[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wV2UIOV1Fk]
This elegant looking lamp uses capacitance sensing to turn on and off. [Mikey77] takes us through the process of making the curved circuits and putting it all together. The circuit is built to be modular, so he could use it elsewhere. That’s a pretty good idea for someone who is always tossing projects together. As usual, schematics are available in the instructable. We love this design and would proudly use this at our office desk.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF6ZL-WerYo]
[Steve] shares another project with us, this time a robotic foot stool. A Parallax Propeller micro controller, some linear actuators, servos, and a slew of sensors are enclosed in this vinyl covered cube. It has 3 modes, remote control, follow me (seen in the video above), and come to the beacon. This, along with [Steve]’s other creations make us think that his ultimate goal is to have a house full of servant bots eager to carry out every task that would pull him from his chair. That seems like a noble goal to us. You can download source code and schematics from his site. Join us after the break to see more pictures and videos of Robostool.
The Hack a Day store has a couple new items. It was brought to our attention that we once held a T-shirt contest, and people really wanted access to that design. Well, now you can get it. The design on the shirt will be roughly 13″x10″ and located at the hem under the right arm. Please note that this is not identical to the previously made ones that you may have noticed at CES. The design is also available as a large sticker.
We would love to see our stuff in the wild, so please upload your pictures to Flickr and put them in the Hack a Day pool.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExoJDxBGEBU]
[Kenneth Finnegan] is back with another video showing some cool stuff he’s doing to connect his microcontrollers to the internet. Usually, we see this done with a prebuilt module like an iobridge. [Kenneth] is using a Microchip ENC28j60 module for the communication and he’s managed to stuff it all onto a tiny Electroboards piece. [Kenneth] is starting to become a regular around here.
[via HackedGadgets]
[Dustyn Roberts] takes us through the process of designing gears for a specific application. Using Inkscape and Ponoko.com [Dustyn] takes us from equation to physical gear. While there is a plugin for Inkscape that allows you to basically drag and drop gears, this writeup will take you through the math to get exactly what you need. Those laser cut wooden gears are pretty cool looking too.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZf3lo-16wQ]
Researchers at MIT have come up with this slick demo of, what they call, programmable matter. This flat sheet covered in tiny foil actuators can be programmed to fold into specific shapes. Shown in the video above is a boat and an airplane. Using the concepts set down by origami through the years, they can divide the sheet into triangles in specific arrangements to make certain shapes possible. This one is fairly simple, but judging by some of the insane origami we’ve seen around, this could get pretty cool.
[via slashdot]
Sonoluminescence is one of those strange phenomenon that many would never encounter outside an academic environment. For those who have never heard of it, Sonoluminescence is when tiny bubbles suspended in a liquid emit light while being vibrated at certain frequencies. We were pleased to see that some plans are out there on how to build your own device to produce it.
[via io9]
