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Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS

rocket.jonh.net

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Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS

#41

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

I don't even have kids yet and I already feel bad for them!

On a more serious note, what an incredible project. There's all the very obvious stuff -- the creativity, the learning experience, the sense of wonder and ways it can inspire both the adults and kids -- but above all what sticks out to me is the amount of time that it took to put this together could have so easily... gone to waste? Like, what a nice way to have a hobby, spend time with your kids, and have something to show for it at the end? I worry that with the increased ease with which you can just "doom scroll," things like this are tougher and tougher to achieve. I remember as a child I'd get bored so I'd be FORCED to get my toys out and make up stories. In a similar vein, as an adult, this is such a positive outlet for "free time," but I worry that the attention economy has made committing to projects like these even harder (at the margin).

I applaud the rocket scientist (and astronaut!). Truly inspiring stuff!

Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS

#42

Post by jaxr »

andrewstuart wrote: post #14

Projects like this make life magic for little kids. I don't have the time/skill/patience for something of this scale, but I love doing little projects that make life magic for other people. So far I have created multiple kids gaming tables. I made a lego play table that had storage drawers underneath and stuck big baseboards on the top. I made quite a few kids playtables using model railroad stuff like grass mats, tr…

Just curious about the reusing old radios. I have a similar project and could use some inspiration:)

Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS

#43

Post by dcminter »

BoxOfVoxels wrote: post #40
evilstark wrote: post #35

Honestly, if that video, et. al. is 11 years old, then Eliot is old enough to participate here -- I'd love to hear HIS side of the story and I bet the HN crew could find him an engineering internship in like 30 seconds!

Eliot Here, I'd be happy to talk about the rocket and man I really could use one of those engineering internships it's been surprisingly hard to find things to apply to.

I have a lot of questions :D

What did the rocket mean to you growing up?

Were you the envy of all your friends at the time?

Do you remember the original trip to scout for parts? How did the plan and execution take part from your point of view & recollection?

Was the rocket always a rocket in your imagination? What else was it if not?

How about for your siblings and friends?

Any other rocket-related anecdotes?

Do you think it influenced your choice of career? Or was that just destiny?

Where, ultimately, do you want to go with your career? Genuine rocket scientist?

I'm agog. Also more than a little envious; my own father's home-built treehouse for me and my brother was little more than a plank in a tree with a rope ladder to get up to it. But that was plenty and, in my imagination, so many other things...

Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS

#44

Post by fnordpiglet »

uscjeremy wrote: post #4
dang wrote: post #3

As david_elson pointed out, this incredible project was originally submitted back in 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2246856 - and got zero comments. An observant HN user (dcminter - thanks!) ran across it the other day and suggested it as a candidate for the second-chance pool (explained at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 ). I enthusiastically agreed and we got back in touch not only with th…

Thanks dang! I'm one of the makers and happy to chat!

Best use of time, money, and effort I’ve ever seen. Congrats on winning life.

Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS

#45

Post by detrites »

uscjeremy wrote: post #11
detrites wrote: post #6

This is incredible. Is there any more recent photos/video of how it looks now?

Thanks! Yes, many new photos though we've been derelict in updating the web site ever since the big 2019 makeover! Here are some of our end users enjoying our efforts: https://photos.app.goo.gl/8zca5kXXbAf2vcJh6 Here's disco mode, though I think this is with the old audio synthesizer: https://photos.app.goo.gl/vkenYZKATyDRB1386 The original rocket's primary display was 4 rows of 7-segment LEDs. It was actually just 4…

600hrs: 1hr/week for 12 years!

Amazing thank you. Very classy engraved cover for the boards.

And love the Pong game, it's a cool effect the way the "ball" cascades through the segments.

Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS

#47

Post by susiecambria »

sokoloff wrote: post #8

There’s a whole bunch of fractal awesome here: > Well, that logo's so classy, it needs to go on a patch! I could have had it done for maybe $80 at some web vendor. But why do that when we can spend $200 on craigslist for an old embroidery machine, and learn to do it ourselves? > The embroidery software I used to do the patch was pretty awful. In the spirit of do-do-it-yourself-yourself, I wrote my own embroidery soft…

Came to say how fab it is that they bought an embroidery machine! As a quilter who uses two stitches on her not inexpensive sewing machine, I think that's so cool!

Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS

#48

Post by BoxOfVoxels »

dcminter wrote: post #43
BoxOfVoxels wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliot Here, I'd be happy to talk about the rocket and man I really could use one of those engineering internships it's been surprisingly hard to find things to apply to.

I have a lot of questions :D What did the rocket mean to you growing up? Were you the envy of all your friends at the time? Do you remember the original trip to scout for parts? How did the plan and execution take part from your point of view & recollection? Was the rocket always a rocket in your imagination? What else was it if not? How about for your siblings and friends? Any other rocket-related anecdotes? Do you…

Growing up the rocket basically meant I had a place to chill out and definitely would hang out with my friends in it at one point my friends and I made a movie about going to an alien world with it as a central plot.

I don't know that envy was the right word but everyone thought it was pretty cool.

I do but only that I was really interested in the rivet guns as it was a tool I'd never seen before haha.

I'm kinda weird in that I don't have a mental eye so it wasn't like in my imagination like most people would think of it but it was definitely something that I spend a lot of time thinking about as a child.

My siblings are a lot younger than me so I don't know exactly but they definitely seem to think it's cool especially my younger brother.

I remember that when we went to maker fair with the rocket I could not be less interested in it and spend as much time as I could looking at the other displays because well I had the rocket at home.

I don't think the rocket specifically influenced my carrier choice but I got to participate in lot of projects like this with my dad for all of my childhood and so that definitely is a big reason I'm in college for mechanical engineering right now.

As a mechanical engineering major I really would love to go into robotics especially like conveniency things like home automation systems.

It definitely was one of those things that was just around when I was a kid and as I started on my own projects I look back at that project as my first.

Re: Show HN: Homemade rocketship treehouse – hardware to custom OS

#50

Post by hermitcrab »

This is a really cool project. A serious amount of creativity and love obviously went into it.

BTW If you kids are interested in space, consider trying some model rocketry. I bought my son an Estes kit some years back, one thing led to another and he is now competing in a UK national model rocketry championship (UKROC) and planning to do a degree in aerospace and astronautics.

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