For those who are seeking prosthetic limbs, or just require a little bit of robotic gripper help, the choices are very few and very costly. A newcomer to the area is hoping to change the costly part with their door opening arm. Costing only $2,000 to build, it is quite cheap compared to the other offerings. This arm can grip, twist, and swing its arm at the same time using a single motor thanks to a slip clutch.
[via Popular Science]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMhrvKEmyTY]
Pay close attention. At roughly 36 seconds we see Asimov’s laws going out the window. We’re pretty sure we saw this little autonomous battle bot take a shot at a human. We can’t tell for sure, but it looked like it enjoyed it too.
This bot is being built by [xdream] to compete in the Mech Warfare section of the Robo Games 2010. His target acquisition system and firing are completely autonomous. We think his motion is controlled by an operator though.
This little fellow may seem harmless enough, until you realize that those servos and guns could be replaced and this “little guy” becomes that “big fella”. That’s not anything the maker suggested, we’re just pointing out that a killer robot is only cute when it’s small.
[via BotJunkie]
[Alpay] sent in this project he did recently. He was hired to produce a kiosk that would stand out to the kids at the event. He chose to make a bike riding game utilizing open source hardware and software. There was some thought put into what interface to use to make it easiest for people to just pick up and use. The ultimate decision was a simple one. Use real handle bars from a bike. As for software, they used Blender, the open source 3d creation program. The actual control is done via a pair of Arduinos, an accelerometer, and a pair of XBee modules.
He notes that blender is fully capable of accepting the serial input from the controller, but they opted to have the controller mimic keystrokes to make life easier on the developer, as well as make the controller usable on more games. Maybe if enough people ask really nice, he’ll release the source code for the controller.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV9_25N21eM]
Before we begin, let us soothe those first dreaded thoughts. No, the commodore was not destroyed in the process. They can simply clip the 16 wires they added to interface the keyboard and be back to stock. Breathe a sigh of relief, and enjoy the twypper, a twitter wall made from a commodore SQ1000.
[Alex] needed to make an interesting project for his companies Openspace/hack day. A friend, suggested a twitter wall, and that’s when [Alex] got the idea for a typewriter. After a quick search, he found oomlaut’s typewriter. They didn’t let that deter them from making their own version though. They found a nice fully functional commodore SQ1000 and began hacking. Ultimately they simply decided to use an Arduino to short the key switches to simulate typing. There are all kinds of details on the necessary steps to get the typing to function absolutely correct on the project page. Over all it was well done and we’re happy to see that it can be undone just as easily.
[vimeo = http://vimeo.com/7367464%5D
Sometimes we miss that old Etch a Sketch we had when we were kids. The challenge of producing a decent image using those two knobs was always fun and frustrating at the same time. This project lets us recreate this interface on our computer. The Hack a Sketch is a combination of an Etch a Sketch style input and a processing sketch to recreate the experience. They’re using an Arduino to interpret the inputs and feed it to the computer via USB. We really like this thing. Simplify the electronics and we could see this as a neat toy for sale somewhere like Thinkgeek.
[via hacked gadgets]
Hacklab’s laser cutter got the customary musical treatment. You can see it play the theme from mario brothers here. It’s nothing new to us, but we still enjoy seeing it done.
Ever been curious how a pole transformer is made? Quench that curiosity with this educational video. [via HackedGadets]
Here’s a quasi humanoid robot that is designed to be your workout trainer. He’ll show you the exercises, give you motivational and encouraging pep talks and even play games with you. We think the idea sounds good, but in execution, he flails his arms and randomly says creepy insincere sounding things like “I’m having fun. I could play this game all day long. I’m having too much fun.” That’s just creepy.
[Mr. Nelson] got sick of walking all the way down the hall just to see if there was anyone in the bathroom. His solution was to build this massively overdone indicator light system. It uses a proximity sensor located in each bathroom to determine occupied status and has a fantastic industrial look.
If you’ve ever wanted to get into 3d photography you’ll be pleased to see this writeup on how to build a simple rig and compile the images for different viewing methods.
We were amazed by these beautifully crafted brass machines. The one in this video is solar powered and seems to run pretty smoothly. Not bad for something that was all hand crafted from sheets of brass.
Be careful with this one folks. This video shows how to melt a beer bottle in your microwave. We’re not sure why you would want to, but we sure enjoyed watching it happen. Maybe that’s reason enough.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szZv2YYQm0U]
As you can see above, there is no wiimote in that accessory steering wheel. There is, instead, a home-made accelerometer controller that connects to the pc via USB. Based around a PIC 18F2550 and a 2 axis accelerometer, this device is detected by windows as a standard controller. The schematic and source code are available on his website. He says it can also be used as a “motion mouse”. You can see a video of that after the break.
When we first saw the video, we thought it might be the same person as the accelerometer controlled maze project, due to the wiimote steering wheel casing.
