Hackaday Podcast Episode 295: Circuit Graver, Zinc Creep, And Video Tubes

November 8, 2024 by Dan Maloney 1 Comment

With Superconference 2024 in the books, Dan joined Elliot, fresh off his flight back from Pasadena, to look through the week (or two) in hacks. It was a pretty good crop, too, despite all the distractions and diversions. We checked out the cutest little quadruped, a wireless antenna for wireless communications, a price-tag stand-in for paper calendars, and a neat way to test hardware and software together.

We take the closest look yet at why Arecibo collapsed, talk about Voyager’s recent channel-switching glitch, and find out how to put old Android phones back in action. There’s smear-free solder paste application, a Mims-worthy lap counter, and a PCB engraver that you’ve just got to see. We wrap things up with a look at Gentoo and pay homage to the TV tubes of years gone by — the ones in the camera, for the TV sets.

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Open-Source Robot Transforms

November 5, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 2 Comments

Besides Pokémon, there might have been no greater media franchise for a child of the 90s than the Transformers, mysterious robots fighting an intergalactic war but which can inexplicably change into various Earth-based object, like trucks and airplanes. It led to a number of toys which can also change shapes from fighting robots into various ordinary objects as well. And, perhaps in a way of life imitating art, plenty of real-life robots have features one might think were inspired by this franchise like this transforming quadruped robot.

Called the CYOBot, the robot has four articulating arms with a wheel at the end of each. The arms can be placed in a wide array of positions for different operating characteristics, allowing the robot to move in an incredibly diverse way. It’s based on a previous version called the CYOCrawler, using similar articulating arms but with no wheels. The build centers around an ESP32-S3 microcontroller, giving it plenty of compute power for things like machine learning, as well as wireless capabilities for control or access to more computing power.

Both robots are open source and modular as well, allowing a range of people to use and add on to the platform. Another perk here is that most parts are common or 3d printed, making it a fairly low barrier to entry for a platform with so many different configurations and options for expansion and development. If you prefer robots without wheels, though, we’d always recommend looking at Strandbeests for inspiration.

Hackaday Podcast Episode 274: Capstan Robots, Avionics Of Uncertain Purpose, And What The Frack?

June 7, 2024 by Al Williams No comments

What do capstans, direct conversion receivers, and fracking have in common? They were all topics Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams found fascinating this week. If you wonder what makes an electrical ground a ground, or what a theodolite is, you should check it out.

This week, the hacks came fast and furious. Capstans, instead of gears, work well for 3D-printed mechanisms, a PI Pico can directly receive radio signals, and the guys saw a number of teardowns and reverse engineering triumphs. You’ll also find solid-state heat pumps, flying wings, spectroscopy, and more.

The can’t miss articles this week? Learn about theodolites, a surveying feat from ancient Greece, and how fracking works.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what we’ve mispronounced — or any other thoughts on the episode — in the comments!

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DIY Robotic Actuator Built For Walking Robots

June 30, 2023 by Lewin Day 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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Robodog Goes Free Thanks To Unofficial SDK

June 24, 2023 by Donald Papp 8 Comments

What’s better than a pretty nice legged robot? One with an alternate SDK version that opens up expensive features, of course. The author didn’t like that the original SDK only came as pre-compiled binaries restricted to the most expensive models, so rolled up their sleeves and started writing a new one.

The manufacturer’s SDK limits access to programmatic functions, but that needn’t stop *you*.

There are a number of commercially-available robotic quadrupeds that can trace their heritage back to the MIT Mini Cheetah design, and one of them is the Unitree Go1 series which sports a distinctive X-shaped sensor cluster on its “face”. The basic models are affordable (as far as robots go, anyway) but Unitree claims only the high-priced EDU model can be controlled via the SDK. Happily, the Free Dog SDK provides a way to do exactly that.

The SDK is a work in progress, but fully usable and allows the user to send various high level and low level commands to the Go1 robots. High level examples include things like telling the robot to perform pushups, turn 90 degrees, or walk. Low level commands are things like specifying exact positions or torque levels for individual limbs. With the new SDK, doing those things programmatically is only a Python script away.

Know any other robots that might be based on the same system? This SDK might work on them, too.

Robotic Fox Is Part Dog, Part Cat — Just Like The Real Thing

June 8, 2023 by Dan Maloney 8 Comments

Foxes are cat software running on dog hardware, or so they say. And [Will Cogley] seems to have taken that to heart with this 3D-printed robotic fox, which borrows heavily from projects like Boston Dynamics Spot robodog. True, the analogy breaks down a bit when you include MIT’s Cheetah on the inspiration list, but you get the point.

Very much a work in progress — [Will]’s RoboFox lacks both a head and a tail, which he aims to add at some point — there are some interesting design elements on display here. Whereas commercial quadruped robots tend to use expensive harmonic drives for the legs, [Will] chose simpler, cheaper hobby servos for his fox’s running gear. Each leg has three of them — one each for the upper and lower leg, and another that moves the whole leg in and out relative to the body. The dual-servo design for the leg is particularly interesting — one servo drives the upper leg directly, while the other servo drives the lower leg through a gear drive and a captive bearing arrangement connected to a parallelogram linkage. The result is a quite compact assembly that still has twelve degrees of freedom, and isn’t anywhere near as “floppy” as you might expect from something driven by hobby servos.

The video below shows off the design details as well as some of the fox’s construction, including some weirdly anatomically correct poses while it’s on its back. The fox is still getting its legs — you can see a few times when the servos get the jitters, and the umbilical is clearly a hindrance for such a lightweight robot. But [Will] has made a great start here, and we’re keen to see RoboFox progress. Although we’re not sure about giving the future head animatronic eyes.

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Mini Cheetah Clone Teardown, By None Other Than Original Designer

December 19, 2022 by Donald Papp 21 Comments

[Ben Katz] designed the original MIT Mini Cheetah robot, which easily captured attention and imagination with its decidedly un-robotic movements and backflips. Not long after [Ben]’s masters thesis went online, clones of the actuators started to show up at overseas sellers, and a few months after that, clones of the whole robot. [Ben] recently had the opportunity to disassemble just such a clone by Dogotix and see what was inside.

Amusingly, one of the first things he noticed is that the “feet” are still just off-the-shelf squash balls, same as his original mini cheetah design. As for the rest of the leg, inside is a belt that goes past some tensioners, connecting the knee joint to an actuator in the shoulder.

As one may expect, these parts are subject to a fair bit of stress, so they have to be sturdy. This design allows for slender yet strong legs without putting an actuator in the knee joint, and you may recall we’ve seen a similar robot gain the ability to stand with the addition of a rigid brace.

It’s interesting to read [Ben]’s thoughts as he disassembles and photographs the unit, and you’ll have to read his post to catch them all. But in the meantime, why not take a moment to see how a neighbor’s curious sheep react to the robot in the video embedded below? The robot botches a backflip due to a low battery, but the sheep seem suitably impressed anyway.

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