One-night No Budget CNC Machine

November 10, 2013 by James Hobson 44 Comments

The Hackerspace Kraków in Poland hosts a weekly event on Fridays called NightHack. The idea is simple. It’s late Friday night, all the stores are closed — something needs to be hacked.

Just this past Friday night, they decided to try making a CNC machine using only what they had in the space. And gosh darn it, did they ever succeed! The build makes use of an Arduino Mega, broken Playstation 3 drives, a few spare L293D ICs, some hot glue, and wood. The resulting CNC machine is an awesome example of what can be done in a night with the right group of people working together.

It might not be powerful enough to do milling, but works quite well as a small CNC drawing plotter with its massive 5x5cm work area, with a resolution of 0.16mm. Next week they hope to modify it to allow for PCB drilling, which at the right feed rates, might just be possible!

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Brute Forcing An Android Phone

November 10, 2013 by James Hobson 67 Comments

[Brett’s] girlfriend is very concerned about cell phone security — So much so that she used a PIN so secure, even she couldn’t remember it.

Beyond forgetting the PIN, the phone also had encryption enabled, the bootloader locked, and zero permissions for the Android Device Manager to change the PIN. Lucky for her, [Brett] had purchased an STM32F4Discovery Development Board a few months ago, and was itching for a suitable project for it.

Now unfortunately, Android allows you to pick a PIN of anywhere between 4 and 8 digits, which as you can guess, results in a massive number of possible permutations. She was pretty sure it was only 6 digits, and that she didn’t use a 1, 2, or 3… and she thought it started with a 4 or a 7… and she didn’t think any of the digits were repeated… This helped narrow it down a bit, from 1 million possibilities to about 5,000 — assuming all of the boundary conditions she remembers are in fact correct.

[Brett] started by writing a C library to generate permutations of the PIN, testing the board on his own phone to make sure it works with a known PIN, and boom, they were in business.

28,250 PIN attempts later, they decided they were not. Did we mention you can only enter 5 PINs in every 30 seconds?

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Morph: Adaptive Spaceframe

November 10, 2013 by James Hobson 17 Comments

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[William Bondin] is working on a rather interesting project, a tetrahedron morphing robot called Morphs (Mobile Reconfigurable Polyhedra).

It is able to move by the extension of each of its telescopic edges, and as it morphs, the centre of gravity shifts, allowing it to roll over. It is far from an efficient way to move, but it is quite entertaining to watch!

The custom two-directional linear actuators were designed to ensure the weight is symmetrically distributed on each axis, and they were able get the current draw down to about 200mA during actuation, which means with a few strategically placed battery cells, it’ll be able to go wireless too. The prototype unit is controlled by a single Arduino, which sends the commands to each motor-encoder couple.

[William] is hoping to develop it into a full scale architectural prototype, and by 2015 hopes to have these interactive robotic structures rolling around public parks. The architectural end goal is to allow for buildings to respond to environmental inputs, like daylight and temperature.

Confused? Check out the video after the break.

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Robots Of BarBot 2013

November 9, 2013 by James Hobson 5 Comments

barbot

Here’s an amazing conference we really wish we could have been at — Barbot 2013: a celebration of booze serving robotic masterpieces.

Lucky for us though, the folks over at Evil Mad Scientist did have the opportunity to attend — and they took lots of pictures. There is just so much awesome it is hard to pick our favorite barbot, but the one shown above is definitely a contender. It’s the Schrödinger’s Martini. While the box is closed, the amount of vermouth poured is indeterminate until observed. Classic.

Another one that popped out at us was the 500SW, which became more affectionately known as Dance Dance Intoxication, which apparently judged you based on your dancing skills and then poured you a drink — appropriate to your moves.

Click through and see for yourself, but here’s a couple other related posts from our past, remember the Cooler Master Advanced Beer Delivery System? How about the amazing conveyor belt driven, alcohol dispensing Inebriator? There are just so many ways to have fun with the concept it’s hard not to try your hand at building one at home.

Constructable: Interactive Laser Cutting

November 9, 2013 by James Hobson 7 Comments

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Do you miss the old days of making things by hand, without the aid of a computer? Do you remember actually drafting drawings by hand? Well, the folks over at the Human-Computer Interaction group from the Hasso Plattner Institute have come up with a rather novel idea, combining manual input via laser pointers, to cut designs with a laser cutter. Sound familiar? A few days ago we shared another cool project on Laser Origami from the same people.

So what exactly is it? It’s an interactive drafting table which can produce very precise physical outputs from a rather imprecise input method. By using specific laser pointers, the user can instruct the laser cutter to cut, trace, or etch designs into the workpiece. A camera picks up the laser pointer and then the software cleans it up, by straightening lines, connecting the dots, etc. While only so much can be determined by the included video, it’s pretty impressive to see what the software comes up with while cutting the design… We can’t really imagine the programming behind it!

Between this and PACCAM: Interactive 2D Part Packing, it looks like laser cutting is going to get a whole lot more user friendly! Stick around after the break to see it in action, the results are quite impressive!

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Full-size MRI Machine Replica

November 9, 2013 by James Hobson 15 Comments

Foam MRI machine

It’s been a bit dusty lately in Seattle’s Metrix Create:Space. That’s because they’ve taken on their biggest project yet — a full scale replica of an MRI machine for university research.

[Tom Grabowski], a professor of Radiology & Neurology at the University of Washington, needed a replica MRI machine. This is because time on real MRI machines is very expensive, and when performing research on Autism, it is important to get the test subjects used to the process before using the real deal. He originally turned to the Center for Human Development and Disability, also at the University of Washington, but the project was just simply too big for their facilities. He did however get to meet a fellow researcher named [Fritz] who then contacted Metrix to see if it was possible, and like any good hackers, the members of the space were more than up for the challenge.

The replica MRI machine is made out 2″ thick, 4′ by 8′ foam insulation sheets, which is the maximum size their router can handle. Not having made use of the 3D z-cutting capabilities before, they had a bit of learning to do, but as you can see from the pictures, it worked out quite well. Over a few weeks they were able to construct the general shape of the MRI machine, and finish the surface nicely — it’s far from complete though, as they might even be adding lights and other features to make it one heck of a replica. It’s a great project, and those who have helped are happy to do so as the replica will benefit not only [Tom] but many other researchers at UW — for science, yeah!

RC Tractor Build

November 8, 2013 by James Hobson 18 Comments

[Rémi] is an engineer in France who runs his own little plasma cutting shop where he designs and manufactures custom projects for people. His latest project is this very slick remote controlled tractor.

It makes use of two 350W motors running at 24V, powered off of two 12V lead acid gel cells. The entire frame was designed in 3D CAD and then cut to shape using a plasma cutter. It was designed to tow small farm equipment around, or to turn mowing the lawn into a fun game that can be performed from the comforts of your lounge chair, while sipping a cold drink.

The reason we’re sharing this is because [Rémi] made an excellent video of fabrication and build of this project — So stick around after the break and enjoy! But be warned, watching the video may induce certain desires for owning a personal plasma cutter. Oh the possibilities!

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