The Triple Delta Robot Arm (and Leg)

October 9, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

delta By now you’d think we’ve seen just about every means of robotic actuator possible. We have Cartesian bots, Stewart platforms, SCARA bots, Delta bots, and even some exceedingly bizarre linkages from [Nicholas Seward]. We’re not done with odd robotic arms, it seems, and now we have Delta-ish robots that can move outside their minimum enclosed volume. They’re fresh from the workshop of [Aad van der Geest], and he’s calling them double and triple Deltas.

Previous Delta robots have used three universal joints to move the end effector up and down, and side to side. They’re extremely fast and are a great design for 3D printers and pick and place machines, but they do have a limitation: the tip of a single Delta can not move much further than the base of the robot.

By adding more parallelograms to a Delta, [Aad] greatly increases working volume of a his robots. One of the suggested uses for this style of bot is for palletizers, demonstrated in the video below by stacking Jenga blocks. There is another very interesting application: legs. There’s footage of a small, simple triple Delta scooting around the floor, supported by wire training wheels below. It makes a good cat toy, but we’d love to see a bipedal robot with this style of legs.

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Paper Plane Folding Machine Gun Is A Mechanical Marvel

October 9, 2014 by James Hobson 44 Comments

A German man has just finished a very impressive Paper Airplane Machine Gun, or a Papierflieger-Maschinenpistole, which just sounds so much cooler. It actually takes a stack of paper, folds it into paper air planes and shoots them.

The device takes a stack of what looks like post-card size paper in the “clip”, forms them into paper air planes by a series of rollers and folding edges and then launches them out of the end. A cheap electric screwdriver powers the entire drive train, which allows him to shoot around 20 planes per minute (PPM?).

Sadly there’s really not too much information on how it works, nor the files to reproduce it. [Papierfliegerei], as he goes by on YouTube, decided to build this awesome contraption to show off just what 3D printers are capable of these days. He designed the whole thing in 3D CAD and had many of the parts printed off at a 3D printing company called fabberhouse.de, while the rest of the components are off the shelf.

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Hackaday 10th Anniversary: Hacking Your Way To NASA

October 9, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 2 Comments

[Steve] drives spacecraft for a living. As an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he’s guided probes to comets, asteroids, Mars, and Jupiter, figured out what happens when telemetry from these probes starts looking weird, and fills the role of the Space Hippy whenever NASA needs some unofficial PR.

Like most people who are impossibly cool, [Steve]’s career isn’t something he actively pursued since childhood. Rather, it’s something that fell in his lap. With qualifications like building a robotic computer to typewriter interface, a custom in-car navigation system in the late 80s, and a lot of work with an Amiga, we can see where [Steve] got his skills.

The earliest ‘hack’ [Steve] can remember was just that – an ugly, poorly welded sidecar for his bicycle made in his early teens. From there, he graduated to Lasertag landmines, Tesla coils, and building camera rigs, including a little bit of work on Octopussy, and a rig for a Miata. It helps when your dad is a cinematographer, it seems.

In college, [Steve] used his experience with 6502 assembler to create one of the first computerized lighting controllers (pre-DMX). After reading a biography on [Buzz Aldrin], [Steve] realized doing his thesis on orbital rendezvous would at least be interesting, if not an exceptionally good way to get the attention of NASA.

Around this time, [Steve] ran into an engineering firm that was developing, ‘something like Mathematica’ for the Apple II, and knowing 6502 assembly got him in the door. This company was also working to get the GPS constellation up and running, and [Steve]’s thesis on orbital mechanics eventually got him a job at JPL.

There’s several lifetimes worth of hacks and builds [Steve] went over at the end of his talk. The highlights include a C64 navigation system for a VW bug, a water drop high voltage machine, and a video editing system built from a few optical encoders. This experience with hacking and modding has served him well at work, too: when the star sensor for Deep Space 1 failed, [Steve] and his coworkers used the science camera as a stand in navigation aid.

One final note: Yes, I asked [Steve] if he played Kerbal Space Program. He’s heard of it, but hasn’t spent much time in it. He was impressed with it, though, and we’ll get a video of him flying around the Jool system eventually.

