Year: 2011

A Prosthetic Arm That Doesn’t Cost An Arm And A Leg.

June 11, 2011 by 32 Comments

After a motorcycle accident that cost him is arm [Martin] and his son [Luke] chose not to give up. They used their considerable mechanical skills to create a replacement robotic arm which allowed Martin to start doing some of the simple things he had been unable to do with the prosthetic he was originally fitted with. There are not a lot of details but it seems the arm has 2 degrees of freedom with a claw manipulator, controlled via chin controls to free up his other arm. For anyone interested in similar projects you should check out the Open Prosthetics Project. There is a short video after the break which tells Martin’s story. If you don’t have an arm, build one, seems perfectly reasonable to us. Nice work guys! We look forward to seeing the next version.

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The Breech Loaded Paintall “Shotgun”

June 11, 2011 by 14 Comments

Although this isn’t the first pneumatic air cannon to be featured on HAD, this “paintball shotgun” is certainly one of the coolest.  While most air cannons have little practical use besides looking awesome and being cool to play with, this cannon, according to it’s maker, has actually been used successfully in actual paintball competition.

The system works by preloading a sabot full of paintballs into a section of barrel that can be removed.  The barrel is then slid forward and the sabot/barrel section is then inserted and the gun is loaded.  This configuration is known as a “floating barrel” and seems to work quite well.

The author is quick to point out that this device is not designed to be used against human competitors, but against tanks and such in scenario games. Used properly or not, we can’t vouch for the safety of this device.  One should take extra caution when working with CO2 tanks as they can reach a maximum pressure in the thousands of PSI.

For other pneumatic cannon ideas, check out this other bolt-action miniature potato gun or this “water blob launcher”.

Satellite Tracking By Shining A Laser Into Space

June 11, 2011 by 36 Comments

[Shingo Hisakawa] sent in a tip for a for a neat little box called the Levistone that tracks the Internation Space Station with a laser. His video log goes though all the steps for this great little project.

[Shingo] originally planned to pull orbital data down from NORAD and send that to an ArduinoBT board with ethernet, GPS and compass modules. In the original plan, the Arduino would do the orbit calculations and point the laser using a few servos. There wasn’t much success with making an Arduino do all the work, so the an Android phone stood in for the GPS, compass and connection to the web. The duty of calculating the location of the ISS using GPS and orbital elements was moved onto the Amazon EC2 cloud. The final product looks great, even if it’s impossible to record the beam for the video.

With the ability to calculate the azimuth and elevation of the ISS from any point in the world, [Shingo] came up with SightSpaceStation, a neat mashup of his data and Google Maps. There are also iOS and Android apps for a nice piece of work in augmented reality. It’s a great project that would really compliment the ISS desk lamp we covered a few days ago.

3D Printer Looks Factory Made

June 11, 2011 by 22 Comments

[Richard Sum] came up with a great looking 3D printer and put his project up as a campaign on IndieGoGo.

[Richard]’s ‘SUMPOD’ is based off the reprap like a lot of other 3D printers, but the SUMPOD has a look of professionalism to it; the printer looks like something that would come from a factory. We think a lot of thought went into the design and fabrication of this printer.

The specs of the machine aren’t too bad either. It’s build area is 150x150x100 mm, or nearly 2 inches than the Makerbot Thing-O-Matic. We asked [Richard] about the drive system of the machine, and he told us there is a linear bearing/belt setup for the x and y axes with a screw drive for the z axis. The electronics are standard NEMA 17 motors and reprap RAMPS fare, so everything electrical is tried and true.

[Richard] plans on adding a Dremel attachment for pcb and lithophane milling. We hope that some design files of the SUMPOD released, but in the mean time we’re really looking forward to seeing the progress of this project.

AVRcam For Small Robot Machine Vision

June 10, 2011 by 7 Comments

It’s neat how a project from 2004 can still be relevant if it’s done really well. This is the case with AVRcam.  It uses an Atmel AVR mega8 and can do some pretty impressive things, like track up to eight objects at 30fps. The hardware and software is also open source, so it should be possible to build one yourself. There are many projects like it on the internet, though often they require much beefier hardware. Although, these days you can fit a computer inside a match box, so we see more and more projects just throwing a full USB camera on a robot to do simple things like line following.  It’s debatable which solution is more elegant, but maybe not which one is more impressive.

Forearm-mounted GPS Uses LEDs To Light The Way Home

June 10, 2011 by 17 Comments

arm_mounted_gps

While some people can rely solely on memory and landmarks to find their way home, others need a bit more help. Consider Instructables user [_macke_] for instance.

Like other screenless GPS navigation devices we have seen, his “Find Home Detector” uses a GPS module to obtain his location, guiding the way home via a set of alternate indicators. In this case, he uses LEDs which are laid out like a compass rose. When [_macke_] is aimed toward his destination, the LED nearest to his fingertips lights up, letting him know he is on the right path. As he turns away from home, the other LEDs light, indicating the direction in which he should turn.

His forearm-mounted GPS navigator uses a LilyPad Arduino to control the system, much like others we have seen. It is connected to a GPS sensor and a compass module that work in concert to guide him home. The compass is responsible obtaining his heading information, and while it might look as if the LEDs that surround the module are pointing North, they are in fact indicating the heading of his destination instead.

It’s a cool little creation, and we can imagine it would be quite helpful if you happen to be walking home after a long night of drinking.

Be sure to check out the video below for a quick demonstration.

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Spherical Military Drone Coming To A Sky Near You

June 10, 2011 by 51 Comments

spherical_drone

We’re always fascinated by flying drones around here, and this latest creation by Japan’s Ministry of Defense is no exception. The spherical drone, which looks far simpler than this drone we saw several months back, looks pretty benign at first glance. Once it starts moving however, you can see just how slick it is.

Reports say that it can hit a top speed of 40 mph, but it seems that the fun is relatively short-lived, as the drone runs out of juice after about 8 minutes. While it is flying, the drone appears to be incredibly agile and fairly easy to control. The built-in camera isn’t top end, but it looks more than sufficient for general surveillance use.

While we love quadrocopters and all of the cool acrobatics they pull off, there’s something awesome about a drone that can hit the ground at speed, roll, and take off again without incurring any serious damage.

Anyone care to start work on a civilian prototype with a longer battery life?