Amazing quad pick and place system tirelessly sorts your Legos

delta_robots

[Chris] is quite the devoted tinkerer. He recently wrote in to share what can only be described as a labor of love. His Quad Delta Robot system has been in the works for about six years now, split into periods of research, building, more research, and rebuilding until arriving at its current form. The system is made up of four Lego NXT robots which are tasked with sorting Lego cubes by color as … [Read more...]

Trackuino – an Open Source Arduino APRS Tracker

board (Custom)

Trackuino is a new open source (GPLv2 license) Arduino APRS tracker designed by [Javier Martin]. If you are unfamiliar: APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) is an amateur radio method used to relay small packets of position-tracking data to an online database for easy access and mapping. In this case, GPS telemetry data is used to track latitude, longitude, altitude, course, speed, and time … [Read more...]

Larson scanner using 7400 series logic hardware

7400-larson-scanner

[RandomTask] is sharing a Larson scanner he built a few decades ago. These days you can whip one of these up using an Arduino in under an hour. He mentions this, but we agree that for nostalgic purposes there's nothing like implementing the scanning LED effect using hardware. Often called a Cylon Eye (after the television show Battlestar Gallactica) or referred to as the lights on the front of … [Read more...]

Capacitive touch sensor shield for the TI Launchpad

launchpad-capacitive-touch-sensor-shield

Texas Instruments just released a product they call the Capacitive Touch Boosterpack which is basically a touch-sensitive shield for the Launchpad. The video after the break shows an unboxing and demonstration of the product which TI is launching with a $4.30 limited-time price tag. The red PCB itself has a capacitive touch button in the center, surrounded by a touch-scroll wheel, which is … [Read more...]

Interactive sun exhibit uses 3D projection screen and Kinect

3d-projection-sun-exhibit

A few common components come together to make this interactive museum exhibit that teaches about the sun (translated). It uses three main physical components to pull this off. The first is a custom projection surface. It's a hemisphere of the sun with a slice cut out of it. This is presumably coated with the paint you'd use to turn a wall into a projection surface. Software translates a projected … [Read more...]

iPhone watching every breath you take, every move you make

iphone_data

Most people tend to enjoy a certain modicum of privacy. Aside from the data we all share willingly on the web in the form of forum posts, Twitter activity, etc., people generally like keeping to themselves. What would you think then, if you found out your iPhone (or any iDevice with 3G) was tracking and logging your every movement? That's exactly what two researchers from the UK are … [Read more...]

Zork on the Microtouch

zork-microtouch

[Rossum] just finished porting Zork over to the Microtouch. This hardware, which he originally designed, is now available for purchase through Adafruit. It's a tiny 320x240 TFT touchscreen, driven by an AVR ATmega32u4 microcontroller. The device draws power from a lithium battery, and also boast a USB connection and a MicroSD slot. The hack here is getting Zork to run with the limited … [Read more...]