We’ve all dreamt, with tears in our eyes, of one day flying with a jet pack. The inherent danger of falling and/or exploding were almost as much as of a deterrent as the price tag. Now, that dream is closer to our grasp. This system, looks like it is basically just a pump that drags along behind you pushing water through nozzles on your back. You can see a video of someone flying around on one here. We think that the theme song should actually come with the unit and be broadcast at all times.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYUm3V1NSAM&eurl=http://segwii.com/]
The Segwii is a self balancing robot. Yes, another one, only this one can be controlled via WiiMote. The Segwii can function in stand alone mode, which offers only the ability to balance, or it can be tethered. When tethered via USB to the laptop, it can be remotely controlled using the WiiMote through processing. Sadly, the video above doesn’t show any WiiMote action. Lets hope they continue the work to incorporate a direct bluetooth connection to the bot.
This one seems to be pretty sturdy, though he does mention that temperature changes can throw off the internal gyroscope. This one seems to be similar to the Arduway in terms of how smoothly it keeps balance. The miniature balancing robot has them both beat for pure goofyness though.
[pros] has come up with a very elegant way of making lighted buttons (translated). Using a bunch of small push buttons harvested from old CD players, he rigged this unique way of mounting LEDs. Each LED has two buttons under it. They are wired in parallel, so if either of them is pushed, the button works. The LED isn’t actually soldered where it passes through the board. The anode and cathode are bent around and soldered to allow the LED a little bit of travel. There’s a good picture of how he did this on the site. The rest of the details might be hard to decipher though, it looks to be in dutch.
[thanks Tom]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T6zzV1vmOI]
The last time we checked in on Pandora it was just being shown in dev unit form. Embedded above is a video of the first case prototype. It doesn’t have any components yet, but it definitely looks like a good formfactor with a lot of potential. The Pandora is a Linux based portable game console with an 800×480 touchscreen.
[via Gizmodo]
[vimeo= 2976417]
Tired of having to physically connect to your microprocessor to upload new code? Just do it over a wireless connection. [Nathan] takes us through the process of setting up a wireless bootloader for the ATmega168. He is using the XBee base and remote modules for the wireless communication. While people have been doing wireless bootloading with the Arduino already, [Nathan] found that it was common for them to have timeout issues. His remedy was to make his own custom one that is much faster. He’s asking for help though. At this point it is tested and working, but he needs someone with more programming knowledge to help him make it “drop-in” compatible with the Arduino IDE.
Don’t forget to submit projects to our tip line.
This is a 5 cent tilt sensor. We know it cost more than 5 cents, but it is in fact a tilt sensor that utilizes a 5 cent coin. We’ve all done quick hacks to make quick sensors for various projects. We’ve seen tons of them, from stealing springs out of pens and shoving a resistor through them for flexible contact switches, to tin foil touch sensors. This one is new to us though. The design is fairly simple, you insert 4 bits of wire to serve as contacts and the coin will make contact with only two at a time. It isn’t analog, it isn’t extremely precise, but it is super quick and easy. Thanks for sharing [ix].
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tpAHjh7O2Y]
It seems like every piece of hardware has to earn its respect by going through some standard paces. One of which is having Quake ported to it. Much like an angel earning their wings, Bug Labs, with the help of community [CMW], has ported Quake to the BUG. Right now, the only add on needed is the BugView module. Controls are done through the base unit.
