9 ms·

Show HN: Sketch, connect and simulate gears and chains

201 points by frankl 13y ago

bockris 13y ago
I don't have my tablet with me but I'm eager to try it. Have you tested on Android?
- frankl 13y ago
  I tested it on my 2010 android phone and it just barely works on that. More recent android tablets should be able to run it quite smoothly.
  - bockris 13y ago
    I've played a bit on my desktop browser and it's fun! Can't wait to show it to my kids. I've looked for similar things a long time ago and only found Java apps/applets. I like that this is browser based. Do you have a TODO features list? I don't know Coffeescript but this would be a good learning experience for me. I can think of at least one feature I would like to add.
    - frankl 13y ago
      Currently there's no todo list with features like other types of gears, more easily creating gears of specific sizes and the like, but I would very much welcome contributions of that type. I ported this version from the original in java, to make it usable on mobile devices, because they are much more widely available than e.g. wacom tablets. I'm using the GearSketch environment in my PhD research to study different forms of support for learning about gears. For instance, I created a puzzle generator that creates concrete gear configurations based on abstract descriptions (e.g. there are two unmovable gears, one larger than the other; goal: connect them in such a way that the large gear will turn faster than the small gear). Using each student's solutions to earlier puzzles, the software tried to model their individual understanding of the gears domain and create new puzzles based on that. Turns out accurately modeling student knowledge is hard. ;) The students using GearSketch are 10-11 years old, and understanding the interactions between the normal gears and chains is already quite challenging for this group, so my current focus is not on adding more elements. But like I said: I'd love to see others working on it and would be available to help.
- xutopia 13y ago
  I just tried it on Chrome on desktop and it is usable. I think the touch just makes the experience better.
jawerty 13y ago
This is really cool. I could definitely use something like this when testing gear functionality on a bot I'm making.
nicpottier 13y ago
Really enjoy the different take on the interface.. feel like you might be missing something in having modality though, seems like you could combine the actions for drawing a gear and drawing a belt, which would make it a bit neater. Any plans to add more complicated gear types? Would love to see something like this enabling easy explanations of watches and the like..
- Sukotto 13y ago
  In case you're interested, here are two of the best video's I've seen describing how a watch works ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiCPu0SjEW4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiCPu0SjEW4 ) and how a differential works ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4JhruinbWc&t=1m50s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4JhruinbWc&t=1m50s ) Don't let their old school-ness throw you off. They are both extremely well done and demonstrate in clear and simple language from first principles to finished object.
- reeses 13y ago
  Hah, the first thing I did was build a going train. I had to use belts for the second, third, and fourth wheels because the planarity was difficult or impossible to manage. It was of course more like an electronmechanical clock since there isn't a way to build a balancewheel and escapement, but since I had to eyeball the gear sizes and draw them with my mouse anyway, it now appears to be approximately 0:65:101am.
canthonytucci 13y ago
This is cool but I'm learning quite quickly that I'm no good at drawing circles with my mouse, perhaps a bit more forgivness when using the gear drawing tool might make life a bit easier? Overall I'm impressed.
- gcb0 13y ago
  Will probably send a pull request just to be able to draw gears by the diameter or radius instead of the perimeter. can't even draw a square with the clitmouse...
milesokeefe 13y ago
Very good experience on the latest iPad. I wish there was a way to delete gears though. Also having the play button toggle pause/play would be nice.
- Sunlis 13y ago
  Drawing a slash through a gear seems to delete it. I'm not sure whether or not that is intentional
- bockris 13y ago
  draw a slash though the gear to delete. I learned a bunch by watching the demo (big ? on the right)
Sunlis 13y ago
Great for touchscreen, but tricky with a mouse. I would like to see an option for drawing gears where mouse down sets the center of a new gear and dragging away determines the radius.
- 91bananas 13y ago
  Totally the first thing I thought of as well. Great idear.
- gknoy 13y ago
  Absolutely what I was about to post. For a mouse user, mimicing the circle construction mechanics (with preview!) used in the geometry construction puzzle app that was linked a few weeks back [1] would be the bee's knees. 1: http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/ http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/
- hamburglar 13y ago
  Agreed, and some controls that allow you to specify the radius of a gear instead of drawing it would help, too. I spent a long time trying to draw two gears with the same number of teeth on my ^#$(@#! trackpad. :) Also, there's a UI limitation with snapping concentric gears together: you can snap a small gear onto a larger one, but not the other way around. This seems to make it impossible to add a pair of concentric gears whose smaller gear is meshed with the edge of an existing gear. But overall, great project with very pleasant casual interaction. Would be interesting to see what you plan to do with it.
