Jamming Gripper Completes Robot Drug Dealer

January 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

Here’s an inexpensive way to build your own jamming gripper. [Steve Norris] combined a robot arm with a few inexpensive items to achieve similar results as the original. Much like the last DIY version he started with a balloon and some coffee grounds, but instead of using his own body as a vacuum pump he sourced a Reynolds Handi-Vac, an inexpensive food vacuum sealer. It connects to the balloon using some plastic tubing, and sucks all of the air out, locking the coffee grounds around an object for a firm grip. The video after the break even shows the gripper picking up two aspirin. At first we thought a servo motor was being used to seal off the tube once the air had been pumped out. Instead, it is covering a hole in the tubing, which breaks the vacuum when it’s time to let go of an object.

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Radios Without Power Sources

January 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 37 Comments

[Goodhart] is sharing his process for building a couple different AM radios. It’s surprising how few components he’s using; the first build is just a germanium diode, some wire, and a piezo earpiece. But it strikes us that both of the radios he gives build instructions for have no power source. We’re also amused by the process of selecting the station. His example uses 770 AM, and requires you to take the wire and place it up in a tree with the two ends about 1216 feet apart. We think there’s something a bit off with the math, but with that much conductor to start with there might be enough induced current for you to actually hear something come out the piezo. We don’t think we’ll be trying this anytime soon, but we’d like to hear comments from those of you who do (or already have).

Jeep-uter Adds Push Button Control To Your Vehicle

January 25, 2011 by Mike Szczys 24 Comments

[Ed Zarick] built a module to control his vehicle which he calls the Jeeputer. The name’s a mash-up of Jeep and Computer; the device itself is a combination of Arduino, character LCD, and a collection of shift registers and relays for interfacing. Watch the video after the break to see what this can do. We were surprised in the beginning when he says that all he has left to do is remove the steering wheel lock and he’ll be able to drive using the interface, but we think he means type in a code to unlock the ignition, not remote control for his car. He then goes on to demonstrate garage door control, power cycling for CB radio, GPS, 110V power inverter, vehicle light control, and much more. This must be the most feature packed car computer we’ve seen so far.

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AVR: The Facts About Flash Memory

January 24, 2011 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Here’s a nice little discussion about reading and writing AVR flash memory that [Windel] put together. He’s using an In System Programmer to read the flash memory from an ATmega328 using AVRdude, the programming software which we used in our AVR Programming Tutorials. He covers the particulars of the commands, how this might be useful, and finishes up with the gotcha’s involved in reading back code from the chip. We recently tried this out with that LED light bulb but were unsuccessful because the lock bits on the ATtiny13 chip had been set in order to protect the firmware from our prying eyes. Hopefully you’ll have more luck with these methods.

Building A Creepy Doll Army

January 24, 2011 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

Want your very own Chucky doll to scare the crap out of the roommates? [Gzip] shows you how to make this happen by adding servo-based animatronics to old dolls. In the video after the break you can see the doll throw up her arms and turn her head thanks to a motor in each shoulder and one in her melon. You won’t see it in the clip, but the legs are motorized too meaning that some creative coding might have this old gal awkwardly crawling across the room (with knife in hand). Then again, maybe this is just the inspiration you need to get off your bum and finish the Santa-Pede Challenge. Submissions are due a week from today!

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Keyless Entry Via SMS

January 24, 2011 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

[Billy’s] work got new keys which he didn’t want to carry around with him. Instead he built this system to unlock the door via text message. It is based around a Spinneret Web Server which drives a servo motor. He’s rigged up a pipe hanger to add some leverage to the lock’s knob. We’re surprised that the servo has enough power to do the job here but the video after the break shows there’s really no problem. On the communication side of things [Billy] set up Twilio to wait for text messages from an approved list of senders, then used an HTML form to issue the unlock commands to the webserver.

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Amarino Makes Android Controlled Robots A Snap

January 24, 2011 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

[Lucas Fragomeni] is controlling this robot using the accelerometer on his Android phone (translated). He could have gone through our Android tutorials and developed a custom application but he took the shorter route and used Amarino, an ‘Android meets Arduino’ toolkit, to do it for him. [Lucas] combined an Arduino, a BlueSMiRF Bluetooth modem, and two servo motors to build his robot. Amarino lets him connect to that Bluetooth modem and send sensor data over the connection. In this case it’s only the accelerometer that he chose to use, but he could have gone with the touchscreen, or any other sensor the handheld has to offer. Using this code package got him up and running quickly, only requiring that he writes his own code to turn the received signals into servo motor control routines. See it in action after the break.

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