Author: Zoe Skyforest

3699 Articles

Build Yourself A Screw Propelled Robot To Tackle The Dirt

December 2, 2023 by 11 Comments

Wheels and tracks are common choices for robot propulsion, but they’re not the only game in town. You can do some nifty things with long extruded screws , and they work pretty well in soft terrain. [gokux] set about building a small robot using this propulsion method using 3D printed parts.

The build uses a Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32S3 as the brains of the operation. This provides wireless connectivity for remote control, as well as a way to get a low-latency video feed out of the robot from the OV2640 camera. The ESP32 controls a pair of brushed DC gearmotors via a DRV8833 motor driver. Each drives one of the two screws on the robot. By driving the two screws separately, the robot has simple skid steering. Two 18650 lithium-ion cells provide power for the robot, and are charged via a TP4056 battery charger module.

If you want to build a small robot that can handle soft terrain well, screw drives could be just the solution you’re looking for. They’re usually a bit slow, though, especially for human-scale conveyances, so don’t write off wheels or tracks if you don’t have to. And, of course, when your build is done, don’t forget to put it online and tell us all about it!

Generating Motion Via Nitinol Wires

December 2, 2023 by 13 Comments

Generally, when we’re looking to build something that moves we reach for motors, servos, or steppers — which ultimately are all just variations on the same concept. But there are other methods of locomotion available. As [Jamie Matthews] demonstrates, Nitinol wires can be another way to help get things moving.

Nitinol is a type of metal wire made of nickel and titanium that is also known as “memory wire”, because it can remember its former shape and transition back to it with a temperature change. [Jamie] uses this property to create a simple hand that is actuated by pieces of wire sourced from Amazon. This is actually a neat way to go, as it goes some way to mimicking how our own hands are moved by our tendons.

[Jamie] does a great job of explaining how to get started with Nitinol and how it works in a practical sense. We’ve seen it put to some wacky uses before, too, such as the basis for an airless tire.

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Print Your Own Brain Lamp From MRI Data

December 1, 2023 by 12 Comments

MRIs generally fall somewhere on the scale from boring to stressful depending on why you’re having one and how claustrophobic you get. Regardless, they’re a wonderful diagnostic tool and they’ve saved thousands if not millions of lives over the years. In a fun use of the technology, [mandalaFractals] has shown us how to make a 3D-printed brain lamp using an MRI scan of the head.

The build starts with an off-the-shelf lamp base and a smart LED bulb as the light source, though you could swap those out as desired for something like a microcontroller, a USB power supply, and addressable LEDs if you were so inclined. The software package Slicer is then used to take an MRI brain scan and turn it into something that you can actually 3D print. It’ll take some cleaning up to remove artifacts and hollow it out, but it’s straightforward enough to get a decent brain model out of the data. Alternatively, you can use someone else’s if you don’t have your own scan. Then, all you have to do is print it in a couple of halves, and pop it on the lamp base, and you’re done!

It’s a pretty neat build. Who wouldn’t love telling their friends that their new brain lamp was an accurate representation of their own grey noodles, after all? It could be a fun gift next time Halloween rolls around, too!

Meanwhile, if you’ve got your own MRI hacks that you’ve been cooking up, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Robot Pianist Runs On Arduino Nano

December 1, 2023 by 7 Comments

The piano has been around for a long time now. Not long after its invention, humans started contemplating how they could avoid playing it by getting a machine to do the job instead. [vicenzobit] is the latest to take on this task, building a “Robot Pianista” that uses a simple mechanism to play a tune under electronic command (Spanish language, Google Translate link).

An Arduino Nano is the heart of the build, paired with a shield that lets it run a number of servo motors. The servos, one per key, are each assembled into a 3D-printed bracket with a cam-driven rod assembly. When the servo turns, the cam turns, and pushes down a rod that presses the piano key.

The build is limited in the sense that you can only play as many keys as you have servo channels, but nonetheless, it does the job. With eight servos, it’s able to play a decent rendition of Ode to Joy at a steady tempo, and that’s an excellent start.

We’ve featured some great mechanized instruments before, too. Video after the break.

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Wine Is For Windows And Darling Is For MacOS

December 1, 2023 by 44 Comments

Wine has become a highly optimized and useful piece of software for those that live in Linux, but occasionally need to walk on the Windows side. In case you’d wondered, there’s a similar tool for when you need to run a MacOS program in your Linux environment. Enter Darling, the translation layer you’ve needed all along.

Just as Wine is not an emulator, nor is Darling. As a translation layer, it duplicates functions of the MacOS operating system that programs need to operate but within Linux. It’s fast, because it’s effectively running the MacOS software directly. Initially, Darling was mostly only capable of running MacOS apps at the console level. However, there is rudimentary support for running graphical applications that are based on the Cocoa framework.

Hilariously, if you’re into weird recursive situations, you can go deeper and run Darling within Windows Subsystem for Linux, itself running within Windows. Why? Well, you’re probably bored or just trying to for the sake of it. Regardless, we don’t judge. If you’ve got your own nifty translation or virtual machine hacks in the works, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Is Microsoft BASIC Hidden In This Educational Child’s Toy?

November 30, 2023 by 24 Comments

The VTech PreComputer 1000 is a rather ancient toy computer that was available in the distant misty past of 1988. It featured a keyboard and a variety of simple learning games, but does it also feature Microsoft BASIC? [Robin] of 8-Bit Show and Tell dove in to find out.

Officially, the PreComputer was programmable in a form of BASIC, referred to by VTech as PRE-BASIC V1.0. Given that the system has a Z80 CPU and there’s little information in the manual about this programming language, [Robin] was suspicious as to whether it was based on Microsoft BASIC-80. Thus, an examination was in order to figure out just how this BASIC implementation worked, and whether it shared anything with Microsoft’s own effort.

We won’t spoil the conclusions, but there are some strong commonalities between VTech’s BASIC and Microsoft’s version from this era. The variable names in particular are a strong hint as to what’s going on under the hood. The video is worth a watch for anyone that’s a fan of early microcomputer history, BASIC, or just the weird computer-like devices of yesteryear. We also love the idea that the PreComputer 1000 was actually quite a capable machine hiding behind a single-line LCD display.

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The Raspberry Pi 5 Can Use External Graphics Cards Now

November 30, 2023 by 32 Comments

The Raspberry Pi line is full of capable compact computers, but they’ve never been the strongest in the bunch when it comes to graphical output. Nor have they been particularly expandable in that regard. However, that’s all beginning to change, with [Jeff Geerling] reporting success getting external GPUs to work on the Raspberry Pi 5.

Unlike previous Raspberry Pis, the Raspberry Pi 5 has a less quirky implementation for its PCI Express bus. Previous editions have thrown up issues when trying to work with GPUs, but [Jeff] has found much more success this time around. He’s gotten an AMD RX 460 to work with the setup, and has got it running quite a bit of the glmark2 test regime. He’s working on a variety of other AMD cards too, but suspects NVidia parts could be harder due to some initialization issues that are proving difficult to quash.

It still takes some funky adapters and a lot of work, but finally GPUs are starting to work with the platform. Keep up with his list of card trials on the PiPCI website. We’ve seen [Jeff]’s work with earlier iterations of the Raspberry Pi before, too. Video after the break.

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