Crank-arm Style Hexapod

February 28, 2011 by Kevin Dady 1 Comment

The latest robot out of Nolebotic is Al.I.S.E, or Aluminum, Infrared Scanning Entity. Don’t let the name fool you, its a pretty simple take on the classic hexapod walking platform using a crank arm and leavers made into the legs.

The body of the robot is made out of aluminum which is pretty easy to work with at home, lightweight, and sturdy. Bolted to the body are a pair of beefy gear head motors, a 9.6 volt rechargeable battery pack, along with a basic stamp 2 and its own 9 volt supply, and a Solarbotics 1198 CMD driver board.

Obstacles are handled right now with rudimentary infrared detectors and emitters, but it seems to work pretty good avoiding some library books in the demo. Combine that with clean mechanics and a pretty good stride and this thing can get up and move pretty quick.

Propane Tank-ard

February 25, 2011 by Kevin Dady 22 Comments

[hpstoutharrow’s] new instructable is a neat idea on how to re-use those single use small propane bottles by turning it into an insulated canteen. Once the bottles are emptied through normal use, the safety valve is popped loose and allowed to vent. There are also comments on the article that suggest that the bottle be submerged to ensure all gas is gone, and we think that is wise too.

Once safe to work on, the bottom is cut open and the stem is cut off leaving a empty shell, a soda bottle is shrunk down by boiling water inside of it for a little bit, then is fit inside the propane bottle. The top of the soda bottle is held in place by an O-ring, the safety pressure hole plugged up and the whole thing is filled with spray “expand-o-foam” locking everything in place and adding insulation.

Though using a thermoplastic bottle as its liner does not invite hot beverages to the party, it seems to do the job just fine for cold drinks, and it makes for a interesting conversation piece out on the campground.

Join us after the break for a quick how-to video.

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Digital Wavetable Oscillator

February 25, 2011 by Kevin Dady 9 Comments

The tabulaRasa is a digital wave table oscillator, and features control of frequency, wave table selection, and interpolation. The device is split up into 2 parts. One is a pcb with a healthy amount of resistors, 3 potentiometers, ST TL074 JFET op amp, atmega328 and a SD socket.

The second part is software for your computer that allows you to edit or create your own waveforms. There are 3 different modes of control. Breakpoints, which allows you to set the waveform points and allows up to sixteen. Harmonic allows amplitude control over 16 harmonically-related sine waves, finally, the third mode lets you load in short sound clips.

Once you’re happy, save to a SD card and pop it into the board, and you’re ready to make some noise. The project page states at the end “tabulaRasa is in the last stages of development, and will be available soon.” so you cant get your hands on one just yet, but if you’re interested [Greg] has a kickstarter page setup where you can find out details on pricing.

555 Video Game

February 24, 2011 by Kevin Dady 20 Comments

[Thrashbarg] is back up to some 555 timer madness again, this time with his sort of dodge ball video game. Featuring twenty three 555 timers, op amps (the LM324) and atari paddles slightly modded so the pots act as voltage dividers.

Output is on a monochrome composite tv signal, and the game plays like a dodge ball game where the object is to avoid the ball and take out the other player. You can also launch your own ball and deflect the oncoming attack. When hit the defeated player disappears from the screen for 3 seconds and then another round starts.

On a personal note this project hits close to home, as the project I had planned was a 555 based pong game, and just days before the deadline all I have is a wobbly sync generator, so seeing something close to what I had imagined, and working, makes me smile and feel a little better about my mental status.

Check out a short video after the break, and [Thrashbarg’s] previous 555 project, The Synthanola.

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Xteardown

February 23, 2011 by Kevin Dady 9 Comments

A hot topic in the gadget world right now is the Sony Ericsson XperiaPlay phone, and while that is not our usual cup of tea, when we see the newest toy stripped down to its bits n pieces it piques our interest.

This 8 page teardown of the XperiaPlay (google translated to english) takes you though all the steps needed to dismantle your new joy. Every screw, clip, header and connector, each in order so you can get it back together again.

As the carnage progresses time is taken to point out some of the parts of the phone. From the mundane like I/O jacks, to the more interesting like the Synaptics touch pad driver that are handling the “analog” sticks, the Cypress multi-touch controller for the screen, and of course, the brains.

(thanks Frogz)

Mystery Box Out Of Lego

February 23, 2011 by Kevin Dady 8 Comments

[Todd] recently completed completed his biggest LEGO project, and its pretty wild. The Mystery Box is an 8 compartment LEGO brick puzzle box, covered in a psychedelic pattern of interconnecting question marks.

The question mark pattern was inspired by a few things, the book called “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” contained an illustration that looked sort of like a M.C. Escher painting, which with some looking around brought up tessellation. With the look in mind [Todd] sat down with a paint program, drew out a grid, and started flood filling blocks until the pattern was perfect.

In puzzle box tradition, to gain access to the contents you must remove each compartment in the specific mystery order, and to accomplish this was no easy task. Lego Digital Designer was used to prototype everything on the box and then once happy, [Todd] broke the model down for a parts count.

Nearly 8,000 parts, 35 brick orders, and some long waits, the box was finally completed and its definetly worth a look. If you’re not that extreme, they also make cool electronics enclosures.

555 Cartoons

February 22, 2011 by Kevin Dady 10 Comments

Drehkino is a Turntable Cinema that plays short (50 frames) looping animations from specially printed, disks, and is housed in a wooden frame similar to a record player. The paper disks are the frames of animation and an optical rotary encoder pattern, that pattern is picked up by a infrared pair scavenged from an old mouse. The signal is then passed onto a 555 timer configured as a Schmitt trigger that (indirectly) drives the led strobe light creating animation that is synced to the speed of the turn table.

That sounds all good and well, but it must be a big pain to split up an animation and calculate each frame’s position etc, well that is covered too by a couple scripts. Movie clips are sent though virtualdub to select what 50 frames you want, then are exported to individual images, an sh script then takes over and gawk is used to manipulate the data and create an ImageMagick (“CONVSCRIPT”) file. After you do the script dance you are left with a perfectly spaced wheel with encoder ready to print on standard paper in a PDF format.

Software and schematics included, with future improvements already in the works and its nifty, so its worth a check. This is an interesting take on the old zoetrope design.