Month: October 2013

Boston Dynamics Takes WildCat Outside

October 5, 2013 by 62 Comments

wildcat

[Boston Dynamics] has released a video of their latest robot, which means it’s time to go hide in bed before this thing comes to get us. The new video features WildCat, which is apparently the evolution of the Cheetah robot we saw last year. Cheetah was an indoor cat, tethered by power, data, and hydraulic lines while running on a treadmill. WildCat has been released to terrorize people explore the great outdoors

Reminiscent of the early videos of BigDog, WildCat is currently powered by an internal combustion engine. The engine drives a hydraulic system, which then actuates the robot’s legs and front/rear pods. The beauty of a system like this is that switching to an electric motor is simple – just replace the IC engine. While we’re sure this would make a much more stealthy cat, weight and run time could be issues. Moving the power system onboard has also slowed down WildCat a bit. Cheetah was able to reach 28 MPH while WildCat can only muster 16 MPH.

WildCat is part of DARPA’s maximum mobility and manipulation program. The research appears to be focused on improving the gaits the robot uses to move at various speeds. The video highlights both bounding and galloping.  Slo-mo sections show all four of WildCat’s legs leaving the ground, which is the suspension phase of a classic gallop gait. Control isn’t perfect yet, as WildCat tumbles at one point in the video.  It gets right back up though – ready for more.

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(Please Don’t) Build A Jet Engine From A Toilet Paper Holder

October 5, 2013 by 49 Comments

Turbo charger Jet Engines have long been considered one of the holy grails of backyard engineering. This is with good reason – they’re hard to build, and even harder to run. Many a turbo has met an untimely end from a hot start or oil starvation. [Colin Furze] however, makes it look easy. [Colin] is a proponent of crazy hacks – we’ve featured him before for his land speed record holding baby carriage, and his pulse jet powered tea kettle.

In his latest video set, [Colin] takes a toilet brush holder, a toilet paper roll holder, a few plumbing fittings, and of course a small turbocharger from the scrap yard. Somehow he converts all of this into a working jet engine. The notable thing here is that there is no welding. Some of the joints are held together with nothing more than duct tape.

Calling this a working jet engine is not really an overstatement. As every backyard jet jockey knows, the first goal of DIY jets (aside from not hurting yourself) is self-sustaining. Turbines are spun up with air hoses, vacuums, or leaf blowers. The trick is to turn the fuel on, remove the air source, and have the turbine continue spinning under its own power. Once this happens, your engine is performing the same “Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow” combustion process an F-18 or a 747 uses.

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Homebuilt Ultra Wideband Impulse Radar

October 5, 2013 by 7 Comments

wideband impulse radar

[Dr. Gregory Charvat] tipped us off to a video demonstration of his ultra-wideband impulse radar he built using some of his existing radar gear and a few bits purchased off eBay. The homebuilt radar system worked well in his backyard but not much is covered about the build. [Greg] is promising a new book on practical approaches to developing and using small radar devices titled “Small and Short Range Radar Systems“. He told us that the draft is finished and covers radar systems like doppler, linear FM, synthetic aperture, phase array and also UWB impulse radar. It sounds like an interesting book, which can be pre-ordered on Amazon, and will include schematics and bill of materials so you too could build a UWB impulse radar or other small radar systems. Some of the advantages of a UWB impulse radar system are that it produces sub-nanosecond pulses good for tracking moving objects as well as imaging stationery objects. Such radar technology can even image buried objects like metallic and nonmetallic landmines.

Join us after the break for a little background on [Dr. Gregory Charvat] and to watch his demonstration video.

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Home Made CNC Reuses Printer Parts

October 4, 2013 by 13 Comments

Do it yourself CNC machines can be never ending projects. Once you get one machine done, you want another. [Mario] found this out when he started work on his second CNC machine, TheMaker2. As its name implies, TheMaker2 is the successor to TheMaker1. It seems that [Mario] was trying to walk the fine line of precision at minimal cost. He wanted a rigid frame, so he chose to go with a moving table, rather than the moving gantry of TheMaker1. The frame is made up of galvanized steel stock, which makes it much stronger than many DIY CNCs out there. [Mario] had a friend weld the steel up for him, we hope he took the proper precautions when welding galvanized material.