basicallydan 13y ago
This is really cool! The ability to save a configuration and share it would be pretty cool, but as well as that, other objects such as sticks which are attached to gears would be a lot of fun. But then I suppose you have to involve gravity :)
- tantalor 13y ago
  Rods and cams would be the next logical step.
instakill 13y ago
Impossible to add the chains with a touchpad.
- frankl 13y ago
  Using it with a touchpad is far from ideal, but you should be able to manage it by drawing the chain very widely around the gears. The chain will be tightened automatically.
- matthuggins 13y ago
  Same problem on my Galaxy Nexus, I tried all combinations of placing a belt, and it just wouldn't work.
- bherms 13y ago
  You need to create two gears, a big one and a small one, then place the small one directly in the center of the big one. You can then attach a chain around a gear. Took me forever.
jack-r-abbit 13y ago
very nice. very smart how it won't let you put gears together that will violate their rotation. would be wicked if you could right click (or otherwise select) a gear and edit its radius and/or tooth count.
brbcoding 13y ago
I have no real use for this, but that didn't stop me from playing with it for 30 minutes!
lifeformed 13y ago
I've always wondered - Consider the following gear arrangement: http://snag.gy/Tvsgi.jpg http://snag.gy/Tvsgi.jpg The tiniest push on the gear on the left causes the gear on the right to fly at thousands of RPM. Of course, there would be a ton of friction in the system to overcome. However, what if the left gear was a pinion connected to a rack that was pushed by an extremely powerful, yet slow-moving source, such as a glacier or tectonic plate? With enough gears in this arrangement, an unstoppable force moving just 1mm/year could spin tons of turbines. Would this work?
- ultimoo 13y ago
  Great arrangement! It will work. Whether it will be financially feasible to construct such a large system of gears, deploy it in extreme weather, keep it well oiled and maintain it, and then transport the generated power to a usable location are entirely different questions.
  - lifeformed 13y ago
    Hmm... maybe there are more common sources of strong-but-slow power. The heat expansion of bridges? The weight of vehicles sitting idly at a stoplight? The swaying of skyscrapers? I wonder if you could make a purely mechanical solar panel that way. Get a giant sheet of metal, put it out in the sun, and attach this gear arrangement to it, braced by opposite sides of the expansion. Hmm... I kinda want to make this now.
    - ultimoo 13y ago
      I think the heat expansion of bridges can be put to use to power an interesting gear system art installation at best :-)
      - lifeformed 13y ago
        Still worth it! I'm gonna try building that mechanical solar panel.
    - 13y ago
caseorganic 13y ago
Love this! It's very intuitive and fun to draw gears of different sizes and hook them together. I'd love to be able to make more complex gears. I immediately tried to make a compound gear set with three gears and two different bands. That got me thinking about "Incredible-Machine" puzzle features and how fun it would be to actually try to build working things like clocks, bikes and machines with this.
ne0phyte 13y ago
Uncaught TypeError: Type error - gearsketch_main.js:53 Am I the only one getting this? Chrome 28; Windows 7.
jmanamj 13y ago
At last, I have found the true purpose of my GNote II. Things get a lot more complex when you realize you can drag gears around with chains attatched after you place them...
kylebrown 13y ago
Cool! Something like this is the first thought I had when I saw the old book "507 Mechanical Movements in Dynamics, Hydraulics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Steam Engines, Mill and Other Gearing" on HN a few months ago[1]. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5660770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5660770
tantalor 13y ago
Please add a permalink feature.
yyao 13y ago
Very fun! Ideas: - draw involute teeth forms - allow non circular gears - add other linkages - plot force (torque) and velocity (rotational velocity) against time or position That would be a pretty slick tool for some quick back of the envelope type calculations.
neckro23 13y ago
This is pretty neat. I've been doing a similar thing lately (rendering arbitrary-sized bicycle chainrings in SVG), so I have gears on the brain. I'm surprised this one uses canvas instead of SVG, actually. Compatibility reasons?
acomjean 13y ago
reminds me of Arthur Ganson, artist who sometimes makes homemade gears. Has fun with gear ratios too (I think the machine with concrete will spin 1 revolution in 10000yrs if I remember correctly). http://www.arthurganson.com/pages/Sculptures.html http://www.arthurganson.com/pages/Sculptures.html I was a museum gaurd at an art museum that had his work last century. He now has a permanent home at the MIT Museum.
mdturnerphys 13y ago
My (almost) 4-year-old has a new favorite activity. Thanks!
EzGraphs 13y ago
Reminds me of Mindstorms: http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful-Ideas/dp/0465046746?tag=duckduckgo-d-20 http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful... In the intro of the book Seymour A. Papert describes how gears provided an early concrete framework that made understanding abstract mathematical concepts presented at a later point much easier to visualize and apply.

