Snoozy The Sloth

May 18, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

[vimeo = 4703152]

Snoozy the Sloth clings to you and sleeps. While this may sound easily done, the maker wanted the sloth to actually simulate breathing with exhaled breath to add to the realism. To do this, they had to build a “respiratory system” out of a rubber glove, a solenoid, and a couple pumps. This kind of toy can be very beneficial to special needs children. The lifelike and calm behavior helps the child connect to the toy. The pumps and solenoid are said to not be too distracting, but we are curious just how loud they are. This seems well executed, and much more sloth like than slothra, another sloth toy from last week. Were these guys in an Arduino powered sloth making class together?

Punchy Punchout, Improved

May 18, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 23 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuHxfYfs9XY]

[Sam] submitted this fun project, a Punchout interface that you actually punch. If you recall, we’ve done a Punchout interface that you punch, but this one takes it a step further. Instead of being a blob on a desk that you’re mashing around, the new one is a Slam Man boxing dummy. They’ve mounted the buttons on different areas of the dummy so you can punch him to completely control the game. As you can see in the video, it seems to work ok, though we doubt the buttons will hold up very long under those conditions. They do say that this is just to hold them over till the Wii version, so maybe those buttons will last just long enough.

Nerf Sentry Gun With Image Recognition

May 17, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 45 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGRBjCrnjhs]

Here’s another hacked Nerf Vulcan rifle. This time it is an automated sentry gun. You must present it your badge, if no badge is found, you are assaulted with a fiery storm of small nerf darts. All encounters are logged and a photos are kept. This was a final project at Cornell, and for once it wasn’t ECE. This was for CS1114. They did a pretty good job with the tracking, now they need to add some more interesting voice options to it.

8×8 RGB Small Form Factor Toy

May 17, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q38NxsKetgo]

Here’s a cool tip, sent in by [Martin]. He has put together this very compact package for an animated 8×8 RGB LED array with a tiny footprint. It is controlled by an ATMega16 powered by 2 small lithium cells. While it may not be quite as small as the space invader button, it seems to have a bit more animation horsepower.

Magic Wands For Disney

May 17, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

[NRP] sent us a few of his projects. The most notable of the bunch was a school project funded by Disney. They were to make some kind of interactive entertainment for people waiting in line for rides. They decided on a wand style interface. Each wand has an accelerometer, an IR LED for tracking, an XBee unit, and a few buttons for interaction. They wrote some custom games and a multi person white board to test it all out. You can see those in action, along with a space themed pong game in the video after the break. Even though this was funded by Disney, you can still find all the source code and schematics, available for free.

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Slothra, Arduino Powered Plushy Sloth

May 15, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 32 Comments

slothra

[Daniel] sent in this project. He tells us it’s an Arduino powered kid’s toy that “furiously swings his arms” when you squeeze his chest. As you can see in the video on the site, furious is up for interpretation. It is a sloth though, maybe that’s sloth furious. While it is cute and we do applaud the effort, anyone with children will agree that this is a step down in destruction for a 3 year old. You’re going to have to spice it up a bit, or give it a timer and make it free standing, make it roar or something to make it more appealing. What recommendations do you guys have to improve this toy?

Unique Li-Ion Battery Tester

May 15, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

battery

[moris_zen] found himself with a hand full of Li-Ion batteries and no good way to see what their capacities were. He built a this unique tester really quick to get the job done. He’s using off the shelf components and a cheap pocket watch which he bought in Taiwan for $1. You hook the circuit up to your battery, click the button and the watch starts working. When it stops, you multiply that number by .38 to get your amp/hour results. Sure, he could have just used a counter, but this is an interesting approach. All he needs to do now is make a nice container to hide all of the circuitry. How could he change the circuit to make the end multiplication unnecessary?