Stompy, The 18-foot, 2-ton Hexapod Is Ready For Production

August 15, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

Stampy

Over at the Artisan’s Asylum hackerspace in Somerville, MA, something terrifically awesome is happening. They’re building an 18-foot diameter, 2-ton ridable hexapod that can walk over a car. It’s called Project Hexapod and they need your help.

Over the last year or so, the team behind Project Hexapod has developed an amazingly inexpensive hydraulic control system for each of the six legs and created a 1:1 model of the leg fastened to a wheeled cart to get the kinematics down pat. Now, with thousands of pounds of steel already watercut for the legs, they’re turning to the community for a little help with the welding.

The Project Hexapod team estimates they have about 1100 hours of welding time in front of them. They’re looking for a few people around the Boston area that are familiar with steel fabrication and are willing to work on a two-ton robot that can walk over a Volkswagen Beetle.

The guys have put up a little application form if you meet those basic requirements. You can also check out their Facebook page for any announcements and a whole lot of pictures.

Your Hackerspace Needs A Biology Lab; Here’s The Inspiration

August 15, 2013 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

biology-hackerspace

When you think of Hackerspaces what pops to mind? For us it’s electronics first, then machining related stuff (3D printing, CNC milling), followed by welding, woodworking, auto mechanical, we could go on and on. But biology hacking doesn’t really make that list. The New York based Genspace is a strong case on why we should add a biology lab as a viable hackerspace option.

What are Hackerspaces other than a collection of tools and skilled members that helps to bring the mad scientists of the world out of their basements and into the light? Pretty much every Hackerspace teaches classes that are open to the public. This is basically a requirement of being a non-profit, but is also driven by the virtue of making knowledge open and available. Offering biology themed classes is an incredible tie-in for helping to see our young learners through to a career in the sciences.

Vice-President and Co-Founder [Daniel Grushkin] was inspired by college students who hack organisms for a one semester long project. He wanted to try his hand at it, but needed help with the resources. He gathered a few others who were interested and, with encouragement from NYC Resistor, they got Genspace up and running in Brooklyn. The organization holds safety as a top priority. Each new member learns about the Biosafety Level 1 guidelines used by the space. For less involved experiments they even use tools of their own making, like a glovebox similar to this one.

Bow Tie Kindly Suggests That You Back Off

August 15, 2013 by Marsh 18 Comments

personalSpaceBowtie

Everyone’s had their “personal space bubble” burst. You just wanted a friendly conversation, but now some overzealous blockhead is standing on your shoes and breathing in your face, making you guess what he had for lunch. Fortunately, [Grissini] has created this sylish bowtie solution. Stand too close (within 19 inches) and the LEDs come to life, flashing a warning that indicates a personal space violation. [Grissini’s] tie is 3D printed to accommodate most of the electronics, which snugly snap into place. The rest of the wiring appears to run through the neck strap and connect up to a battery pack hidden elsewhere. You can check out a brief description and demonstration in a video after the break.

We’ve seen this hack for the ladies: [Jeri’s] dress performs a similar function. We’re unsure, however, if these LEDs can deter your average socially-awkward space invader. What we’d really like to see is someone take these hacks to their logical conclusion and make a wearable out of the non-lethal dazzler clone…hopefully the victim would back up a step or two before they spewed.

If you’re lonely and want to encourage people to come closer, maybe this LED bow tie will help. Or, who knows, maybe it’s yet another way to scare people off.

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Controlling A Railroad With An Mbed

August 14, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

The word hacking got its start with model railway clubs, and the state of the art belies the current advancements in computer control and very, very small microcontrollers. [Jim] put together a great tutorial for driving model locomotives with a microcontroller, in this case an ARM-powered mbed.

Low-end model locomotives are controlled with DC, so an H-bridge and a PWM out on the mbed makes sense to drive these trains. [Jim] wired up a Pololu H-bridge driver, connected it to his mbed, and everything ran great.

Rail switches are another matter entirely. These allow trains to move from one track to another, but having them go to the left or right requires powering a fairly high current solenoid with 15 to 24 volts. For this, [Jim] used a MOSFET power control board to switch the rails and came up with a pretty neat demo that shows a small locomotive going back and forth over a single rail switch.

There is another class of model locomotive – ones with Digital Command Control. This setup is just a small decoder chip that fits inside an engine and tells the locomotive to turn on a lamp or run a motor digitally, allowing the conductor to control multiple trains on the same track.

[Jim] goes through the basics of DCC using the mbed, allowing two trains to switch positions in a rail yard using computer control. It’s really cool stuff that leaves us wanting a little more room in the basement to start building a huge computer controlled model railway.

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The RPC: A Stand-alone MIDI Workstation

August 14, 2013 by Marsh 11 Comments

raspiMidiRPC

Not just another pretty enclosure, this shiny little red box is [Lauri’s] stand-alone MIDI workstation. The build uses an Arduino Mega 2560 to handle the MIDI inputs and outputs. It communicates via serial with a Raspberry Pi that acts as a sequencer and oversees all user interactions. The Pi’s SD card offers convenient storage for your work, though we wish it was easily ejectable from the front of the box and not trapped under the hood. [Lauri’s] RPC also squeezes in the necessary USB hub for the RasPi and an HDMI-to-VGA converter. As an all-in-one solution, this is a sleek little box that–once paired with some software for arpeggiators, chord harmonies, and scales–will be a handy MIDI sequencer with robust control ready to be conveniently mounted on your rack.

Now all you’ll need is something to plug in. Why not check out the custom MIDI recorder we featured last week, or the organ-to-MIDI keyboard conversion for inspiration.

[Thanks Teemu]

3D Printering: Where Can I Get The Cheapest Filament?

August 14, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 105 Comments

We’ve complained about the price of 3D printing filament, and cheered at the machine that makes filament out of plastic pellets. Still, the price of filament for our 3D printers is climbing ever higher, leaving us to wonder, where can I get the cheapest filament?

Now, I’m going to start this of by saying this is a work in progress. Canvassing suppliers on every continent for 1.75 and 3mm ABS and PLA for every possible color while accounting for different amounts of filament and shipping is a whole lot of work. Therefore, we’re going to do this in parts, first starting with how much it will cost me to get a kilogram of PLA shipped to my door. This should be a valid test for just about everyone in the USA.

The test criteria is simple: find a supplier of PLA on the Reprap wiki printing material suppliers page and figure out how much it would cost me to get 1 kg of white or natural PLA shipped to my front door. I’ve organized this in a spreadsheet (below) that contains the supplier, size (1.75 mm or 3mm), weight (usually 1 kg although some suppliers are about three ounces short), color, and price with shipping included.

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Reactive Target Range For Nerf, Airsoft, Etc.

August 14, 2013 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

reactive-target-range

Taking the time to build a reactive target range really adds to the fun of toy weapons. It lets you move beyond just point and shoot to actual games of skill.

The project is anchored by an Arduino board. It connects to a piezo element on the back of each of these sheet metal targets. Detecting when a projectile hits the target works pretty much the exact same way the ever popular Knock-block works. To provide interactive enjoyment each target has an LED which, when lit, indicates that the target is active. From here it’s just a matter of coding to add different challenges. So far [Viktor Criterion] has implemented quick draw, timed, and rapid fire modes. The demo after the break shows off everything, including the slick modular design he came up with to make the system portable.

We’d love to see these targets mounted on motorized tracks. Each round would have the targets moving closer to you at a faster pace to keep you on your toes.

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