Daniel Benamy Dedicated Project Visit Application

Basic Info

• I'm Dan Benamy.
• I'm from NY, USA.
• Audrey Rampone, Technical Community Manager, has my contact info. I'd rather not post it here.

Video of Interest

TODO: Please submit a 1-2 minute video introduction regarding your interest in applying. This is a video-of-interest (VOI) and it must include: (1) Name and country where you are located, (2) why you are interested in applying; (3) what you would like to contribute to our effort and relevant skill set that will help you do that; (4) what are you hoping to get out of your visit? Please upload this video to a public video sharing site such as YouTube or OpenPhoto.

Sample Work

Jackbot

A robotic road following car that drives itself.

• Main control software, including simple vision algorithm, written in Python.
• One microcontroller was a Basic Stamp with software written in PBASIC.
• The second microcontroller was a custom board based on an Atmel AVR with software written in C. I designed the PCB using Eagle, fabricated it with a friend, and soldered on the parts myself.

Overview at https://www.assembla.com/spaces/jackbot/wiki/Home. Code at http://trac-hg.assembla.com/jackbot/. For an example of what I consider pretty good code I've written, take a look at http://trac-hg.assembla.com/jackbot/file/af82cb357453/robotcontroller.py. There's a fair amount of design documentation in the wiki pages linked from https://www.assembla.com/spaces/jackbot/wiki/Home.

Hand Made Log Cabin

I'm not quite done building a very rustic log cabin, almost entirely with hand tools.

PR2 Sushi

Making the PR2 robot set a table and clean up.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnfJUPz6__M

I wrote some pretty neat python, mostly high level control logic and integration, but I'm not sure where it is.

Turtle feeder

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOg0jZJhZNU

It uses an Arduino and some motors I had lying around. It's quick and dirty, but gets the job done.

Hardware accelerated ray tracer using an FPGA

Project home page; https://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/hwraytracer

This was a cool project with decent documentation although I didn't love some of the documentation that my teammates wrote.

Skills and Expertise I Hope to Gain

I'd love to learn any or all of:

• Economics and theory of society that OSE hopes to enable to give people more free time and more freedom.
• Machining parts (eg cutting, welding, etc).
• More assorted construction skills.
• General engineering processes and skills, like making detailed designs.
• Maybe about meta-engineering (how you're designing processes to run the project smoothly and scale).

Work and Volunteer Experience

• Software Developer at Red Hat
• Sysadmin at Columbia University
• Teaching Assistant at Columbia University
• Web Developer at NY Public Radio
• Guest robotics teacher for elementary school
• Web & Messaging Developer at Mobile Commons
• Visiting Robotic Developer at Willow Garage

Availability

The wiki says many DPV are a month, and that works for me. I was thinking that October would be a good time. I'm somewhat flexible on scheduling though.

I'm Kosher

• I'm over 18.
• I'm willing to publish all the results of my work openly according to the OSE Open IP Guidelines.
• I have the resources to support myself while volunteering.
• TODO I'll email my references directly to TechCommunity@opensourceecology.org.

Please provide three (3) references (professional or educational). Contact information for references can be uploaded with the application, resume, or emailed directly to the Technical Community Manager: TechCommunity@opensourceecology.org.

Source

I don't remember how I first heard about OSE. Maybe Marcin's TED talk.