It’s Easy To Make Gears Out Of Wood

June 30, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 20 Comments

Typically, most of the gears we use in our life are made of plastic or metal. However, wood gears can do just fine in some simple roles, and they’re utterly pleasant to make, as this video from [botto bie] demonstrates.

With steady hands, it’s easy to make basic gears by hand with basic tools and a printer. You just need the help of a spur gear generator to produce the required outlines for you to follow. [botto bie] uses the online tool from Evolvent Design which will spit out DXF or SVG files as you desire.

Basic woodworking techniques are used to produce the gears, and they prove simple and effective. A rack is produced by first applying a involute tooth template with paper to a rectangular piece of wood. A series of circular and table jigsaw operations are then used to cut out the required material to produce the rack. A variety of toothed gears are produced in a similar fashion.

If you’re lacking a CNC machine or a 3D printer, this can be a great way to experiment. Bonus points if you use your wooden geartrain as part of some kind of exciting mechanism, like an automated marble run or musical contraption. Video after the break.

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Picopad Is A New Open Source Game Console

June 30, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 18 Comments

Microcontrollers are so powerful these days that you can build color handheld games with them that match or exceed what you’d ever get on the Game Boys and Game Gears of yesteryear. The Picopad aims to offer just this, in an open-source hackable format that’s friendly to experimenters.

As you might have guessed from the name, the Picopad is based on the Raspberry Pi Pico and its RP2040 microcontroller. It features four face buttons and a D-pad, along with a small color LCD with a 320×240 resolution. There is also a microSD slot upon which programs can be stored, and also an expansion port with headers for a variety of IO from the RP2040 itself including both GPIOs, serial, I2C and analog input pins. The housing is constructed out of PCBs, with some cheerful gaming artwork adding a fun aesthetic. Development is via a custom C SDK, with support for Micropython as well.

If you want to build your own and don’t fancy starting from scratch, kits are available online. We’ve seen some other great gaming experiments with the Raspberry Pi Pico before, too, like an open-world 3D game and ZX Spectrum emulators. Video after the break.

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DIY Robotic Actuator Built For Walking Robots

June 30, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 2 Comments

[Aaed Musa] has built a variety of robots over the years, but found off-the-shelf servos to be underwhelming for his work. Thus, he set out to build a better actuator to support his goals of building a high-performance walking bot in future.

[Aaed] decided to try and build a quasi-direct drive actuator, similar to those used in MIT’s agile mini Cheetah robot. It consists of a powerful brushless DC motor driving a 9:1 planetary gear reduction built with 3D printed parts, which provides high torque output. It’s designed to be run with an ODrive S1 motor controller with encoder feedback for precise control.

The actuator weighs in at a total of 935 grams. It’s not cheap, with the bill of materials totaling just under $250. For your money, though, you get a responsive robotic actuator with a hefty holding torque of over 16 Nm, which [Aaed] demonstrates by having the actuator shake around some dumbells on a long lever arm.

Walking robots have exploded in popularity ever since Spot hit the scene. We’ve seen everything from complex builds to super-simple single-servo designs.

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Hydroplaning Boat Skims Over Water

June 29, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 3 Comments

Regular hulled boats are all well and good for rowing and all, but if you wanna go fast, you’ve gotta cut your draft. [RCLifeOn] built a hydroplane design that skims on the very surface of the water, and thus travels very quickly as a result.

The build came about as [RCLifeOn] has an upcoming race which he wishes to win with speed and finesse. To that end, he 3D printed an RC hydroplane, using spray paint and spackle to waterproof the parts. It’s a trimaran design, with the large central hull connected to two pontoons via carbon fiber rods. Propulsion is via a triple-motor fan setup on the rear of the boat.

The outer motors were initially used to steer the boat via variable thrust, which comes with zero drag penalty compared to a conventional rudder. However, they proved ineffective, and a servo driven rudder was used instead. Eventually, all three motors were reconfigured for forward thrust.

