Flatpack Walker

February 20, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

flatpack

If you’re into robotics, you’re probably already familiar with the 2 motor walker. This design, usually used in B.E.A.M. robotics is a pretty easy way to make a 4 legged walking robot. [Edwindertien] has made the design a little bit easier to build with these flatpack walker plans. He used 4mm thick birch, cut by laser to get his walker into shape, but the design would work with almost any material. His walker is Arduino powered, so it could be programmed for all kinds of behavior, especially if you add some sensors. You can see his bot in action after the break.

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TinkerKit, Physical Computing Toolkit

February 5, 2009 by Eliot 5 Comments

tinkerkit

TinkerKit is a collection of 20 different sensors and 10 actuators. It’s meant to make prototyping of physical computing devices much quicker/easier. The devices plug into a Sensor Hub Arduino shield. There is also a similar hub board that can emulate a keyboard; it translates sensor input directly to key strokes. It looks like a very ambitious project and it’s still in development. We love the idea though and think the wide variety of components will foster better final designs. The TinkerKit site covers the current component lineup and there’s a demo video embedded below.

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Wireless Bootloading

January 28, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 3 Comments

[vimeo= 2976417]

Tired of having to physically connect to your microprocessor to upload new code? Just do it over a wireless connection. [Nathan] takes us through the process of setting up a wireless bootloader for the ATmega168. He is using the XBee base and remote modules for the wireless communication. While people have been doing wireless bootloading with the Arduino already, [Nathan] found that it was common for them to have timeout issues. His remedy was to make his own custom one that is much faster. He’s asking for help though. At this point it is tested and working, but he needs someone with more programming knowledge to help him make it “drop-in” compatible with the Arduino IDE.

Don’t forget to submit projects to our tip line.

Forknife, Android G1 Controlled Robot

January 25, 2009 by Eliot 11 Comments

g1bot

When we first saw [Jeffrey Nelson]’s G1 based robot we immediately wondered what the transport for the controls was. The G1‘s hardware supports USB On-The-Go, but it’s not implemented in Android yet. It turns out he’s actually sending commands by using DTMF tones through the headphone adapter. The audio jack is connected to a DTMF decoder that sends signals to the bot’s Arduino. He wrote client/server code in Java to issue commands to the robot. You can find that code plus a simple schematic on his site. A video of the bot is embedded below.

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Sound Effects Box

January 25, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 9 Comments

At first glance, this may look like a retro styled monome, but it is actually quite different. Merging a Project64 key pad and a Voice Shield for Arduino, [Spikenzie] has made a sound effects box. Each button triggers a unique sound that is stored in the Voice Shield. Of coarse, it will be like a game of memory trying to remember what sound is where. You can see a demo video here.

Automated Shooting Range

January 22, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 28 Comments

targets

[Steve] was discussing airsoft with a friend when he came up with this idea. His friend was lamenting the lack of “action” style targets for their airsoft hobby. [Steve] took this as an opportunity to make his own automated target system. The targets themselves are made from Construx, a paper target and a piece of cloth to stop the airsoft pellets. Controlled by an Arduino and an ioBridge module, it has a web interface so he can switch programs from up range. You can see a video example of him shooting some targets after the break. Next,he should make it twitter where each target was hit.

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Meggy Serial Cable

January 21, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

meggy

We thought the Meggy had some serious potential. The open serial port is ripe for the plucking, but has thus far been fairly unused. Here’s directions on how to make your own serial cable capable of connecting two Meggies. Basically, it is just modifying an audio cable, used to connect CDROMs to the motherboard. The cool thing about this is that the resulting crossover cable should work on any Arduino that is programmed via an FTDI cable.