Cockroach-sized Robots Pull Full-Size Sedan

March 17, 2016 by 26 Comments

Well, if you’re not scared about the singularity yet, how about now? Stanford robotics just demonstrated six MicroTug (μTug) minibots — weighing 100g together — move an 1800kg sedan on polished concrete.

The research is being performed at Stanford’s Biomimetrics and Dextrous Manipulation Lab by [David L. Christensen] of the Engineering department — the car being pulled? His. The tests were performed to determine the effectiveness of robotic teamwork — mimicking the behaviors shown by ants.

The robots use an adhesive technique as found in gecko feet to adhere themselves to the concrete, and use micro-winches to tug the car. Individually each μTug minibot can pull 23kg. The strength to weight ratio of the hoard of minibots is 18,000:1!

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When You Get Serious About Selling A Project, Consider An Accelerator

March 17, 2016 by 26 Comments

I was visiting San Francisco, scratching my head for something cool to cover for Hackaday. When it hit me: this is one of the leading cities in the world for starting new companies. It’s known for its software, but with Tesla, Type A Machines, Intel, Apple, and more within an hour’s drive of the city, there’s got to be a hardware scene as well. Silicon isn’t a software product after-all. But where do you find it, and how do you get a hardware start-up going in one of the most expensive cities in the world?

That’s where hardware accelerators or incubators, whichever name they prefer, come in. One-third hackerspace, two-thirds business crash course, they help you skip a lot of the growing pains associated with starting a capital intensive thing like a hardware business. I dropped in, and they kindly gave me a few minutes of their time. I wanted to find out what a hacker could do if they felt it was time to turn those skulls into dollars. What are the requirements. What is the cost? What help does the incubator offer to the burgeoning capitalist in a hacker?

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What Happens When You Fold Paper A 7th Time?

March 17, 2016 by 77 Comments

Ever heard that myth(?) about not being able to fold a sheet of paper more than 7 times? Well if you’ve ever tried it you know it’s impossible to even fold it a sixth time with your bare hands… but what if you have an industrial hydraulic press to help you out?

News to us, a YouTube channel exists called the Hydraulic Press Channel, dedicated to — you guessed it — crushing absolutely anything and everything with the help of a hydraulic press. Narrated by a lovely old chap whose accent (and colorful language) we can’t quite place, the channel is filled with amusing videos of guaranteed destruction — including paper.

But the result is not what you would expect at all — you’ll have to watch the video to see. With a bang and a tremble the seventh fold seems to change the material properties of paper. Can anyone explain what’s going on here?

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Presenting The Internet Of Trash Cans !

March 17, 2016 by 17 Comments

This was gonna happen – sooner or later. [matthewhallberg] built a “Smart” trash can that is connected to the Internet and can be controlled by its own Android App. We’re not sure if the world needs it, but he wanted one and so built it. He started it out on a serious note, but quickly realized the fun part of this build – check out his funny Infomercial style video after the break.

trash_can_02The build itself is uncomplicated and can be replicated with ease. A servo motor helps flip the lid open and close. This is triggered by an ultrasonic ping sensor, which responds when someone waves a hand in front of the trash can. A second ping sensor helps inform the user when it is full and needs to be emptied. A Leonardo with the Idunio Yun shield helps connect the trash can to the internet. An mp3 shield connected to a set of powered computer speakers adds voice capability to the trash can, allowing it to play back pre-recorded sound clips. Finally, a Bluetooth module lets him connect it to an Android phone and the companion app controls the trash can remotely.

For the IoT side of things, [matthewhallberg] uses a Temboo account to send an email to the user when the trash can is full. The Arduino sketch, a header file to configure the Temboo account, and the Android application can all be downloaded from his blog. If this project inspires you, try building this awesome Robotic trash can which catches anything that you throw near it  or read the barcodes off the trash being thrown out and update the grocery list.

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Vintage 8mm Camera Now Powered By Raspberry Pi

March 16, 2016 by 20 Comments

If you are a lover of the aesthetic of vintage photography and Instagram’s filters don’t quite cut it for you, then there are plenty of opportunities even in this post-film age to sample the real thing. Plastic lens cameras from the former Soviet Bloc countries or the Pacific rim are still in production, and you can still buy 35mm and 120 roll film to put in them.

You can even still buy 8mm film for your vintage movie camera, but it’s rather pricey. [Claire Wright] is a young film maker who had an old 8mm camera and really wanted that analog film feel to her work, and she and her father solved this problem by using the 8mm camera’s lens in front of a Raspberry Pi camera sensor. Since an 8mm film frame is 4.5mm x 3.3mm and the Pi camera sensor size is 3.76mm x 2.74mm, it’s quite a good fit.

Their first prototype had a custom case which concealed the Pi camera behind the lens on rails taken from an old CD-ROM drive, and had an HDMI screen on top and a pistol grip to make it portable. An external thumb screw allowed the camera to be positioned in the focal plane.

A further refinement has stepper motor driven focus driven from an Adafruit motor drive HAT. The software is simply the standard Pi camera utilities. To demonstrate the system, she made a short video about how it came to be, and took the camera on a road trip to Austin, Texas. She tells us a local 3D print shop is working on a 3D model to replicate the camera, but sadly as yet there are no resources for the Hackaday crowd to examine.

Her video is below. She has certainly captured the feel of an 8mm film very well. If the SUVs were replaced by cars with more chrome in her Mainstreet America, you might almost be there in the 1950s.

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Could Metal Particles Provide Clean Fuel For The Future?

March 16, 2016 by 140 Comments

The oil age is ending. Electricity and battery power are great, but are we really going to be able to replace the entire oil industry before it’s too late? Researchers at the McGill University have come up with a possible clean fuel replacement — metal particles.

Tiny metal particles, as fine in grain size as icing sugar, have long been used for fireworks and even for rocket propellants, like the space shuttle’s solid-fuel booster rockets. But very little research has been used on applying this technology for use as a recyclable fuel — until now.  Continue reading “Could Metal Particles Provide Clean Fuel For The Future?” →

Tiny Raspberry Pi Shield For High-Quality RF Signals

March 16, 2016 by 18 Comments

Among its many tricks, the Raspberry Pi is capable of putting clock signals signal out on its GPIO pins, and that turns out to be just the thing for synthesizing RF signals in the amateur radio bands. What [Zoltan] realized, though, is that the resulting signals are pretty dirty, so he came up with a clever Pi shield for RF signal conditioning that turns a Pi into a quality low-power transmitter.

[Zoltan] stuffed a bandpass filter for broadband noise, a low-pass filter for harmonics, and a power amplifier to beef up the signal a bit into a tiny shield that is cleverly engineered to fit any version of the Pi. Even with the power amplifier, the resulting transmitter is still squarely in the realm of QRP, and the shield is optimized for use as a WSPR beacon on the 20-meter band. But there’s plenty of Pi software available to let hams try other modes, including CW, FM, SSB, and even SSTV, and other signal conditioning hardware for different bands.

Yes, these are commercially available products, but even if you’re not in the market for a shield like this, or if you want to roll your own, there’s a lot to learn from [Zoltan]’s presentation at the 2015 TAPR Digital Communications Conference (long video below). He discusses the difficulties encountered getting a low-profile shield to be compatible with every version of the Pi, and the design constraints that led to the decision to use SMT components.

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