LEGO Printer Built Without NXT parts

June 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 28 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX09WnGU6ZY]

[Squirrelfantasy] built a printer using LEGO pieces. It’s not a Mindstorm project but instead depends on some type of development board and some auxiliary components on a protoboard. We couldn’t get a good enough look to tell exactly what makes up the electronics so start the debate in the comments. We feel this is a printer and not a plotter because the stylus moves on just one plane while the paper feeds past it but that’s open for debate as well.

Guess this answers the question of why aren’t we building our own printers? Some folks are.

[Thanks Haxorflex and many others, via DVICE]

HDSPs And Playstation 2 Controllers On Arduinos

June 2, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 5 Comments

There were a couple short Arduino tips in the mailbox this morning. We’ve combined them in this post since both are fairly short and sweet.

Over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, they’ve posted a quick breakdown of how to interface those neat little HDSP LED displays with an Arduino. This specific instance is for Mr. Stabby. Source code and schematic are included.

For those who would like a nice familiar input device for their Arduino, how about a Playstation2 controller? [Bill Porter] has written up the code and shown how to wire it up. This even includes the ability to read the analog stick correctly. Source code and schematic are available on the project page.

[via Littlebird electronics]

RC Car Taunts Man’s Best Friend

June 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

[Arkos] gutted an RC car from his childhood and made it into a dog-taunting remote platform. An Arduino replaces the original circuitry with a Bluetooth module for connectivity. He uses an Xbox 360 controller and has added a small speaker to act as a siren. But for our money it’s the camera that makes this hack. It streams video back to a laptop and because it’s mounted on a couple of servos the left stick controls where the lens is looking. The next evolution should replace the Arduino for a standalone microcontroller but what he’s come up with as a first prototype is delightful. See Fido run in terror after the break.

Continue reading “RC Car Taunts Man’s Best Friend” →

Modern Recordings On Wax Cylinder

June 1, 2010 by Mike Szczys 16 Comments

If you thought you’d never have a chance to release your hit single on the wax cylinder think again. A band obsessed with the Victorian era did just that, having a DIY’er produce the cylinders for them. The story was covered by the BBC and includes a lousy attempt to build a phonograph to play back the recording. The video shows their craftsmanship (or lack of it) but it’s not even in the same realm as the masterpiece we saw last September. You do, however, get to see the production equipment used at about 2:45 into the clip.

[Thanks Charles]

Stomp Box Synthesizer

June 1, 2010 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

[Brian McNamara] fed the output of his guitar pedal back into its input creating a looped synthesizer. He started with an effects pedal he made but now we think he’s ended up with an electronic stomp box. Check out the results in the video after the break. Now he needs to make the knobs foot-friendly so he can monkey with this while playing guitar.

Continue reading “Stomp Box Synthesizer” →

JTAG Programming Over A Network

June 1, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

[Matt Evans] was running up against the common programming gotcha caused by disappearing parallel ports. For years he had used a JTAG parallel cable when working with FPGAs but recently realized he no longer owned any machines with that interface available. Instead of shelling out $50 for a USB programmer he a programming interface from an old router.What he’s doing is bit-banging using Linux. In this case it’s a router running a version of Linux which makes his setup Internet friendly but this could be done in the same basic manner on any Linux device with enough available I/O to connect to the device you are programming.

IRobot Gets Awesome Exploding Rope Thingy

June 1, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 40 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3jab7rnIL0]

The iRobot Warrior 710 is shown here touting a new toy called an APOBS or Anti-Personnel Obstacle Breaching System. The system is comprised of an explosive rope pulled by a rocket. We know that sounds pretty awesome, and you can see in the video that it is, in fact, pretty awesome. We don’t condone violence, or war. We do, however, love blowin’ stuff up. This footage was just so pretty, we thought we had to share it. What’s even more amazing is that these guys aren’t battling Apple over the name iRobot.

[via botjunkie]