Fail Of The Week: Transparent Circuit Design Is Clearly A Challenge

October 9, 2014 by Kristina Panos 76 Comments

[Frank Zhao] wanted to try his hand at making a transparent circuit board. His plan was to etch the paths with a laser cutter and fill in the troughs with conductive ink. The grooves are ~0.1mm deep x ~0.8mm wide.

He used nickel ink, which is slightly cheaper than silver ink. The ink was among the least of his problems, though. At a measured resistance of several hundred ohms per inch, it was already a deal breaker since his circuit can’t function with a voltage drop above 0.3V. To make matters worse, the valleys are rough due to the motion of the laser cutter and don’t play well with the push-to-dispense nature of the pen’s tip. This caused some overflow that he couldn’t deal with elegantly since the ink also happens to melt acrylic.

[Frank] is going to have another go at it with copper foil and wider tracks. Do you think he would have fared better with silver ink and a different delivery method, like a transfer pipette? How about deeper grooves?

Fail of the Week is a Hackaday column which runs every Thursday. Help keep the fun rolling by writing about your past failures and sending us a link to the story — or sending in links to fail write ups you find in your Internet travels.

Delta Coffee-Brewing Bot

October 9, 2014 by Ethan Zonca 8 Comments

Pour-over coffee brewing is a simple and cheap hands-on alternative to using an automatic coffee maker. Although coffee aficionados often choose pour-over just for the manual brewing experience, this didn’t stop [Elias] from automating his pour-over coffee setup with an elaborate delta-robot: the DeBrew.

The coffee-brewing robot is built around a delta assembly from a 3d printer controlled by a BeagleBone Black. The BeagleBone drives stepper motors, displays information on a small open-source hardware HDMI LCD display, and serves up a web interface to control the machine. The radius of the pouring pattern, water temperature, and grind coarseness of the DeBrew can all be customized though its web interface.

For those who want to build their own pour-over robot, [Elias] has made a SketchUp drawing of the design and all of his Python source code available as open-source. Check out the video after the break where [Elias] explains how his delta pour-over bot works.

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Laser Dog Goggles Make Halloween A Nice Night For A Walk

October 8, 2014 by Kristina Panos 31 Comments

Sure, you could dress your dog up for Halloween in some pre-fab hot dog costume or a little French maid outfit, but what’s the fun in that? Hilarious as it may be, there’s no hack there. [Becky Stern] will help you out of your pet costume rut with the tutorial for her latest creation, laser dog goggles.

First things first: the laser she uses is fairly benign. You can safely stare it down for just under 30 seconds, so your pet should be okay. [Becky] offers other helpful safety suggestions, like covering the delicate battery pack with fabric to avoid scratching damage, and waiting until the adhesives are completely dry before outfitting Rover. But hey, if your dog isn’t into eye wear, don’t force it.

These are based on Doggles brand dog goggles and the Adafruit Trinket. The laser is mounted on a micro servo so that it pivots back and forth, allowing your dog to scan the ground like RoboCop or Terminator. As you might expect, [Becky]’s tutorial includes a comprehensive list of tools and great documentation. Check out her video overview after the break.

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Scrobby’s On Your Roof, Cleaning Your Solar Panels

October 8, 2014 by Kristina Panos 33 Comments

Solar panels are a great, sustainable addition to your home’s energy scheme. They’re bound to get dirty, but they can’t withstand harsh chemicals and still be effective. While there are companies that will come out and clean your installation a few times a year, the service is a recurring cost that adds up quickly. With Scrobby, his entry into The Hackaday Prize, [Stefan] sought to build a highly affordable and sustainable solution that, after installation, requires no dangerous trips back up to the roof.

Scrobby is solar-powered and cleans using rainwater. The user can set and alter the cleaning schedule over Bluetooth from their phone. [Stefan]’s prototype was built around a Teensy 3.0, but he will ultimately use custom boards based on the Freescale KL26. In addition to the Bluetooth module, there are six ultrasonic sensors, rain and temperature sensors, and motor-driven spools for tethered movement.

Make the jump to see Scrobby get his prototype bristles installed and show off his abilities in [Stefan]’s demo video. To register for updates, check out Scrobby’s website. If you hurry, you can donate to Scrobby’s Kickstarter campaign. The question is, who will clean Scrobby’s solar panels?

This project is an official entry to The Hackaday Prize that sadly didn’t make the quarterfinal selection. It’s still a great project, and worthy of a Hackaday post on its own.