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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.
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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.
It's fixed now, I promsie.
The linked article isn't even one year old...
For a second there, I thought I was crazy and losing track of time.
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.
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.
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?...
10,000 lashes with a wet noodle for you!
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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.
Perhaps he could have done it will less, but it is unlikely he could have done it for a lower price than a $5 Pi zero.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
He could have gotten the price down cheaper if he just wrote it all with machine code and created his own chips by doing photolithography at his workstation.
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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?
It's too slow.
The metal snake is being used by his SO.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
...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!
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.
I remember in the 1980s we were all going to get taken over by the Japanese and we would all need to speak Japanese. Never happened.
did you think that this might be an early prototype for charging driverless vehicles.
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