Robotic Baby Crib

February 9, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 44 Comments

suima_crib

This surprisingly pleasant looking crib is actually a robot, designed to keep babies quiet and happy all night long. Once inside and locked up, the baby is under the robot’s care. When the robot senses crying, it rocks gently back and forth. This should allow parents the time to catch some sleep. As pointed out in the article, the $5000 price tag is a bit steep. Especially considering the fact that you can get a much less technologically advanced equivalent for relatively cheap. How many of you hackers have babies? What hacks did you do to get your babies to sleep?

Radio Controlled Beetle

February 9, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 57 Comments

Scientists at the university of California have managed to implant a chip in a giant flower beetle that makes it respond to commands from the computer. They can tell it to fly, stop, turn left and turn right. The controls are done through its optic nerves and wing muscles. Though the article states that flight signals are sent to the optic lobes and steering is done through stimulation of the wing muscles, the video shows steering being accomplished through optic lobe stimulation.

Though we’re sure there’s some grand scientific goal behind this, we can’t help but think (hope) that we’ll be seeing giant robot controlled beetle battles with lasers and rockets.

Build A Wiremap

February 9, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 13 Comments

wiremap

For those of you who don’t recall, the Wiremap is a 3d volumetric display built from hundreds of tiny strands. An image is projected onto the strands to achieve 3d effects. [phedhex] has posted an in depth instructable on how to build a wiremap. He covers the construction with lots of good tips as well as giving links to the software for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Check out the video after te break to see some fairly impressive 3d patterns.

Continue reading “Build A Wiremap” →

Gray Hoverman UHF Antenna

February 8, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

ant

With the impending digital switchover, many of you will find yourselves not only in need of a new converter box, but an antenna as well. Just like everything else, there are plans out there on how to build your own. [William] has gone through the effort of documenting his design and build of a very nicely made version. He used PVC for the frame and a wire mesh or chicken wire reflector. Good job [William]

Plexi Cliffhanger For Trackmate

February 8, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 1 Comment

cliffhanger1

If you’ve ever wanted to play with tangible tracking systems quick and cheap, you might be interested in this super quick tracking surface for trackmate. Trackmate is open source software for physical object tracking. Making a surface for it isn’t that hard in the first place but this one is probably the easiest. All you really need is some Plexiglas, some c-clamps and a web cam. The whole thing packs into a backpack or over the shoulder bag. This would be perfect for live performances.

Desulfator In An Altoids Tin

February 7, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 26 Comments

desulfator

If you’ve ever let a car sit for a period of time and returned to find that the battery was mysteriously “dead”, you were probably experiencing a sulfate crystal build up. Often, people just buy a new battery and plop it in, but that isn’t absolutely necessary. [Kmpres] takes us through the process of building a desulfator. A desulfator works by putting high voltage pulses into the battery forcing the sulfate crystals to dissolve back into the electrolyte. From what [Kmpres] says, you can find “bad” batteries in all kinds of places, use the desulfator on them and have perfectly fine batteries when you’re done. You may recall doing something similar with a disposable camera.

IR Controlled Light Dimmer

February 7, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 14 Comments

dimmer

This is a pretty useful device. It is an IR controlled light dimmer. It goes in line with the main power and controls how much gets through to your light. You can adjust the brightness with a TV remote control. Finally, we can retire our clapper! These are commercially available, but making your own is just so much more fun. You may have to dig a little on their site for the schematics and programming. There are tons of other projects there as well so have fun. You can see a video of it in action after the break.

Continue reading “IR Controlled Light Dimmer” →