Your 15 Days To Be Excellent

August 5, 2014 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

This is it. It’s time to step up and be a hardware hacker.

If you haven’t submitted your entry for The Hackaday Prize, get out that graph paper and mechanical pencil and start scribbling. The coming fortnight is your time to shine.

As of right now you have exactly fifteen days to tell us about your concept for an Open, Connected device. This doesn’t mean you have to finish the build, there’s time for that after the August 20th deadline. What you do need to do is describe your idea and explain how you plan to build a working prototype for the final deadline in early November.

I’ve appealed to your vanity — it’s hard to call yourself a hacker if you sit on the sidelines for this one! Now I’ll appeal to your want of recognition and the prizes that dreams are made of. Right now we haven’t quite crossed the 500 entry mark. When was the last time you had a chance as good as 1 in 500 for such a huge bag of booty?

THP Entry: A Holonomic Drive 3D Printer

August 5, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 59 Comments

holo

[Sugapes] always wanted to cut a few corners and build a really, really cheap 3D printer, but the idea of using linear actuators – pricing them, sourcing them, and the inevitable problems associated with them – scared him away. One day, he realized that moving in a plane in the X and Y dimensions wasn’t hard at all; cars and robots do this every day. Instead of moving a 3D printer bed around with rods and pulleys, [Sugapes] is moving his 3D printer around with wheels. It’s different, it’s interesting, and it’s the perfect project to show of his creativity for The Hackaday Prize.

The drive system [Sugapes] is using is called a holonomic drive system. In his build, three omnidirectional wheels are attached to continuous rotation servos, each of them mounted 120 degrees apart. The print bed is simply placed on these wheels, and with the right control algorithms, [Sugapes] can move the bed in the X and Y axes. With an extruder on a Z axis above the bed, this setup becomes a 3D printer with a theoretically unlimited XY build axis. Pretty clever, huh?

There are a few problems [Sugapes] will have to overcome to turn this project into a proper printer. The omnidirectional wheels aren’t the best at transferring movement to the bed, so a quartet of USB optical computer mice are being used for a closed loop system. [Sugapes] put up a video of his project, you can check that out below.

The project featured in this post is an entry in The Hackaday Prize. Build something awesome and win a trip to space or hundreds of other prizes.

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What Could Possibly Go Wrong Giving A Robot A Chainsaw?

August 5, 2014 by James Hobson 15 Comments

Chainsaw wielding robot

[Morgan Rauscher] is a rather eccentric artist, inventor, maker, professor… jack of all trades. His latest project is called the Art-Bot – and it’s an 8′ robotic arm equipped with a chainsaw. Did we mention you can control it via arcade buttons?

He’s been building sculptures for over 10 years now, and has enjoyed observing the evolution of automated manufacturing – from CNC machines to laser cutters and even now, 3D printers. He loves the technologies, but fears machines are making it too easy – distancing us from the good old physical interaction it once took to make things with a few simple tools. His Art-Bot project attempts to bridge that gap by bringing tactile transference to the experience.

The cool part about the Art-Bot is that it is mostly made of recycled materials – in particular, bicycle parts!

Making a robot from bicycle parts is really not that difficult, and I highly recommend it.

The rest of the robot consists of electric actuators (linear), the control circuitry, and of course — a chainsaw. For safety’s sake, [Morgan] also built a polycarbonate wall around it to protect users from ~~it going on a murderous rampage~~ wood chips and other debris thrown from the robot.

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Automated Bathtub Prepares Your Bath Just The Way You Like It

August 4, 2014 by James Hobson 21 Comments

Automated Bathtub Controlled by Arduino

We live in the future don’t we? Is there a reason why only rich people have touchscreen controlled showers and temperature regulated bathtubs? [Raptor_Demon] shows us how to make our very own automated bathtub for cheap, using our favorite microprocessor — the Arduino.

