Then I watched the Tesla Roadster event. On Thursday night, October 15, Tesla livestreamed the next-gen Roadster reveal from a SpaceX test site in McGregor, Texas. The moment that got me was the Roadster coming down for a landing on thrusters. A car hovering on jets felt like something straight out of a video game. So I figured, why not make that game?

RoadsterGO is a 3D browser game set in a neon arena. You fly a white Roadster with booster thrusters, and your goal is simple: stick a soft landing. It’s harder than it sounds. There are four modes: Ramp, Suction, Jump (clear a row of Teslas from Cybercab to Semi) and Flip. You score points for a clean landing and for any fuel you have left. There’s a live Top 10 leaderboard, and the crowd cheers when you nail it and ducks when you don’t.

Building a game turned out to be a nice break from routing traces. Thrust, gravity and timing a landing aren’t that far from motion control. Once the ncBrain boards arrive I’ll be back to bring-up and testing, and I’ll post an update here.

Play RoadsterGO for free at roadstergo.web.app. If you make the Top 10, grab a screenshot and share it with me.

Tesla and Roadster are trademarks of Tesla, Inc. RoadsterGO is a fan-made game, not affiliated with or endorsed by Tesla.

The post Waiting on PCBs, I Built a Flying Roadster Game: Meet RoadsterGO™ appeared first on vBotTech.

At vBotTech, we’ve been building something new: ncBrain, our own motion controller for CNC machines and robot arms. It runs on a dual-core 32-bit processor with a real-time operating system, so motion stays smooth and timing stays tight while everything else is going on.

What it does today

• Runs G-code jobs straight from the board, with machine and work coordinates handled the way machinists expect.
• Supports a hardware MPG pendant (a handwheel for jogging) with a small OLED screen. Each click of the wheel moves exactly the distance you’ve set, for fine control when setting up a part or simply jogging the machine to a new spot.
• Pairs with ncRun, our desktop software, for running jobs, with a live position display and a 3D plot of the toolpath.
• Connects to ncWebLink over the internet or directly over Wi-Fi, so you can check on your job and jog your machine from a phone or tablet browser, with no physical connection to the machine.

Why we built it

We wanted one controller that could drive both our CNC machines and our robot arms. We also wanted it to be as easy to use as possible, and open to makers and labs who want to tinker.

What’s next

We’re polishing the firmware and testing it on our own machines here in Irvine. Follow the blog for build updates, videos and launch news.

For more videos and progress updates, check out our ncVBot YouTube channel.

The post ncBrain: controller behind our next machines appeared first on vBotTech.