Standard threaded rod was used as lead screws, with some very well made anti backlash nuts. Acme thread would have been a better choice here, however [Mario] doesn’t say if acme stock was available to him. Most of the mounts and small parts are made from easily worked PVC sheet stock. Precision rails were scavenged from old Ricoh copiers. Epson printers provided the tubing which became motor couplers.

One negative in this build are the stepper motors. [Mario] used NMB PM55L-048 motors he had pulled from HP printers. These motors have both a wide step angle (7.5 degrees) and a rather anemic torque. Thankfully [Mario] mentions upgrading NEMA 23 motors in the comments of TheMaker2’s instructables page.

Have A Router? Build A Skeeball Machine

October 4, 2013 by 17 Comments

skee

There are a lot of hackerspaces and maker labs all around the world that have amazing capabilities for manufacturing. Mills, lathes, drill presses, laser cutters, and CNC routers are no stranger to the any maker’s arsenal of tools. Do you know what isn’t? A DIY Skeeball machine.

This, ‘should be a project for every hackerspace’ project is the brainchild of [fungus amungus] over on Instructables. Despite what you might think about the complexities of building a Skeeball machine, [fungus’] build is actually rather simple, and also easily transportable.

The main material used in the build is seven sheets of 3/4″ plywood. These sheets were cut out on a ShopBot CNC router, and held together with screws in a tab-and-slot construction scheme. The playfield is covered with cork for what we assume is a proper Skeeball experience, and all the electronics controlled by an Arduino and Laptop.

The electronics for this build are very simple – just a few IR distance sensors mounted under the holes. The laptop is running a Processing sketch to display the score on a TV above the cage, allowing for some improvements in the gameplay and scoring system of the original Skeeball machines.

It’s a really fantastic project, and something that we’re sure will be the center of attention wherever [fungus] brings it.

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Why Kickstarter Projects Are Always Delayed

October 4, 2013 by 45 Comments

Most Hackaday readers may remember the Spark Core, an Arduino-compatible, Wi-Fi enabled, cloud-powered development platform. Its Kickstarter campaign funding goal was 10k, but it ended up getting more than half a million. The founder and CEO of Spark [Zach Supalla] recently published an article explaining why Kickstarter projects are always delayed as the Spark core project currently is 7 weeks behind schedule.

[Zach] starts off by mentioning that most founders are optimistic, making them want to embark in this kind of adventure in the first place. In most presentation videos the prototypes shown are usually rougher than they appear, allowing the presenters to skip over the unfinished bits. Moreover, the transition from prototype to “manufacturable product ” also adds unexpected delays. For example, if a product has a plastic casing it is very easy to 3D print the prototype but much harder to setup a plastic injection system. Last, sourcing the components may get tricky as in the case of Spark core the quantities were quite important. Oddly enough, it was very hard for them to get the sparkcore CC3000 Wifi module.

Electrooculograph (EOG) From A Video Stream

October 4, 2013 by 9 Comments

[Michael] from Lucidcode is at it again, this time with an Android app called Halovision.

In case you don’t remember, this is the guy who has been working on the Lucid Scribe Project, with the end goal of communicating from inside your dreams! Here’s the basic gist of it. If we can use a sensor to detect REM (rapid eye movement) or body movement during sleep, we can tell if we’re dreaming — then it’s just a matter of using an audible cue to inform the sleeper of the dream, so they can take control and become lucid.

The first way they did this was by using commercial EEG headsets to detect REM. We covered a hack on modifying one so it would be more comfortable to wear at night, but what is really exciting is [Michael’s] new app, Halovision — No EEG required

It’s an Android app that uses the camera to detect movement during sleep, and it is only the first plugin planned for Lucid Scribe. The algorithm is still in its experimental stages, but it is at least somewhat functional at this time. They note it’ll only work for day-time naps or with a bright night light, but this could be easily solved with an IR webcam and a few IR LEDs.

It will be interesting to see where this all goes, has anyone else been following or participating in Lucid Scribe?