Robotic bird flaps away last bits of privacy

robotic-bird

This really gives a lifelike look to the eye in the sky. In case you were worried that every part of your life wasn't being recorded by a surveillance camera, the Festo Bionic Learning Network has come up with a drone that will be hard to discern from the wildlife. Watch the video after the break. We're not 100% certain that it's not fake, but it looks real enough (the mark of a truly amazing … [Read more...]

Wireless luge timer levels the playing field

wireless_luge_timer

In Colorado, amateur luge competitions are serious business. Every winter, [Ryan's] friends dig a long luge track through the many feet of snow that occupies their yard, and have competitive sled races to see who can make it down the giant hill in the least time. They call it the Mario Cup, after one of the participants, not the Nintendo mascot, and they were in desperate need of some timing … [Read more...]

Propeller-Android communications using debug mode

android-propeller-bridge

Here's a new way to connect an Android phone and a Propeller microcontroller. It's called the PropBridge and uses a very simple circuit with a voltage regulator, a couple of transistors, and a few resistors. The trick to this method lies in creative use of software features that already exist on Android hardware, the Android Debug Bridge (ADB). The ADB was added with development in mind, but since … [Read more...]

CFL Breakdown

lampphoto

Reader [Jay] was inspired by one of our earlier articles and started digging around the web for some more information, and found a handy web page with tear downs and schematics of popular compact florescent lamps. Schematics are provided to 15 fairly common models including bigluz, isotronic, luxtek, maway, maxilux, polaris, brownie, Phillips, Ikea, Osram, and eurolight. Also, just in case you … [Read more...]

Quadcopter pair plays table tennis without the table

quadcopter-ping-pong

This pair of quad-rotor helicopters does a better job of keeping a ping-pong ball in the air than we could. The two flying drones are performing inside of the flying machine arena, a 1000 cubic meter indoor space surrounded by nets with a foam-padded floor. This makes for a prototype-friendly space, protecting the copters from hard landings and the experimenters from the maiming that might … [Read more...]

Printable gripping rover is wristwatch controlled

SAMSUNG

[Lars Kristian Roland] is using a wristwatch to control this rover. The bot itself is a utilitarian build with a gripper based on this Thingiverse project. As you can see in the video after the break, it's got variable speed control based on accelerometer data from a TI ez430 Chronos wristwatch. The watch connects to the bot wirelessly thanks to a CC1110 development board which relays … [Read more...]

Propeller proto board has you flying in no time

propeller_proto_board

[Parker] was in need of a Propeller development board to make working on his projects easier. More often than not, when he needed to prototype something, he would pull the only one he had on hand from his home made pinball machine, and replace it when finished. This was time consuming and cumbersome, so he decided he needed a better way of doing things. He looked into purchasing a Gadget … [Read more...]