201 points by frankl 13y ago

bockris 13y ago

I don't have my tablet with me but I'm eager to try it. Have you tested on Android?

frankl 13y ago
I tested it on my 2010 android phone and it just barely works on that. More recent android tablets should be able to run it quite smoothly.
- bockris 13y ago
  I've played a bit on my desktop browser and it's fun! Can't wait to show it to my kids. I've looked for similar things a long time ago and only found Java apps/applets. I like that this is browser based. Do you have a TODO features list? I don't know Coffeescript but this would be a good learning experience for me. I can think of at least one feature I would like to add.
  - frankl 13y ago
    Currently there's no todo list with features like other types of gears, more easily creating gears of specific sizes and the like, but I would very much welcome contributions of that type. I ported this version from the original in java, to make it usable on mobile devices, because they are much more widely available than e.g. wacom tablets. I'm using the GearSketch environment in my PhD research to study different forms of support for learning about gears. For instance, I created a puzzle generator that creates concrete gear configurations based on abstract descriptions (e.g. there are two unmovable gears, one larger than the other; goal: connect them in such a way that the large gear will turn faster than the small gear). Using each student's solutions to earlier puzzles, the software tried to model their individual understanding of the gears domain and create new puzzles based on that. Turns out accurately modeling student knowledge is hard. ;) The students using GearSketch are 10-11 years old, and understanding the interactions between the normal gears and chains is already quite challenging for this group, so my current focus is not on adding more elements. But like I said: I'd love to see others working on it and would be available to help.
xutopia 13y ago
I just tried it on Chrome on desktop and it is usable. I think the touch just makes the experience better.

jawerty 13y ago

This is really cool. I could definitely use something like this when testing gear functionality on a bot I'm making.

nicpottier 13y ago

Really enjoy the different take on the interface.. feel like you might be missing something in having modality though, seems like you could combine the actions for drawing a gear and drawing a belt, which would make it a bit neater. Any plans to add more complicated gear types? Would love to see something like this enabling easy explanations of watches and the like..

Sukotto 13y ago
In case you're interested, here are two of the best video's I've seen describing how a watch works ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiCPu0SjEW4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiCPu0SjEW4 ) and how a differential works ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4JhruinbWc&t=1m50s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4JhruinbWc&t=1m50s ) Don't let their old school-ness throw you off. They are both extremely well done and demonstrate in clear and simple language from first principles to finished object.
reeses 13y ago
Hah, the first thing I did was build a going train. I had to use belts for the second, third, and fourth wheels because the planarity was difficult or impossible to manage. It was of course more like an electronmechanical clock since there isn't a way to build a balancewheel and escapement, but since I had to eyeball the gear sizes and draw them with my mouse anyway, it now appears to be approximately 0:65:101am.

canthonytucci 13y ago

This is cool but I'm learning quite quickly that I'm no good at drawing circles with my mouse, perhaps a bit more forgivness when using the gear drawing tool might make life a bit easier? Overall I'm impressed.

gcb0 13y ago
Will probably send a pull request just to be able to draw gears by the diameter or radius instead of the perimeter. can't even draw a square with the clitmouse...

milesokeefe 13y ago

Very good experience on the latest iPad. I wish there was a way to delete gears though. Also having the play button toggle pause/play would be nice.

Sunlis 13y ago
Drawing a slash through a gear seems to delete it. I'm not sure whether or not that is intentional
bockris 13y ago
draw a slash though the gear to delete. I learned a bunch by watching the demo (big ? on the right)

Sunlis 13y ago

Great for touchscreen, but tricky with a mouse. I would like to see an option for drawing gears where mouse down sets the center of a new gear and dragging away determines the radius.

91bananas 13y ago
Totally the first thing I thought of as well. Great idear.
gknoy 13y ago
Absolutely what I was about to post. For a mouse user, mimicing the circle construction mechanics (with preview!) used in the geometry construction puzzle app that was linked a few weeks back [1] would be the bee's knees. 1: http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/ http://www.sciencevsmagic.net/geo/
hamburglar 13y ago
Agreed, and some controls that allow you to specify the radius of a gear instead of drawing it would help, too. I spent a long time trying to draw two gears with the same number of teeth on my ^#$(@#! trackpad. :) Also, there's a UI limitation with snapping concentric gears together: you can snap a small gear onto a larger one, but not the other way around. This seems to make it impossible to add a pair of concentric gears whose smaller gear is meshed with the edge of an existing gear. But overall, great project with very pleasant casual interaction. Would be interesting to see what you plan to do with it.

