hangups.

Kilinich,

Thanks for the helpful hint. I will try that. I initially tried a circle and was disappointed to find it only had one collision.

The maze is like an intestine and that's where worms do best in.

Nice work.

Here's a suggestion for your one hinge scale:

initialize:
_oldm = 0.0;
_lastHit = 0.0;

postStep:
g := scene.entityByGeomID((readable(entity)).geom0);
v := (readable(entity)).totImp3(1) * sim.frequency / 9.8 - 25000.0;
m := _oldm + 3.0 / sim.frequency * (v - _oldm);
_oldm = m;
sim.time - _lastHit > 0.5 ? {
g.text = math.toInt(m) + " kg";
_lastHit = sim.time
} : {}

This adds a low pass smoothing filter that has a 3 second time constant to the output and updates the scale twice a second.

Q: What is "g" good for if you use it only once? Just wasted RAM space.
A: No good unless you use it more than once.

Q: So it is scale that update text every half a second?
A: So you can read the last digit in the number. What good is a display that changes 120 times per second?

Q: "low pass smoothing filter"?
A: low pass means let the low frequencies go through the filter. Smoothing means stop the display from showing big rapid change.

At any rate, the code is there to try if you desire. Don't try it if you don't like it.

Q: How to make high torque gearbox?
A: I don't know. My first guess would be to use spur gears or circle gears. My second thought would be to see how other people make gear boxes.

Note: This scene is done really well and near perfect. I comment on one small aspect of the scene, which probably accounts for 0.01% of the scene. Do what you feel like doing. I will not feel bad if you disregard the comments below.

If your goal was to use one line of code for the scale, then you did well. If your goal was to stabilize the reading, then you can still improve the scene. The code below may help you accomplish both:
Initialize:
_count = 0;
_sum = 0;
_time = 0;
postStep:
sim.time > _time ? {
_time = sim.time + 1;
(scene.entityByGeomID((readable(entity)).geom0)).t­ext = math.toInt(((_sum * sim.frequency / _count) - (25000 * Sim.gravityStrength)) / Sim.gravityStrength) + "/100,000 kg";
_count = 0;
_sum = 0
} : {
_count = _count + 1;
_sum = _sum + (readable(entity)).totImp3(1)
}

Regarding transmission slipping, see Strong Transmission.

For me, the output fails at 50,000 N-m. At what load is it "freaking out" for you?

↓ don't know what you are talking about. I added a few labels to show how it works.

Yes, I noticed that. The transmission works fine up until you get to a stall condition. Maybe you can fix that.

Ideally, the transmission would stop when the engine is stalled, but the slow stuttering of the transmission at stall could be considered an indication that you need to down shift.

This scene is awesome.

Is this dynamometer turning the engine? If that's the case, then either you got things backwards or you have some explaining to do.

Then do it.

OK. I appreciate your suggestion anyway, but I'm not sure it applies in this case. This scene senses the output torque, multiplies it by the transmission ratio, and applies it to the brake of the input "gear". It then reads the angVel of the input gear, multiplies it by the transmission ratio, and applies it to hinge motorSpeed of the output "gear". So the input "gear" is actually a brake and the output "gear" is actually a motor, and they don't need to contact in order to work. From the point of view of the motor and wheels, the transmission looks and feels like a low slip CVT.

Bottom line is, if it's a useful tool for engine design, then that's a good thing. I'm impressed by the whole design. The graphs look good even without the smoothing. totImp3(2)*sim.frequency is torque, which you probably already know, even though you call it _force.

Regarding "Now I found out that using those is much better as long as less steps have to run scripts.", how did you measure that?

I usually don't think about lag or performance until I run into problems. What's the best way to do something every nth time? (maybe sim.tick % n == 0 ? {doSomething}:{};)

Thanks. Sometimes I set laser maxRays = 1 which is similar to setting refractiveIndex = 1. I had forgotten about the "-" and "*" key and couldn't find it on the forum when I went to look for it. I searched "hotkey", "ctrl", "special", "performance"... all to no avail. At any rate I should note that it's the numeric keypad "*" and "-" keys.

Now I see that. Thanks.

Thanks for the comment and rating.

Sorry about that. I reset Algodoo, loaded it on my PC, and it runs fine. It takes 2.2 second to load on my PC which is now 5 years old.

Nice coding and GUI design. Get rid of the clouds if you are secretly into marble races.

Your next challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make a gear generator that generates an invisible circle gear with visible non-collide spur gear on top. This way you will get the strength of a circle gear and the appearance of a spur gear. I will make a response scene showing what the final product may look like.

Nice work.

Q: Is this necessary?
A: No, but I found out that circle gears are about 10X stronger than spur gears. So if you are looking for something that is strong and looks realistic, then circle spur gears are the answer. If you are not worried about strength, then it is probably better to use spur gears since they use less processor time than circle gears.

S: It'll confuse the hell out of people.
R: Probably most people, bust most spawn engine designers will be able to grasp the concept.

S: Plus I think one of the gears need to be rotated or the spur teeth will overlap.
R: Yes, that's the tricky part from a gear generation, GUI, and user understanding point of view. You could spawn two meshed gears at once or have two types of gears, an A type and a B type, where A always has to mesh with a B. Another tricky part is to get the pitch circles for the spur and circle gears equal. The simplest approach may be to add the circle gear "teeth" to a spur gear.