We are the Borg. We will add heat and distance sensing to your vision.

we-are-borg

[Gregory McRoberts] was born with reduced vision in one eye and has never experienced the three dimensional sight which most of us take for granted. Recently he was inspired by the concept of a hearing aid to build a device which can augment his vision. Behold, the very Borg-like eye-patch that he wears to add distance and heat to his palette of senses. The hardware he chose is an … [Read more...]

$15 toy becomes fully programmable robot

rad-2.0

[Kevin] undertook a robot build partly for his own enjoyment, but also to include his kids in the action. He acquired a cheap toy and packed it full of programmable goodness. The starting point was a $15 toy called Rad 2.0. It's a great starting point as it already included some motorized parts, and takes care of much of the mechanical issues like joints and structure. The image on the left is … [Read more...]

Halloween Hacks: Motion sensing fog machine

motion-sensing-fogger

[monkeysinacan] wanted to add a fog machine to his Halloween display, but he says that the cheaper consumer-grade models are pretty unruly beasts. He cites short duty cycles and tricky fog control as his two biggest gripes with these sorts of foggers. He decided make the fogging process a little more manageable, and modified his to only generate fog when someone was walking nearby. One obvious … [Read more...]

Obstacle avoiding hexapod from reused parts

dorkboard-hexapod

  [Rob] built this hexapod one day when he had some free time after work. Just like the last hexapod we saw, he based the build on the Pololu design which uses three servo motors for surprisingly reliable movement. The hardware is very straight forward. A Dorkboard serves as the brain. It's a PCB that is wider on each side by the width of one female pin-header than a standard AVR … [Read more...]

Self parking lego mindstorms

[Korvost] er, [Hybrid] sent along this video of a lego mindstorm self parking car. I don't think I'd want it parking next to my ride considering how much damage it did to the blocks. Man, I need to upgrade my legos. Sadly, this video just re-iterates one of the my problems with Youtube videos. Video posters tend to fail to provide links with more information about their projects/hacks. Via … [Read more...]