3D Printing Goes Hand In Hand With Iron Man Inspired Prosthetic

October 17, 2014 by Sarah Petkus 10 Comments

It’s exciting how much 3D printing has enabled us to produce pretty much any shape for any purpose on the fly. Among the most thoughtful uses for the technology that we’ve seen are the many functioning and often beautiful prosthetics that not only succeed in restoring the use of a limb, but also deliver an air of style and self-expression to the wearer. The immediate nature of the technology allows for models to be designed and produced rapidly at a low-cost, which works excellently for growing children. [Pat Starace’s] Iron Man inspired 3D printed hand and forearm are a perfect example of such personality and expert engineering… with an added dash of hacker flair.

With over twenty years of experience in animatronics behind him, [Starace] expertly concealed all of the mechanical ligaments within the design of his arm, producing a streamline limb with all the nuance of lifelike gesture. It was important that the piece not only work, but give the wearer that appropriate super hero-like feeling while wearing it. He achieves this with all the bells and whistles hidden within the negative space of the forearm, which give the wearer an armory of tricks up their sleeve. Concealed in the plating, [Starace] uses an Arduino and accelerometer to animate different sets of LEDs as triggered by the hand’s position coupled with specific voice commands. Depending on what angle the wrist is bent at, the fingers will either curl into a fist and reveal hidden ‘lasers’ on the back of the hand, or spread open around a pulsing circle of light on the palm when thrust outward.

The project took [Starace] quite a bit of time to print all the individual parts; around two days worth of time. This however is still considered quick in comparison to the custom outfitting and production of traditional prosthetics… not to mention, the traditional stuff wouldn’t have LEDs. This piece has a noble cause, and is an exciting example of how 3D printing is adding a level of heroism to everyday life.

Thank you Julius for pointing out this awesome project to us!

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Robotic Terminator Teddy Will Protect You While You Sleep

October 16, 2014 by Sarah Petkus 13 Comments

This animatronic teddy bear is the stuff of nightmares… or dreams if you’re into mutant robot toys. In either case, this project by [Erwin Ried] is charming and creepy, as he gives life to an unassuming stuffed animal by implanting it with motorized parts.

[Erwin] achieves several degrees of motion throughout the bear’s body by filling the skin with a series of 3D printed bones, conjoined by servo motors at its shoulders, elbows and neck. The motors are controlled via an Arduino running slave to a custom application written in C#. This application uses the motion tracking and facial recognition features of the Xbox Kinect, mapping the input from the puppeteer’s movement to the motors of the doll’s skeleton. Additionally, two red LEDs illuminate under the bear’s cheeks in response to the facial expression of the person controlling it, as an additional reminder that teddy feels what you feel.

In [Erwin’s] video, he demonstrates what his application sees through the Kinect’s camera side-by-side with the mechanical skeleton its controlling. The finished product isn’t something I’d soon cuddle up to at night, but looks amazing and is fun to watch in action :

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Writing A Message In Hypnotizing Style

October 13, 2014 by Sarah Petkus 19 Comments

If you’ve ever encountered a rapidly spinning split-flap displays at an airport terminal, it’s hard not to stop and marvel at them in action for a few extra seconds. Because of this same fascination, [M1k3y] began restoring an old one-hundred and twenty character sign, which he outlines the process of on his blog.

Finding documentation on this old relic turned out to be an impossibility; the producers of the model themselves didn’t even keep it off-hand any longer. In spite of that, [M1k3y] was able to determine the function of the small amount of circuitry driving the sign through process of elimination by studying the components. After nearly a year of poking at it, he happened across a video by the Trollhöhle Compute Club, demonstrating the successful use of the same display model. Luckily, they were kind enough to share their working source code. By reverse engineering the serial protocol in their example, he was able to write his own software to get the sign moving at last.

Once up and running, [M1k3y] learned that only eighty of the sign’s characters were still operable, but that is plenty to make a mesmerizing statement! Here is a video of the cycling letters in action:

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Build Your Own Stand Alone Web Radio

October 11, 2014 by Sarah Petkus 11 Comments

If you’re the type who enjoys passing idle time by keeping up with podcasts or listening to web stations but don’t always want to occupy your laptop or tablet, this Arduino based radio player will provide a base station for tunes.

The Web Radio project by [Vassilis Serasidis] outlines in a pleasing amount of detail exactly how to wire up a short list of four modules. These including an Ethernet shield, LCD screen, MP3 decoder, and USB serial converter, with an Arduino Mini in order to bookmark and play fourteen of your favorite channels. His hand-soldered board couples everything into one neatly stacked package. The instructional video shows this off and he even explains how to locate your favorite stations on internet-radio.com and copy their port and IP number directly into an example sketch which is provided for use. If you’ve been wanting to build a self contained radio node for your desk free of extra baggage, this is a no-sweat project for both the hardware savvy and those more oriented with code writing.

If you’re going to build your own radio, it’s always cool to disguise your high-tech creation as something more rustic. Check out this project by [Dominic Buchstaller] for a great example of a vintage radio given a second calling.

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