The system controls the filling of the tub, monitors the temperature based on a user profile — and it even adds bubbles. Why do you need this? You probably don’t — but why not, wouldn’t it be nice to press a button and have a bath drawn for you? It uses an Arduino compatible board that controls 3 relays for the water system, a DS18b20 temperature sensor on the inlet and a second wireless (434mhz) Arduino compatible board for monitoring the tub temperature and adding bubble bath using a hacked automated soap dispenser.

[Raptor_Demon] showcased his prototype at the Maker Faire NC 2013 and 2014 where it was a huge hit. He even had a full size tub going, in which he would sit in during his explanation — check it out!

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A Mechanically Scanned LIDAR For Autonomous Robots

August 4, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

LIDAR [Patrick] has spent a lot of time around ground and aerial based autonomous robots, and over the last few years, he’s noticed a particular need for teams in robotics competitions to break through the ‘sensory bottleneck’ and get good data of the surrounding environment for navigational algorithms. The most well-funded teams in autonomous robotics competitions use LIDARs to scan the environment, but these are astonishingly expensive. With that, [Patrick] set out to create a cheaper solution.

Early this year, [Patrick] learned of an extremely cheap LIDAR sensor. Now [Patrick] is building a robotics distance measurement unit based on this sensor.

Early experiments with mechanically scanned LIDAR sensors centered around the XV-11 LIDAR, the distance sensor found in the Neato Robotics robot vacuum cleaner. [Patrick] became convinced a mechanically scanned LIDAR was the way forward when it came to distance measurement of autonomous robots. Now he’s making his own with an astonishingly inexpensive LIDAR sensor.

The basic idea of [Patrick]’s project is to take the PulsedLight LIDAR-Lite module, add a motor and processing board, and sell a complete unit that will output 360° of distance data to a robot’s main control system. The entire system should cost under $150 when finished; a boon to any students, teams, or hobbyists building an autonomous vehicle.

[Patrick]’s system is based on the PulsedLight LIDAR – a device that’s not shipping yet – but the team behind the LIDAR-Lite says they should have everything ready by the end of the month, all the better, because between these two devices, there’s a lot of cool stuff to be done in the area of autonomous robots.

Soccer Playing Robots Score On Human Goalie!

August 4, 2014 by James Hobson 22 Comments

Soccer robot scores on humans

Did you know there’s a rather large community dedicated to making robots that can play soccer? Did you know they’re getting pretty good?

RoboCup is an international robotics competition held annually, first founded in 1997. The goal first and foremost is to promote robotics and AI research — and to do so, they decided to make the competition something that is publicly appealing — Why not one of the most popular sports around? The official goal of the project is to have a team of autonomous humanoid based robot players beat the most recent winning team of the World Cup, complying with the official rules of FIFA. This year, the RoboCup coincided with the real World Cup, and was hosted in Brazil.

There are several categories in RoboCup with various types of robots, and the mid-size team did pretty well this year.

Arguably, this is the most exciting game of all, because it gives a sense of what the current state-of-the-art in robotic soccer is, and how it stacks up to a team of moderately talented squishy bipeds.

We guess that’s a nice way of saying “non-professional soccer players”. Regardless though, they SCORED!

Continue reading “Soccer Playing Robots Score On Human Goalie!” →

New Round Of Astronaut Or Not: Too Cool For Kickstarter

August 4, 2014 by Mike Szczys 20 Comments

Round 3 of Community Voting has drawn to a close. This time around we had nearly 60,000 votes for 420 projects! The first voter lottery drawing didn’t turn up a winner, but on Friday we ended up giving away the bench supply. We’ll cover the projects with the top votes in just a moment, but first let’s take a look at the voter lottery prize for the new round.

You must vote at least once in this new round to be eligible for the voter lottery on Friday!

We’ve got so many prizes in the package for the fourth round of Astronaut or Not that we’re just showing you a few in this image.

On Friday morning we’ll be drawing a random number and checking it against the Hacker profiles on Hackaday.io. If that person has voted in this current round, they win. If not, they’ll be kicking themselves (emptyhandedly) for not taking part in the festivities.

This week’s prize package includes: