Singing Robot

July 25, 2011 by Kevin Dady 19 Comments

The 4DOF CXN-I anthropomorphic robot arm in the Mechatronics Lab at FICES-UNSL (Engineering faculty, San Luis National University, Argentina) was built from scratch, and it is still a work in progress to teach and learn about mechatronics , in order to build another, more robust and precise arm in the future. When one of the students working with the device thought “hey, these motors are quite noisy, aren’t they? let’s put them to work towards something more useful”.

Armed with some guitar tabs, a robot and some noisy servos, [Guille] got the robotic arm to sing a little song raised a couple of octaves, and included it in the introduction video. Because hey, whipping a metal arm around like that is pretty mechanically strenuous, and its not all that great for the servos either.

Join us after the break for a quick video, the singing starts about 58 seconds into the show.

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Hybrid Roller Coaster Concept

July 25, 2011 by Mike Nathan 36 Comments

prius_based_roller_coaster

Toyota recently ran an ad campaign touting “Ideas for Good” in which the actors speculated uses for Toyota Synergy Drive hybrid systems in non-automotive related applications. One idea that was floated involved using the car’s regenerative braking system at an amusement park, in an effort to reclaim and use some of a roller coaster’s kinetic energy.

Toyota sent a Prius to the team over at Deeplocal, who deconstructed it and found that the car could generate 60 amps of current when braking. That’s not an insignificant number, so they decided to create a cool demonstration showing how powerful the technology is. They built a coaster car from the Prius’ guts, and positioned it at the top of an elevated platform, which was connected to a 70 foot track. In the video embedded below they push the car from the platform and down the track, using the regenerative braking system to illuminate a large display of amusement park lights.

While the video is little more than a well-produced advertisement for Toyota, we can’t help but think that it’s pretty cool. It’s doubtful that we will suddenly see an inrush of hybrid-based roller coasters any time soon, but the concept is interesting nonetheless.

[via Notcot]

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Robot Vacuum Makes Cleaning Into A Game

July 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

This is not a Roomba hack, but a ground-up vacuum cleaner robot build. It’s the result of a class project from six students at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. There’s a slew of information available in their paper, but fair warning that it’s an 8.6 MB PDF file that we couldn’t get Google to translate. We were able to skim the PDF and cut and paste to translate the interesting bits we found.

Unlike a Roomba, which just uses a little sweeper to pick up debris, this robot actually includes a vacuum. The image above shows that the cylindrical body is wrapped in an LED matrix, with an ultrasonic sensor on the front for obstacle avoidance. The robot uses a CAN bus to control the various modules inside. We don’t think there’s any autonomous function, but that’s made up for by the remote control. It communicates via a ZigBee module, and includes a d-pad, touch screen, and accelerometer.We’re a little bit hazy on how the games are played, but there are at least two interactive version: one called ball, and another modeled after the classic game of missile command.

You can check out the source code for the project in their repository, or join us after the break for two demo videos.

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Clocks Built From Old Aircraft Surplus Parts

July 25, 2011 by Mike Nathan 26 Comments

A few years ago, Tube Clock forum member[Sine1040] bought a set of four brand new aircraft indicator units that were built some time in the early 70’s. He had no idea what the units were actually used for, but he did know that he could repurpose them into some pretty slick looking clocks.

He disassembled all four boxes and between them, scrounged enough parts to build three clocks. After gutting the clocks and rearranging the digits, he built a timekeeping circuit using an ATMega8 which is clocked by a DS32 oscillator.

While the time is displayed using the large projection-style digit displays, the seconds are ticked off in the left-most analog meter. Minutes are also represented in the clock’s right-most analog window, swinging the needle from top to bottom as each one passes.

[Sine1040] paid special attention to keeping the boxes looking as stock as possible, with the only external modification being a power plug installed in place of an old grounding screw. The clock is definitely a different take on keeping time, and we think it looks great.

Continue reading to see a quick demo video of the clock in action.

[Thanks Brian]

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Arduino Powered 2.4 GHz Spectrum Analyzer

July 25, 2011 by Jesse Congdon 8 Comments

[Fred] dropped a note in our tip line to let us know about arduino forum user [bilbo]’s latest project: A 3-in-one spectrum analyzer, oscilloscope, volt-meter combo. The build consists of an Arduino, radio board and Nokia 5110 LCD breakout board. The (thin) video after the jump shows the rig in action. Though soldered to a full sized perf-board we can see later, smaller, battery powered versions prove useful in rooting out wayward bluetooth signals, or just finding that lost microwave oven. Although [bilbo] uses the same radio board as similar builds his creation boasts several different display modes, as well as doubling as a volt meter and miniature-oscilloscope. There is no shortage of previous spectrum analyzer builds, but this one is the first one we have seen running on an Arduino.

Thanks for the tip [Fred]! If you feel like wedging some frequency scanning capabilities into your next project don’t forget to check out [bilbo]’s forum posts for source code!

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Hacking 14 Year Old Power PC Mac Back To Life

July 24, 2011 by Kevin Dady 63 Comments

For a while now I have been battling a dying 2.6Ghz dual core computer, but due to laziness and budget I just let it ride. At first it would occasionally crash in games, then it got to where it would crash during routine activities. After a year of this it would nail 105 degrees C in like 20 seconds and that is where the drama starts!

I threw my 2ghz “electronics” computer into my main machine’s case and used that for a few months. It’s motherboard had suffered from every electrolytic capacitor on it being puffy, but it has worked fine for nearly 5 years. I was surprised by the sound of what ended up being 2 caps blowing off of the geforce 7600 video card. In shock and excitement I removed the blown caps, slapped her back in and got another 4 months out of it before 2 more capacitors blew and took out a voltage regulator (and who knows what else with it).

Only armed with the craptop, I was stuck in a pickle! Then a co-worker came up to me and said “hey man you want this mac I only want its zip drive”. Well of course, going bonkers without my avrgcc, datasheets, and calculators, I took on the 14 year old Apple Power Macintosh 9600/300 as my bench machine, and I will now show you how I turned it from a novelty relic to a daily useful machine after the break.

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Pass The Bomb Electronic Drinking Game

July 24, 2011 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

[Ragnar] and his friends were getting tired of the usual Friday night drinking games. They went through dice games, card game, and TV show based games before [Ragnar] retired to his workbench to whip up an electronic solution that would randomly pick a player and assign a certain number of drinks. That’s a novelty at first but not really a game. After letting the project sit for some time he revisited it and came up with a more advanced solution. The box seen above is his second attempt; a game called pass the bomb.

The case is a black aluminum project box. The user interface includes a 20×4 character LCD and three buttons. Check the video after the break for the menu system as well as english translations. Once turned on you can set the sensitivity for the accelerometer and choose the game. For now, pass the bomb is the only option – a game that counts down to a digital explosion. Carefully pass the device to the next player without upsetting the accelerometer or it’ll go BOOM and you’ll have to drink.

We’d prefer to enjoy a nice frothy beverage rather than searching for reasons to throw back some shots, but whatever floats your boat.

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