ArduSpider entertains children and exercises pets

arduspider3

There are so many good things about [Jose Julio's] robotic spider. It's design is dainty yet robust, and the behaviors encoded in the firmware are nothing short of spectacular. The body is built from a piece of balsa wood in between sheets of carbon fiber. The legs are carbon rods, using two servo motors for left and right leg movement, and a third servo which can move the intermediary legs … [Read more...]

Atomic pinball clock

Arduino-6874

[Mark Gibson] sent us a load of details on his build, a WWVB atomic clock using a pinball machine marquee (PDF). This is the upright portion of an old machine that used electromechanical displays instead of digital electronics. It's big, noisy, and seeing it running might make you a bit giddy. Luckily he included video that shows it working on both the outside and the inside. It took a bit of … [Read more...]

Theory behind evanescent wave coupling, aka wireless power

wireless-power

[Alan Yates] is building a persistence of vision display and needs a way to transfer power from the stationary base to the spinning circuitry. He's decided to go with wireless energy transfer and he's sharing all of his research and experiment data from the development process. It comes in two forms, the written version we just linked to, and a 37 minute video which is embedded after the … [Read more...]

Macintosh Plus DJ Helmet with an iPad

helmet

Elaborate helmets are not a new concept, with many famous artists such as Daft Punk and Deadmau5 using them for stage shows. For a sculpture class, [Terrence] fashioned his own out of the body of a Macintosh Plus and an iPad conveniently sourced from eBay. After gutting the insides, the Mac Plus was fitted with parts from a helmet both for comfort as well as for keeping the whole setup head … [Read more...]

Open Source Your Rave with OpenLase

OpenLase

Without a doubt, Laser Projectors are a great way to project large, bright images on any surface you can imagine. With a high enough quality projector and software package, excellent images and visualizations can be displayed in real time. [marcan], of the openkinect project, decided that there were not any open source laser projection packages out there that suited his wants or needs, so … [Read more...]