The boat worked well when it was able to get up to speed and hydroplane over the surface of the water. However, it was difficult to film, as even the weight of a GoPro was enough to keep it stuck on the water’s surface. Instead [RCLifeOn] used his electric surfboard as a chase rig to film the boat — a neat trick itself. Continue reading “Hydroplaning Boat Skims Over Water” →

Rubber Tracked Bicycle Is Horribly Inefficient

June 29, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 31 Comments

Wheeled bikes are efficient machines, and most cycling speed and distance records are held by them. However, [The Q] has a taste for weirder creations that amuse perhaps more than they serve as viable transportation. His latest experiments revolve around tracked propulsion methods.

The build is a wheelless bike that relies on long thin tracks mounted to a mountain bike frame. The tracks carriers are fabricated using steel box section fitted with cogged rollers. The tracks themselves are made using a pair of bicycle chains joined with welded steel bars. They’re fitted with slices of rubber cut out of traditional bike tires for grip. The rear track is driven from the bike’s pedals, while the front is merely left to run freely.

By virtue of its wide, flat tracks, the bike actually stands up on its own. It’s capable of riding in a straight line at slow speed, albeit relatively noisily. Steering is limited by virtue of the flat tracks, which don’t operate well at an angle to the ground. Since the tracks only contact the ground at a point, too, the bike has very high ground pressure, which would make it likely to sink into anything less solid than asphalt.

The build is relatively similar to [The Q]’s previous efforts to build a supposedly square-wheeled bike. What we’d really love to see at this point is a tracked bicycle that actually made the best of the technology – by being both swift and capable of crossing soft, marshy terrain. Video after the break.

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Build A DIY Space Mouse For A More Efficient CAD Workflow

June 29, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 21 Comments

When you find yourself doing a lot of work in 3D modelling, you occasionally wish for something more capable than the humble two-dimensional mouse. A space mouse is a great tool in this regard, and [Salim Benbouziyane] was inspired to build his own.

[Salim] started his work with research, by watching a teardown of a Connexion Space Navigator 3D mouse. This informed him of the basic functionality and the workings inside. The commercial product appears to use an optical sensor setup, but [Salim] decided to go with a magnetic sensor setup instead due to the parts he had on hand. Namely, a 3-axis magnetometer which seemed perfect for the task.

The build uses a motion platform mounted on six springs which translates and rotates in three dimensions as required. The magnetometer is mounted on the platform above a stationary set of neodymium magnets. Thus, when the platform, and thus sensor, moves, the magnetometer’s output can be used to determine the motion of the platform and translate that into useful viewport commands for CAD software. A RP2040 is charged with reading the magnetometer and acting as a USB HID device. It’s all wrapped up in a neat 3D-printed housing.

For now, it’s a little simpler in its operation than a full 6 DOF Spacemouse, but it nonetheless has helped [Salim]’s workflow improve. A good peripheral like this can be a real boon on the desktop; we’ve seen a few DIY projects in this realm for just that reason. Video after the break.

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Sci Fi UI Made Easy With Arwes

June 29, 2023 by Zoe Skyforest 19 Comments

Many of us grew up watching Star Trek, marvelling at the beautiful colorful interfaces on the computers that ran the Starship Enterprise. Today’s computer interfaces have certainly grown fancier since the Windows 3.1 and Mac System 7 days, but they’re still nowhere near that gorgeous. The Arwes framework aims to change that, at least where web apps are concerned.

The framework is inspired by the cyberprep and synthwave aesthetics, while drawing from media like TRON: Legacy and Halo. You can get a peek at what it can do on the Arwes website, or look at how it runs on sites like SoulExtract or the Cyber Movie Database. It’s very much about glowing lines, 1980s computer sounds, and screens with animated text fills.

It’s still in an alpha release, and likely isn’t yet ready for business-critical production use. It currently consists of a set of basic components that can be assembled into a functional futuristic website design, but you’ll need some experience to use the tools at hand. There’s a sandbox for experimenting that should help in that regard.

You might just find that it’s the perfect tool to create an interface for your very own cyberdeck, or you might put it to work on your next website design. Either way, if you create something fantastic, don’t hesitate to drop us a line.