Ball Catching Bot

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/6793708]

Who needs a robot that can catch a tennis ball? We do. What would we do with it? Probably just throw tennis balls at it, that’s the only use we can think of. The work of University students in Kunzelsau and Vienna, it is actually a prototype for new transport systems for industrial robots. Though they don’t list any specific instances where this is a practical method of transport, we think maybe a tennis ball factory would be a good place to start. We can also envision a robot baseball league between this bot and the extremely dexterous ones we’ve covered before.

[via BotJunkie]

Touchscreen Picture Frame

touchscreen_picture_frame

Circuit Ideas Design has posted a digital picture frame project based on their 240×320 16-bit color QVGA display. We made our own digital frame from a smaller screen a while back and this is pretty much the same implementation except with a larger screen and built around the AVR family of microcontrollers rather than PIC controllers.

The thing that piqued our curiosity was the five icons silk screened on one end of the display. That’s right, this is a touch screen. The board also has a built in SD slot and a bit of flexibility for connecting to a microcontroller. It can be controlled from a 40-pin header, or from headers that are designed to work as an Arduino shield. We’d love to get our hands on one but we were unable to figure out what currency the list price was in. Has anyone used this board yet?

Add IR Control To Your WiFi Router

wrt54g_ir_receiver

[Craig] wanted to use Boxee on his TV but his computer was in a different room. He rigged up a rather dubious method of delivering the A/V signal (this is a hack in the most guttural sense). More interesting to us is his solution for a remote control interface. We’re familiar with building USB connected infrared receivers but [Craig] decided to patch one into the serial connection on his Linksys WRT54G router. Continue reading “Add IR Control To Your WiFi Router”

PSP Go Gets Butchered (teardown)

Dx1CSXo13YF3NYBa

Not due to be released until the beginning of October, a PSP Go demo unit (shipped to G4TV) has already earned itself a teardown from [iFixit]. Among what was discovered:

– Once a few screws are removed, the battery is user replaceable (as-in: no soldering iron required)

– Wireless connectivity is only supplied through a 802.11b chip (no update to ‘n’, or even ‘g’, by Sony)

– Almost all chips are EMI-shielded (making them a bit more annoying to get to)

With a cheaper version of the PS3 ready to hit shelves, one can only wonder whether the relatively high price tag on this new PSP is worth it.

Update: It seems as though no party involved wanted the info leaked this early, which explains why the video and picture gallaries (up courtesy of Google) have been removed.

Update 2: The article (linked above) and video are now available. An explanation on why Sony had them remove the items for quite some time (plus some repair manuals) was posted by iFixit.