OK, You Might Not Be Paranoid – Perhaps That Priority Mail Box IS Spying On You

rc-box-bot

[Thomas Renck] recently picked up a 1000mW wireless video transmitter that he ultimately planned to mount in an RC plane. Before he strapped it on a plane to potentially kiss it goodbye for good, he wanted to play with it a while to see what it was capable of.

After a friend helped him determine the camera’s maximum range (about 1900 feet on open ground), he thought it would be fun to strap it on his nitro R/C truck. That didn’t work out so well due to some vibration issues, so he constructed a makeshift R/C car from the shipping box the camera arrived in, along with some other odds and ends.

As you can see in the video below, the propeller-driven “Boxmobile” zips along quite nicely. The video feed from the camera is pretty impressive too, allowing him to easily guide the car while it’s well out of sight.

At nearly $350, the self-proclaimed “ghetto-bot” is certainly not cheap, though we hear body repairs are a piece of cake!

Continue reading “OK, You Might Not Be Paranoid – Perhaps That Priority Mail Box IS Spying On You”

Followup: Reproducing Impossible Circuits

Last month we caught wind of an impressive display of troll physics. [Fredzislaw100] out of Poland posted a video of a circuit that should not exist. As expected, the comments in our coverage blew up with 200 posts. About half the commenters called a little Adobe After Effects trickery, while the other half offered up an electrical explanation. We’re happy to report that [Alan] successfully reproduced the impossible circuit and earned an incredible amount of electronic wizard points in the process.

[Alan]’s solution uses low-frequency AC with the first two LEDs. The first LED points forwards and the second diode is reversed. Easy enough. For the third LED, [Alan] used high frequency AC with an inductor wired in parallel with the LED and the third switch. For those of you keeping track, that means [Fredzislaw100] put an SMD diode in two LEDs and two switches and an inductor in one LED and one switch.

[Alan]’s build is just a proof of concept – It’s still on a breadboard and doesn’t have the incredible level of polish that [Fredzislaw100]’s has. That being said, [Alan]’s build is most likely very similar given the small glitch at 2:05 in the original video.

Check out [Alan]’s build video below, and for an added treat check out his 2011 Advent Calendar of Circuits.

Continue reading “Followup: Reproducing Impossible Circuits”