Is this the beginning of a new trend? We’ve seen case modding in computers for a while now, but are we going to start seeing extreme case modding for our CNC machines? This is Kali. Kali eats plastic and pukes parts. Nice.
Year: 2009
Extra Pleo Battery Pack
Those of you who have played with a Pleo know exactly where this is going. The Pleo averages about 30 minues per 2-3 hour charge. Just swap batteries you say? Nope, the battery packs aren’t available. Fortunately, you can make your own pretty easily. The basic frame is a standard battery pack for 6 AA’s. There are only a few modifications necessary to line up the leads and make it fit once you’ve loaded it with batteries.
130 Megapixel Scanner Camera
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn9ZoaPIHQc]
Made from a 1200 dpi epson scanner and a manual focus canon lens, this camera captures 130 Megapixel images. With a resolution of 13,068 x 10,173, these pictures are very detialed. You can see some examples in his flickr set. It doesn’t look like they’re the full size originals though. If you want to build your own, here’s a good start. Keep in mind that it’s from 2004 though.
CrossCanada: A Biking Documentary
[Mike] was going to be biking across Canada. He really wanted to document the trip, so he began planning ways to get still images taken at intervals along the way. After a bit of brainstorming, he ended up setting his goals a bit higher. He was going to film the entire trip. He really didn’t want a simple helmet cam, he wanted himself and the entire bike in the frame. To do this he had to build a long arm on which he mounted a bullet cam. On his handlebars, he has a simple control where he can turn the system on and off as well as initiate recording.
No single piece of this project was too complicated, but taken all together, the final result is quite nice. You can watch the video for yourself after the break.
Pleo Gets Another Chance
[Robert] sent us some news on Pleo’s future. Apparently a company called Jetta has bought the rights to Pleo during the bankruptcy sale. They intend on re releasing the cute little robot. They mention that they have built parts for the iRobot line. We wonder what they’ll do, if anything, to make it more appealing.
Simple Computer Controlled Lights
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rf5zs7VEFM]
As many of you have mentioned, there are a lot of projects that are built with their own microprocessors, and are simply overkill. Here’s a reminder that we can do some pretty fun stuff light synchronized light shows without going overboard. This light show is controlled directly via the printer port on a computer. Sure you can’t un plug it and run it free standing, but you can build it for roughly $20.
Playing With The PC-PIC II
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f09tA7sUbF4]
[Asier] pointed us to this video of his PC-PIC II acting as a peripheral to his EEepc. You can see him playing pong, using it as a musical input, and even a video game controller. This project seems pretty nice, though we would like some more information. We tried digging around in the “projects” area and couldn’t find anything.
