Look Ma, No Wires

November 18, 2009 by Mike Szczys 47 Comments

[Robotkid249] details how to build a wireless power transmission system. This is similar to the commercial applications we have seen in a TED talk as well is in a Sony prototype. Power is fed to a ring made of magnet wire. A smaller loop is attached to the system that you want to power and picked up from the base unit. In this case, he is powering some LEDs but the concept can be tailored for your purposes such as an inductive charging pad. We’d like to see a hack that incorporates the base into a mouse pad (or the desk itself) and the receiver into the body of a wireless mouse. We’ve seen a commercial solution along these lines but we want one that doesn’t require a physical connection for power transfer.

[Thanks Juan]

PIC Powered AVR Programmer

November 18, 2009 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

[Texane] wrote in to let us know he has implemented AVR ISP programming using a PIC microcontroller. He wrote some code for an 18F4550 that uses the STK500 standard for In System Programming. This means that his hardware is compatible with AVRdude, the open source AVR programming software. There has long been an argument over the virtues of PIC versus AVR but we say why not both? If you have already honed your programming chops with PIC, you can build your own programmer and give the Atmel family a try.

The current implementation uses a serial port to connect the programmer to a computer. Keep your eye on this one as [texane] plans to add USB connectivity and has told us he will post schematics for the device as soon as that is complete.

Argh, Thar Be A Big Wheel

November 18, 2009 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

If you’re marooned on a desert island, you want to have a Professor who can build useful items out of coconuts. [LostMachine] is one of those guys, and he’s currently building a land-loving pirate ship. The wacky vehicle will use the giant wheel above to propel the vessel while the captain sits comfortably in the lofty crow’s nest. A crack-pot concept? Not really, he plans to take this to Burning Man where it will be a fairly useful build compared to the folks who have really gone off the deep end.

The story here is the build quality. Take some time to watch his videos which we’ve embedded after the break. In the first, he details his method for creating a precisely level building surface on top of his uneven driveway. This is accomplished by welding supports in a circle that are level compared to the center point. He goes on to share his liquid-cooling system for cutting the pipe supports with a custom-built jig and an old windshield washer water system pump from an RV (second video). The final video shows the construction of the wheel which came in with 2000 welds and about 250-300 hours of construction time.

If you hadn’t guessed, [LostMachine] is a structural engineer. Unfortunately he was laid-off this spring which has put a damper in his building schedule. We hope that with a quality project like this in his portfolio a new job is just around the corner for him.

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DIY Mood Lamp Looks Store-bought

November 17, 2009 by Mike Szczys 25 Comments

[NeZoomie] built an RGB mood lamp as his first electronics project. He certainly hit it out of the park with this one, ending up with a design so clean it could be a commercial product. The controller is an Arduino board (further proof that this is a fantastic entry-level platform) that interfaces with 8 RGB LEDs. He’s built an enclosure out of thick polypropylene that does a great job of diffusing the light and adding a stylish look. The control system features a rotary potentiometer from SparkFun and what he calls a tilt-potentiometer of his own design after drawing inspiration from Hack a Day.

Blinky things are fun and that’s why we see a lot of mood lamps around here. Take a look at the video after the break and if you’ve got the parts, give this one a try!

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BEAM Robot Tumbles Aimlessly

November 17, 2009 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Harm’s] tumbling robot from a few years back is an excellent study in simple motion. Foregoing wheels or legs, he uses four flippers to roll the robot around the room. Two motors are used, each in charge of two flippers. Identical but separate circuits drive the motors with a 74HC240 gate IC monitoring the continuously rotation. When a flipper becomes stuck, the circuit reverses the rotation of the motor so the simple bot can tumble its way out of a jam.

The circuitry is less advanced than some of the BEAM builds we’ve seen before. That doesn’t diminish the cleverness of his design and we think BEAM robotics are great way to get your head out of the computer code and go hardware only. After the break you can take in some video of the tumbling motion. We’ve also included a video of another bot from his website that uses concentric rings for another type of unique locomotion.

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Banned Xbox 360’s – Boon Or Bust?

November 17, 2009 by Mike Szczys 103 Comments

We’re sure you’ve heard about Xbox 360s facing an other round of bans from Xbox Live last week. It seems that living in a hole, or even in Grenora, North Dakota couldn’t help you escape hearing this from every news source possible. Apparently, this has caused a slew of banned consoles to go up for sale in a buyer-beware quagmire. This is a joke in several ways; didn’t the hardware problems of the machine already make the used market risky enough? Now consumers will be even more wary, losing game sales because less people are buying used consoles.

If you have just the right kernel, and a copy of your CPU key, and a second unbanned Xbox 360, you may be able to reactivate your machine. But how many people have those things available to them? Undoubtedly an Xbox 360’s desirability is greatly diminished if Xbox Live is removed from the equation. This is something Nintendo could learn from when it comes to the Wii (no online multiplayer with New Super Mario Bros Wii?… Really?). So whether you are the one who was banned, or you decided/were tricked in to purchasing a banned console, what are you going to do with it now that online play is out of the picture?

We’ve seen the console emulating SNES games and even XBMC run with the help of Ubuntu. Leave us a comment and tell us if you are planning to just go without Xbox Live, use the machine as a desktop running Ubuntu, or spearhead the effort to repurpose this powerful (and flawed) hardware platform. Will you go out and capitalize on cheaper hardware, or have you been burnt by the grim reality of a crippled rig?

R/C Airplane Motors From Computer Trash

November 17, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 18 Comments

Here’s something that the R/C airplane crowd might think of as old news. These directions show us how to rework floppy drive and CD Rom motors to be high power airplane motors. There are several listed, with details on each, but those unfamiliar might want to start with the most basic CD Rom version. It covers winding your own copper and installing the magnets in the “bell”, putting it all together and mounting it. This is a great writeup for those who haven’t seen this done before. If you want something even simpler though, you might enjoy the homopolar motor post. If you’re more advanced, they have tips for you too on machining and balancing the motors as well as winding density.