Dr. Marz's "Inteligent" Reactor

Description

This is a game controlled in real-time by a large group of users. They must command a robot arm in real-time to maintain a virtual reactor. The robot arm is controlled by software I've developed earlier for a robotic arm, connecting it to Twitch.tv. I am now developing a mix of an artfully done real world environment, as well as some game programing to create an ongoing game that can be played by thousands of users together over a long period of time. This will include many hardware and software components. It will need safeguards, since the internet is full of the world's best tricksters. I want to run this hardware 24/7, as an ongoing and full time source of robotic IoT entertainment.

Details

In November and December 2017, I ran an online robot named "Twitchy". He was live-streamed on the Twitch.tv live streaming service. He's controlled by text commands in chat, and would be left on my hobby table with toys like Lego, Blocks, and paints. He was a lot of fun.

I would love to bring him back, but in doing so I believe he needs to have purpose beyond just being an arm on a table. He needs to be able to do something. Something that brings lasting fun, something that makes it easy to let him just play 24/7. To start I'm making an interactive environment, something fun to play in and allows for players to explore and do something with the arm.

In my toolbox I have a Linux computer with a decent graphics card, Unity 3D, Arduino, and a 3D printer. At the time of creating the project on this site. I have 3D printed my first few parts, and have defined the environment size and space and written some code in Unity3D.

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First build log
Vincent Prime • 01/23/2019 at 05:50 • 0 comments

Nuclear reactors are pretty simple if you think about it. You're just boiling water to increase pressure to blow a turbine that spins a generator. Let's see what happens when we leave managing a nuclear reactor to the internet.

The programing for the nuclear reactor is going to be in Unity3D. It provides a great assortment of tools to visually present the data and state of the reactor. I can use a serial connection to communicate with an external Arduino board to retrieve data from NFC readers, sensors, switches, as well as trigger lights and other environmental effects.
At this point, I'm coming close to a first prototype. I hope to finish it in the next couple weeks. I've 3D printed a few pieces that the robotic arm will interact with. I have "Fuel Rods" as well as the reactor body itself. The Cores contain an NFC chip, and the reactor body has a weight switch, and an NFC reader.

I need to print a few more fuel rods, finish them up. Build and test the current unity project on the host computer. Then after cleaning up the environment a little more I should be ready to really iterate on the development.

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Dr. Marz's "Inteligent" Reactor

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