[Pythagoras], A Delta Robot For Drawing

January 13, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 11 Comments

[Pythagoras] is a delta robot built originally using RC servos. Humbly, [Aaron] “concedes” that the first version of his delta robot using hobby servos was easy to build. As anyone who has built any kind of robot knows though, there is definitely a lot of work involved in even the simplest robot. Coordinating three axes and programming it to draw a picture is a really great accomplishment.

The second version, however is currently in development and uses stepper motors instead of servos. These upgraded motors should make the robot faster, more controllable, and more accurate. This version is at least somewhat working as evidenced by the time-lapse video after the break.

Although the title page listed above is a little sparse on build details, if you dig deeper into the page, there are actually 15 articles about the ‘bot, so be sure to poke around. Continue reading “[Pythagoras], A Delta Robot For Drawing” →

Building A LED Strip The Minimal Way

January 13, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 6 Comments

For his first big build with an MSP430, [Javon] decided to an RGB LED fader. Having worked with Arduinos in the past, he figured that his MSP430 would have a few PWM channels. After being proved wrong by the data sheet, [Javon] needed to figure out a way to switch a bunch of RGB LEDs with only one PWM channel on his microcontroller.

Because there was only one PWM pin on [Javon]’s micro, he needed a way to multiplex his output. He ended up using a 74HC4052 mux/demux chip to drive 20 LEDs. The LEDs were mounted onto hard board and the main part of the circuit built on a bit of perfboard. While there’s no total cost for his build, we’re guessing [Javon] didn’t spend much on his project; certainty much less than this explosion of LEDs.

[Javon] put all the build pictures up as a Google+ album and a few video demos up. Check those out after the break (009 Sound System warning, you might want to hit mute).

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Hackaday Links: January 13

January 13, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 18 Comments

An 8×8 LED Matrix Game Grows Up:

[Pixel Land] is an iPhone game similar to [Super Mario Brothers] using a virtual array of 8×8 pixels. This wouldn’t normally be interesting, but we’ve actually featured “this” game as an 8×8 LED matrix game.

How to Drill Golf or Ping-Pong Balls:

Drilling golf or ping-pong balls is not easy. This simple drill press fixture makes that job easier and repeatable. So the next time you want to make lots of diffusers for your LED board, this might be a good device to consider!

The PICkit 2:

If you’ve ever wanted to get into PIC programming, possibly the PICkit 2 would be for you. [Ray] has written a review of his first experiences with setting it up and programming.

Mr Bitey is hungry for resistors!

Is light industrial machinery a hack? It’s a hard thing to define, but if so [Mr. Bitey] would meet the qualifications. It also meets the qualifications of having a great video, and name, so be sure to check it out!

A [Snap Circuits] Programmable Robot:

The robot pictured above on [Instructables] was built using [Snap Circuits], with parts that literally snap together. A neat concept, this construction set seems to fall somewhere between traditional Legos and push-in breadboards.

An E-paper Information Panel

January 13, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 19 Comments

With all the Kindles and Nooks we’re bound to find at yard sales and thrift shops in the coming years, this might be useful. [Chris] made a door-mounted e-paper display to keep himself up to date on recent events.

The hardware comes from an e-paper development kit [Chris] and his friend [Deian] were given a few years back. The dev kit sat in a dusty drawer until [Chris] decided to do something with it. With his door looking like a suitable palette, [Chris] decided to make an information panel that displays the date, his calendar, the weather, and a few RSS feeds.

There was already a Gumstix single board computer attached to the e-paper display, so [Chris] wrote a few scripts on his server and upload information to the paper display. The server renders the display as a PNG image at 800×600 resolution, converts it to PGM and compresses it for the Gumstix. There is a script running on the Gumstix to download the image from the server every five minutes and put it up on the display.

With the awesome readability and low power consumption of e-paper, we’re surprised we haven’t seen a project like this before. Guess we’ll have to wait until Kindles start showing up at flea markets.

Automating The Shutdown Of APC UPS Devices

January 12, 2012 by Mike Nathan 56 Comments

ups-shutdown-device

[Ishan Karve] works in some bizarro world where the building management demands that all servers and Uninterruptible Power Supplies be shut down at the end of each evening. While inconceivable to most systems admins, he has no recourse but to comply. This means that his employees need to turn things off before they leave for the day, and since they often work up to 15 hours a day, waiting for Windows server to shut down seems like an eternity.

Being the good manager he is, [Ishan] decided to build a device that handles the clean shutdown of their servers and UPS for them. An Arduino board serves as the brains of the device, communicating with and issuing shutdown commands to the UPS over a serial port. The Arduino is also connected to the office network, enabling it to send ARP requests to the servers in order to determine when they have completely shut down for the day. In order to protect against an accidental shutdown due to network connectivity issues, [Ishan] added an RTC module to the mix so that the Arduino does not issue shutdown commands until at least 8 pm.

Instead of waiting around for Windows to do its thing, [Ishan’s] employees can take off once they start the server shutdown process, knowing that they are totally compliant with their landlord’s crazy requests.

Boxie Is An Adorable Toddler Videographer

January 12, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 28 Comments

Meet Boxie. He’s a robot videographer with levels of interaction we haven’t seen outside an episode of Dora the Explorer. The project was conceived by [Alex] as his MIT thesis project to see if robots can use humans to make themselves more useful. All we know is Boxie is freaking adorable, as evidenced by this video.

The idea behind Boxie was inspired by Afghan Explorer to capture video in an attempt to tell a story. In the videos (after the break), Boxie wanders around the halls of MIT searching for people to help him (“can you carry me up the stairs?”) and tell stories (“what do you do here?”). It’s an experiment in autonomous documentary directorial skill that was edited down into a video that made sense.

[Alex] designed Boxie to be the cutest thing we’ve ever seen so he could elicit a response from the subjects of the documentary. We’re going to say the voice helped, but [Alex] also found the cardboard robot factor also played into the success. Boxie was originally planned to have a plastic skin, but [Alex]’s friends thought it looked really creepy. They suggested that [Alex] go back to the prototype cardboard body. All we know is there’s a robot cuter than a Keepon, finally.

Continue reading “Boxie Is An Adorable Toddler Videographer” →

Cheap WiFi Bridge For Pen Testing Or Otherwise

January 12, 2012 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Twenty three dollars. That’s all this tiny pen-testing device will set you back. And there really isn’t much to it. [Kevin Bong] came up with the idea to use a Wifi router as a bridge to test a wired network’s security remotely. He grabbed a TP-Link TL-WR703N router, a low-profile thumb drive, and a cellphone backup battery; all cheaply available products.

No hardware hacking is necessary to connect the three components. The only other preparation needed is to reflash the router firmware with OpenWRT and load it up with common pen-testing software packages like Netcrack and Airhack.

[Kevin] calls this a drop box, because you find an Ethernet jack, plug it in, and drop it there. You can then connect to the router via Wifi and begin testing the wired network security measures. We’re sure images of espionage pop into your head from that description, but we’re certain this can be useful in other ways as well. If you ever find yourself with an Ethernet connection but no access to Wifi this is a quick way to setup an AP.