Daniel Benamy Dedicated Project Visit Application

Basic Info

I'm Dan Benamy 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

Video: 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.