Fresh hacks every day
[Martin] just sent in a project he's been working on that takes Donkey Kong out of the realm of pixels and sprites and puts our hero Mario into a world made of laser cut plywood. This mechanical version of Donkey Kong uses an Arduino stuffed into an old NES to control Mario jumping over ball bearing 'barrels.' The game starts with 12 of these barrels ready to be thrown by our favorite gorilla … [Read more...]
If you had a machine that could print complex mechanical parts in an hour or so, what would you do? [Chris] is doing the coolest thing we can imagine and is building an electromechanical computer from 3D printed parts. You may remember [Chris] from his efforts to getting his tiny, 1/10th scale Cray-1 supercomputer up and running. Even though he has the OS on a disk, actually booting the … [Read more...]
The decision to use electronics for our calculating machines has long been decided. However, that doesn't mean that mechanical engineers didn't put up a valiant, if ultimately futile, fight. [Dvice.com] has an interesting article comparing the calculating technology of the 1960s, such as the [Haman 505], to today's iPad. This comparison and pictures were made possible by [Mark Glusker]'s … [Read more...]
A few nights ago, [Chris Fenton] was hanging out at NYC Resistor putting in some time on his electromechanical computer project. You might remember [Chris] from his tiny Cray that he's putting an OS on. It seems [Chris] is going back in time about 150 years and has set his sights on a 3D printed version of [Babbage]'s Analytical Engine. The Analytical Engine was is a remarkable feat of … [Read more...]
[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...]
[vime0 =http://vimeo.com/11700747] We've been watching the progress of this build for a while on Flickr. It looks like they've finally completed the electromechanical game, Running with the bulls. Based off of the event by the same name, you have to keep your guy from being trampled by the bulls as the charge. The entire bull structure is pulled forward on a timing chain with a stepper motor … [Read more...]
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