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Tesla Owner Makes 'Solid Metal Snake' Self-Charging System That Elon Musk Promised (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Nearly two years ago, Elon Musk teased us with a robotic snake that would automatically plug-in and charge your Model S. Well, many months have passed and there has yet to be an official "solid metal snake" available for Tesla owners. So, one Tesla owner decided to make his own autonomous charging station, as spotted by Electrek, that will automatically guide the Model S's charging cable into the waiting receptacle with no human intervention required. The inventor Deepak Mital posted a video showing how it works, and while it's incredibly slow, it does work. Compared to the demo video of the system teased by Elon Musk last year, this version appears much less threatening. Mital calls it the "Evtron," which is controlled with a Raspberry Pi and swings from one side to another before sliding forward to make the connection with the car.
That way we can make a Metal Gear / Solid Snake joke.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Nothing like a glaring typo in a headline.
and is used as a symbol by the Church of Satan.
Pretty slow is right. I would have thought he'd do something closer to the musk version, that is, pop the lid earlier, and use the light ring for all the movement, rather than an align-extend-pop-align-insert method.
The linked article isn't even one year old...
For a second there, I thought I was crazy and losing track of time.
Let's face you: you better learn a fucking second language, and it'd better be Chinese.
America's lost it, we'll never be great again. Buy a car that was made in China-- oh, wait, you already did-- get a Sony television, and hold onto your iPhone tight, because the next one you buy'll be made by SamSung. It's inevitable, the future belongs to the land of the rising sun: porn cartoons, bullet trains, samurai, and all that shit. It's the future, man. I hope you're gonna be able to speak the language.
I patented the idea years ago.
The snake design for Tesla's video is intentional, it's clearly designed for superchargers. And supercharger cables are very heavy and not really flexible, so if you attach them at only couple of points then you'll quickly get issues with wear and stress. A metal jointed snake can much easier redistribute the stress and also it can tolerate fault of a several joints.
a Brazilian tranny's dick. I've seen some trannies with hogs twice the size of normal men's, and they can move it!
It's about time, The are so difficult to plug in and it's so heavy.. I'm surprised most electric cars are ever plugged in the connectors are s obig and heavy and difficult to use.
I'm calling bull on it being "automatic" that video is of someone off screen driving it. you can see reflections of a person off to the left monkeying with it and you can see it being very jerky as if a person is trying to get it adjusted right.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It took a Raspberry PI to do that? Nothing like buttery fly hunting with a flame thrower.
Unknown how it works, what is done to the mechanism, is it doing it by itself or is it hand-steered (looks like it) and what else is happening, how does the car light up and looking at the mirror images reflected on the car.....
Mechanism is not shown, in particular, how the car receptacle is located etc.
Way overblown and fake, as it looks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So assuming the video is showing something that is real (i.e., no mechanism is shown) all the guy did was waste his time building a horribly slow device that will waste energy for about 2 minutes to save about 5 seconds of manual labor.
The article states that it swings from the side and moves forward. But can it adjust up and down to find the charging plug precisely? I'm not being silly here, a Model S has considerable adjustment in the Z axis (driving low is great for feeling sporty and improving mileage, but riding higher can be important for protecting the batteries from speed bumps or other things that could cause serious problems). While you could tell the car to adjust to the highest setting whenever it gets home, I would rather see a snake that can just plug itself in no matter what the current car height is.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Don't bend over to pick anything up in the garage, lest it bring 'user friendly' to new levels.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Would it take more than 5 seconds to just grab the plug by hand and stick it in the receptacle? Jesus Christ, how lazy are people?
Are you kidding me, that is the dumbest thing I have ever seen and the dumbest idea. Let the humans charge with that port on the car make an automatic charge port that is beyond simple under the car or something, or by touching the side of car and bottom of the car with probes (something?). Why make it with a robot arm? That is much to complicated. Think of wireless charging your phone at home, you just set it on the puck and it charges. If you are in your car and need to charge your phone you use the micro-usb port. I would never make a robot arm to plug a phone into a micro-usb port, that port is for humans.
Wireless charging and the phone is only an example I do not know if you can charge a car wirelessly without so much loss it is not practical. Then again, could there be too much loss charging the car wireless or should I say without a direct connector?, Humm, a coil has been used to transfer electricity for years. Maybe that is the better way to charge a car.
Nobody asks the questions that are important. When are the swap-in-swap-out batteries that Musk is getting paid for by the government going to be available? And how are they going to be backported to the current models?
...be careful of not having anything glowing attached to your pants, or the charging snake could be attired to you, and a very embarassing accident could happen!
What if the Solid Metal Snake had to decide between a catastrophic event, that will cause the car to burn to ashes including the lazy ass driver still sitting inside the car, and killing a group of innocent bystanders?
I can see the porn industry just got a new toy.
How was the original version "creepy"? Why is /. linking to stupid click-bait articles that are written for the common mouth breather?
Elon's version: "that's slick and flexible for those who aren't perfect at parking..."
This version: "is that bracket going to scratch the paint just to seat the plug?"
The only maturity in the development of my sense of humor since high school, is that my propensity to spot dick jokes has taken an eerily transhumanist turn.
of someone else making everything Elon Musk blows hot air about.
one Tesla owner decided to make his own autonomous charging station...that will automatically guide the Model S's charging cable into the waiting receptacle... while it's incredibly slow, it does work.
VOLTRON: [watching at home] No, no, that's good. I like it slow. Oh, yeah, baby. Slower.
Why not put charging port on top surface somewhere and let gravity take care of the weight problem. Only minimal torque would be needed to guide the 'snake' if it's hanging. Just park under it and go. Of course there's waterproofing issues of the port, nothing a proper door and seals can't cover.
It should also feed people pies through the open window of their vehicle seeing as they're so lazy they can't even perform the simple act of connecting a cable to their car.
Great, another post based on a stale youtube video that does not contain any further information besides what we can see.. and we can't see much at all, so let's just fill in all the missing blanks by using our imagination. I mean, it is related to Tesla and has a Raspberry PI in it, so it has to be news, right?
This 'thing' in the video looks like something an undergrad can whip up in an afternoon. It doesn't appear to be automated, it moves like its manually controlled (and even that looks unstable as hell). How does the car get the signal to open the cover? Why is there no camera on the tip of the plug to guide it? How can it navigate the plug to a different height? What if I the car is not parked at the exact spot this thing requires?
Essentially, it looks like every aspect that made the "Snake" charger an interesting topic is absent here.
THis is not about laziness, but about the vehicle being able to park itself in the garage and then plug itself in.
Right now, we Tesla ppl can ask our car to pull itself out of the garage and put itself in front of the house. In fact, the vehicle will open/close the garage door on its own. The ONLY thing left, is the plug-in.
Now, for somebody who is in their 30s or just healthy, this is not a big deal.
OTOH, for somebody like my in-laws who are in their 80s pushing 90s, it would be useful to have the car pull out on its own as well as park itself.
In fact, the Model 3 with its coming level 4 Autopilot will enable them to go to the stores and docs on their own. Now, that it can deal with the garage as well, this will solve many issues for them.
and even for those in their 30s who are alcoholics or drug users (hello Colorado), the model 3 will save a number of lives by keeping drunk/stoned drivers off the roads.
yeah, not only wasteful, but slow as shit and ugly as all get out.
In the next 2 years, it will be obvious that EVs have won.
I'm sure there's a gaming joke somewhere in there.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife