{date: 230719}

Gordite is the seventh Rogue to be built, and its body will have a slightly larger diametre, which is now feasible as we can 3D-print the vertebrae rings instead of relying on fixed diametre ready-made wooden rings. It will be equipped with the phoretic hub to accompany the other two phoretic rogues.

{date: 240930}

I'm contemplating whether two Rogues could communicate via a liquid in a tube. One Rogue could send data to the other, by encoding it at least with one bit / two states / two liquids. I can think of is an interleaving of two distinct liquids, e.g. a transparent and a dark one (here I try with distilled water and espresso). This is the first attempt, so many things are not well done yet. For instance, there seems to be a lot of air in the tubes, and having a distance between the valves and the pump means that when changing the valve, a lot of stuff from the just closed valve is still sucked in by the pump... Also lots of bubbling. A sensor, for instance LDR, to detect the different liquids on the receiving end, is still missing. Also, how to convey a “clock signal”? The motor is probably too fast and too loud, I might try with a smaller tube diameter.

{date: 241017}

Another possibility is to “sink” the liquid, for example into a cloth or absorbant material. The receiving Rogue would sense the communication through an increase in humidity.

{date: 250414}

A quick status update of Gordite. Last week and weekend I wired up the upper body. I very much like the "piercing" style. One eye patch is printed, the second one has to be done—would be good to double-check with the HyperPixel base what the original design was regarding screws. I made the LDR sensors today and tested them; the cables still have to be wired up. The fan relay has a bit of a lose contact on the Fan-GND terminal it seems… Also, there is a screw problem in the liquid motor's step-down converter, hopefully none of this is a serious when transporting and setting up in the gallery. The microphones arrived. The GPIO flat cable as always gives headaches, I had to change one for another one, seems good now. Because of the liquid pump, I think the fan has to go to the upper part, which in turn means the cap leaves also go up, and the ldrs go down. The cap leaves still have to be made; seems I still have enough black cable. I might use the fluourescent red colour for some of the cables. Speaker cables still have to be made. I had a look into the Python code of the Pico; apparently I never put the code there for the second relay, so alas I'll have to update the Pico code.py with additional command for the second relay. So, overall, still quite a few things to do.