basicallydan 13y ago

This is really cool! The ability to save a configuration and share it would be pretty cool, but as well as that, other objects such as sticks which are attached to gears would be a lot of fun. But then I suppose you have to involve gravity :)

tantalor 13y ago
Rods and cams would be the next logical step.

instakill 13y ago

Impossible to add the chains with a touchpad.

frankl 13y ago
Using it with a touchpad is far from ideal, but you should be able to manage it by drawing the chain very widely around the gears. The chain will be tightened automatically.
matthuggins 13y ago
Same problem on my Galaxy Nexus, I tried all combinations of placing a belt, and it just wouldn't work.
bherms 13y ago
You need to create two gears, a big one and a small one, then place the small one directly in the center of the big one. You can then attach a chain around a gear. Took me forever.

jack-r-abbit 13y ago

very nice. very smart how it won't let you put gears together that will violate their rotation. would be wicked if you could right click (or otherwise select) a gear and edit its radius and/or tooth count.

brbcoding 13y ago

I have no real use for this, but that didn't stop me from playing with it for 30 minutes!

lifeformed 13y ago

I've always wondered - Consider the following gear arrangement: http://snag.gy/Tvsgi.jpg http://snag.gy/Tvsgi.jpg The tiniest push on the gear on the left causes the gear on the right to fly at thousands of RPM. Of course, there would be a ton of friction in the system to overcome. However, what if the left gear was a pinion connected to a rack that was pushed by an extremely powerful, yet slow-moving source, such as a glacier or tectonic plate? With enough gears in this arrangement, an unstoppable force moving just 1mm/year could spin tons of turbines. Would this work?

ultimoo 13y ago
Great arrangement! It will work. Whether it will be financially feasible to construct such a large system of gears, deploy it in extreme weather, keep it well oiled and maintain it, and then transport the generated power to a usable location are entirely different questions.
- lifeformed 13y ago
  Hmm... maybe there are more common sources of strong-but-slow power. The heat expansion of bridges? The weight of vehicles sitting idly at a stoplight? The swaying of skyscrapers? I wonder if you could make a purely mechanical solar panel that way. Get a giant sheet of metal, put it out in the sun, and attach this gear arrangement to it, braced by opposite sides of the expansion. Hmm... I kinda want to make this now.
  - ultimoo 13y ago
    I think the heat expansion of bridges can be put to use to power an interesting gear system art installation at best :-)
    - lifeformed 13y ago
      Still worth it! I'm gonna try building that mechanical solar panel.
  - 13y ago

caseorganic 13y ago

Love this! It's very intuitive and fun to draw gears of different sizes and hook them together. I'd love to be able to make more complex gears. I immediately tried to make a compound gear set with three gears and two different bands. That got me thinking about "Incredible-Machine" puzzle features and how fun it would be to actually try to build working things like clocks, bikes and machines with this.

ne0phyte 13y ago

Uncaught TypeError: Type error - gearsketch_main.js:53 Am I the only one getting this? Chrome 28; Windows 7.

jmanamj 13y ago

At last, I have found the true purpose of my GNote II. Things get a lot more complex when you realize you can drag gears around with chains attatched after you place them...

kylebrown 13y ago

Cool! Something like this is the first thought I had when I saw the old book "507 Mechanical Movements in Dynamics, Hydraulics, Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Steam Engines, Mill and Other Gearing" on HN a few months ago[1]. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5660770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5660770

tantalor 13y ago

Please add a permalink feature.

yyao 13y ago

Very fun! Ideas: - draw involute teeth forms - allow non circular gears - add other linkages - plot force (torque) and velocity (rotational velocity) against time or position That would be a pretty slick tool for some quick back of the envelope type calculations.

neckro23 13y ago

This is pretty neat. I've been doing a similar thing lately (rendering arbitrary-sized bicycle chainrings in SVG), so I have gears on the brain. I'm surprised this one uses canvas instead of SVG, actually. Compatibility reasons?

acomjean 13y ago

reminds me of Arthur Ganson, artist who sometimes makes homemade gears. Has fun with gear ratios too (I think the machine with concrete will spin 1 revolution in 10000yrs if I remember correctly). http://www.arthurganson.com/pages/Sculptures.html http://www.arthurganson.com/pages/Sculptures.html I was a museum gaurd at an art museum that had his work last century. He now has a permanent home at the MIT Museum.

mdturnerphys 13y ago

My (almost) 4-year-old has a new favorite activity. Thanks!

EzGraphs 13y ago

Reminds me of Mindstorms: http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful-Ideas/dp/0465046746?tag=duckduckgo-d-20 http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful... In the intro of the book Seymour A. Papert describes how gears provided an early concrete framework that made understanding abstract mathematical concepts presented at a later point much easier to visualize and apply.