Fast Little Hexapods

April 20, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 19 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC4vWKenA7Y]

We’ve posted many many times about hexapods. One of the most common comments, aside from how creepy they are, is about their speed. Hexapods are generally pretty slow. These little bots are quite a bit different though. The Sprawl and iSprawl, are anything but slow. Using a hybrid leg mechanism that aims its piston like “toes”, they mimic the motion of cockroaches. The video shows the speed can be pretty quick, especially the iSprawl in the second half. The leg mechanism the Sprawl is air powered, while the iSprawl uses a push/pull cable transmission system. As pointed out at BotJunkie, it’s nice for the “i” in iSprawl to actually mean something. It stands for “independent”.

[via BotJunkie]

Felix’s Machines

April 20, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CdA-ivDj8o]

Ok, we know you’re going to get mad, there’s virtually no information on the technical side. But the music was so pleasant, and that’s rare. There’s an interview with Felix, the creator, where he discusses his goals and ideas behind the project. We prefer just to sit and watch though. If you want to make something similar, there were some technical details on a mechanical drum recently.

[Thanks Hash]

High Speed Book Scanner From Trash

April 20, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 28 Comments

book_scanner

[Daniel] sent us his entry to the Epilog laser cutter challenge on instructables. He made a book scanner, mainly out of found parts. The bulk of the project was salvaged from dumpsters, though if you’re not comfortable with that, the free section of craigslist might be able to do the job. The cameras are loaded with CHDK, using StereoData maker, and custom software to compile the images into PDFs. They did a fantastic job of documenting every step of the construction, including helpful tips for some of the more complicated parts. There are several videos in the instructable, so be sure to check them out. We’re particularly amused by the extra step of making the photo captions visually interesting. At 79 steps, it’s a long read, but well worth it.

Printing Circuits On The RepRap

April 19, 2009 by Eliot 27 Comments

reprappcb

[Rhys Jones] has been working with the RepRap team to develop a way to print circuit boards. The machine first prints the plastic substrate with channels for the metal to be deposited into. They adapted their pinch wheel feeder to work with solid core solder (flux creates a mess). The extruded solder’s specific heat isn’t hot enough to melt the plastic. They made a video (embedded below) of their test piece: an optical endstop. The team has also been experimenting with decoupling the feed mechanism from the extruder.

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Bohemian Rhapsody On Old Hardware

April 19, 2009 by Eliot 24 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht96HJ01SE4]

Here’s another junk music performance to add to the list. [bd594] put together this rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody on assorted computing equipment. The lead piano sound is from an Atari 800XL. Lead guitar is a Texas Instruments TI-99/4a. An 8inch floppy plays bass while a HP ScanJet 3C covers the vocals. He had to dub the scanner four times to get all of the vocal parts. He wanted to use four independent scanners but the prices on eBay were forbidding. The use of oscilloscopes to show the wave forms in the video is a nice touch. Check out our post about Radiohead’s Nude for more examples of this.

[via adafruit]

3D Printing At Home

April 19, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 36 Comments

3dprint

We’ve seen a lot of 3d printing lately, with the RepRap and Cupcake, both the fused deposition modeling type. We don’t often see the Inkjet method. This is a great example of one, built in someones home. Instead of laying down layers of molten plastic, he uses the inkjet system to deposit glue like substances into layers of plaster. This project is much higher resolution than the other two, as you can see in the video of it making an RC engine case below. He is currently rebuilding it to be even better and larger.

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Microsoft Sorta Explains E74 Errors

April 18, 2009 by Eliot 29 Comments

e74

Last month we speculated on the recent rise in Xbox 360 E74 errors. We assumed that this was because of an increase in the number of HDMI consoles and that the associated scalar chip was failing. Unfortunately since these weren’t red ring failures, they didn’t fall into the extended three year warranty period for Xbox 360s. That is until this week when Microsoft admitted that some E74 errors are the same types of failures that cause the RRoD and would repair E74 under the same three year warranty. Kotaku attempted to get a better explanation out of Microsoft, but only got a little more info. Microsoft did confirm that E74 is not a reclassing of RRoD, but that there is some overlap between the two.

[via xbox-scene]