In this episode, Sean's Shmoocon trip got spicy 🌶️ 🥵 and Andrew is riding the high of a great prospect call for MetaMonster. Sean gives feedback on the experience of using MetaMonster, and Andrew debates when (and how) to start charging early customers. Links:Andrew’s Twitter: @AndrewAskinsAndrew's website: https://www.andrewaskins.com/MetaMonster: https://metamonster.ai/Sean’s Twitter: @seanqsunMiscreants: http://miscreants.com/Sean's website: https://seanqsun.com/Worth Driving: https://worthdriving.com/For more information about the podcast, check out https://www.smalleffortspod.com/.Transcript:00:00.38SeanHow's your poop?00:01.58AndrewOh, fuck you. yeah00:05.86SeanI'm sorry, we can cut this out.00:06.93AndrewNo, no, no, it's all good. Everybody poops, man. I didn't actually poop this time, but I do poop.00:10.21Seanyeah oh I hope so.00:13.46AndrewPoops are great.00:17.43AndrewPoops are great. Well, I that was not expecting that. Okay.00:22.77SeanSorry, sorry, how's robotics?00:26.27AndrewRobotics is great. Yeah, we're I think two weeks into the season. And this is going to mean nothing to anybody who hasn't been involved with first robotics, but we're making a big switch from tank drive to swerve drive this year and from time based to command based robot programming.00:46.76AndrewSo.00:46.34SeanWhoa.00:47.88AndrewYeah, pretty cool. Pretty cool. Tank-based is kind of what it sounds like. you know If you imagine how a tank moves, it's like two tracks moving at the same time. um And so it's simple, but it's also like not very precise. Whereas swerve drive, you have four wheels that can all move independently, and so they can and they can rotate. So you can move forward, backwards, left, right.01:14.66SeanHmm.01:15.53Andrewdiagonal you know you become a queen instead of a ah ah rook and it's uh does that metaphor make sense it's nerdy as fuck but it makes sense01:27.02SeanYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it does, it does. It was just not, it was just not the metaphor. Like, it just took me a second. and I was like, I didn't, my brain did not go to chess. I was like, what is it?01:42.87AndrewAnd then, yeah, but the the flip side is it's just way more complicated. So Swerve Drive, you have because you have you go from like four motors that are basically doing the same thing you have to control and to eight motors that can all operate independently. And there's a lot of like tuning and.02:04.02AndrewPID controllers, which are this like math thing that you use to like set a location on within like robotics. So you have to tune like your PID controllers and set your like encoder offsets and just get everything be very precise about everything. And then it's also like strongly encouraged that you use command based code which is like a little things are a little more like obfuscated away from you versus like in timer based you're like there's a timer running throughout a match and you're just constantly getting02:41.44Andrewhitting the same function over and over again. And then in command-based, it's a little more abstracted. And so it can be like just a tiny bit trickier to debug things. So we've just like we have taken a big step up in complexity of our electronics and programming. And guess who's the electronics and programming mentor on the team?03:02.00SeanAustin.03:03.27Andrewyeah03:05.38SeanYou, you.03:05.70AndrewI wish. Dude, I wish Austin was on the team.03:06.88SeanThat'd be crazy.03:07.90AndrewThat would be a blast.03:09.98SeanThat'd be the coolest robot there. That'd be cheating for the kids.03:14.81AndrewYeah. But yeah, it's been super fun. And I you know finished up workday and then went and spent two and a half hours at the robotics center yesterday and spent that whole time trying to tune our surf drive. And it is still not doing what I want it to do. So I'll be going back tomorrow night.03:35.90SeanHow many kids do you have to work with? Like just on your team?03:38.99AndrewYeah, so our team, the first year I did it, we had three kids. The like most competitive teams often have 40 or 50 kids. so And they often have tens of thousands, if not six figures of funding.03:48.64SeanWhoa.03:53.94AndrewAnd we had our first year like two grand. So that gives you an idea of like scale. This year, we're up to, I think, 15 kids.04:00.80SeanYeah.04:06.77AndrewWe've got a handful of eighth graders who were having them build a separate robot so that they can get a as much hands-on experience as possible.04:15.39Andrewthen we have a couple of seniors and like a junior who were who are super involved. And so I've got one senior who is interested really interested in programming and electronics.04:28.12AndrewAnd so usually he and I are working together with a random eighth grader.04:33.22SeanNice.04:34.05AndrewYeah.04:34.64SeanNice.04:35.16AndrewYeah, it's fun.04:35.57SeanCool.04:36.45AndrewIt's cool. Also, our team's all like Hispanic, and like half of them don't speak English. Well, not half. yeah This ...
