Turn Signals On Your Head

August 17, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 8 Comments

Several weeks ago, I was in Culver City L.A., and happened to find a hackerspace nearby. It was a pleasant coincidence that the night I chose to randomly show up, was their public meeting which focused more on projects people were doing. The place was packed, I was barely able to squeeze in the door and actually stood outside for part of the meeting, just listening to people talk about what they’re making.

One of the projects I did get to see was this bike helmet built by [Naim]. At first I was amused at the idea, but the idea of putting lights and an accelerometer on a helmet wasn’t that groundbreaking. But as [Naim] kept talking, he caught my attention. For one thing, the one he was showing at the hackerspace seemed to have some built in correction for natural head movement. In this video he does look around a bit without false positives. At the hackerspace he explained the way he monitors the motion to avoid natural movements causing the lights to initialize.

The part I was really interested in was his power. He spent tons of time reducing the power consumption on the base arduino. I believe the number he used was 10 years of standby without causing the battery to vent or die. If you pick up the helmet at any point during that time period, it automatically turns itself on based on the accelerometer’s motion. While the bike helmet itself was a fairly cute idea, I was really trying to get him to send me the information on how he’s saving power. I believe he had to cut the traces to the arduino’s native power management. Hopefully we’ll still hear from him on the details.

Teensy Tiny Arduino Board With An ATtiny85

August 13, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 55 Comments

Planning another Arduino build? If you’re just doing something simple like switching a relay or powering a LED, you might want to think about the Digispark. It’s a very small ATtiny-based Arduino compatible board developed and Kickstarted by [Erik].

The Digispark is based on the very popular Atmel ATtiny85, an 8 pin microcontroller that provides a quarter of the Flash storage and RAM as the ‘official Arduino’ ATMega328p. The lower storage space and RAM doesn’t mean the ’85 is a slouch, though; it can run Arduino code without a hitch, providing six pins for whatever small project you have in mind.

Right now, [Erik]’s Kickstarter is offering three Digisparks for the price of a single Arduino. At that price, it’s cheap enough to leave in a project and not be repurposed after the build is over. [Erik] is also working on a few shields for the Digispark – only RGB LED shield for now, but hopefully he’ll get some more finished by the time the Kickstarter ends.

TangiBot And The Perils Of Open Source Hardware

August 10, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 125 Comments

I’ve commented before on the terrible inefficiency and artificially high expense of the current crop of 3D printers. It simply doesn’t make sense to produce the plastic parts of 3D printer kits on a printer farm when there are literally thousands of Chinese injection molding companies that will make those parts cheaper. It looks like [Matt Strong] heeded my call and now has a Makerbot Replicator clone up on Kickstarter that costs $700 less than the official version. We assume the Makerbot lawyers are having a busy morning.

From the info on the Kickstarter page, [Matt] is used parts from his Makerbot Replicator to design a one-to-one copy. Every part and component on [Matt]’s TangiBot is 100% compatible – and seemingly 100% identical – with the Makerbot Replicator. Like the Replicator, [Matt] is offering a dual extruder version that allows you to print in two colors.

At the bottom of the Kickstarter page, under a section titled, “How is 3DTangible able to make a Replicator Clone?,” you’ll see [Matt]’s reasoning for cloning the MakerBot replicator. He says everything is open source, and, “MakerBot used other open source designs when designing and producing their 3D Printers.” We’ll agree that MakerBot used existing extruder designs (and improved upon them), but MakerBot was not this blatant in borrowing from the RepRap project.

For want of editorializing, I’ve complained about the stupid inefficiency of manufacturing 3D printers with 3D printers before. It was only a matter of time before someone realized current manufacturing techniques can be used to make 3D printers cheaper. [Matt] – dude – you were supposed to clone a RepRap. Makerbot has done some really incredible things for the community such as building Thingiverse and generally being an awesome cheerleader for the 3D printing community. Taking the flagship Makerbot printer and making it cheaper will not make [Matt] any friends on the Internet, but at least the laws of economics are coming to the world of 3D printers.

Thanks [Brad] for sending this in.

[Hacker Dojo] Renovations Kickstarter

August 7, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 46 Comments

The [Hacker Dojo], as you might have suspected, is a California based hacker space that would like your money to help with renovations. Sure, there is nothing wrong with a little dust on the ground, but half of this space was apparently deemed unfit to use for it’s member hackers. For this purpose, they are running a Kickstarter campaign to raise $250,000 for renovations. If this seems a little steep to you, keep in mind that this looks like a pretty massive space by most standards, and land prices aren’t exactly cheap in that area.

If you’re not that generous, (Who can resist the sad faces around 0:35 in the video on their Kickstarter?) they are also offering some sweet prizes. Unfortunately, the original Super Pong Machine signed by creator Al Alcorn is already sold, but for only $2 you can have their eternal gratitude! For something a bit more tangible, they have stickers for $8, shirts for $32, and other prizes up to $10,000 for the most expensive of them, “creative input” on a mural.

You Are A Sack Of Meat, Easily Punctured By Stompy

August 4, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

It may not be as cool as a bear riding a jet ski on a shark in outer space, but Stompy, the giant, rideable walking hexapod comes very close.

A few months ago, we caught wind of a gigantic rideable hexapod project brewing at the Artisan’s Asylum hackerspace in Somerville, MA. The goal was to build an 18-foot wide, two ton rideable hexapod robot, with the side benefit of teaching students how to weld, code, and other subjects related to giant machines and mechatronics.

The Stompy team has now launched a Kickstarter asking for donations to pay for the materials, plasma cutting, and other bits of hardware required to make Stompy a reality. Since there isn’t much information on amateur level hydraulics, the project is open source; the trials of building Stompy will be made public freely available for any other giant robot project.

Team Stompy has successfully built, debugged, and tested a half-size prototype of one hydraulically powered leg that is able to ‘row’ across the floor under its own power. This is a huge achievement for the team and now they’ll move on to the full-size single leg prototype.

You can see the team’s single leg prototype in action after the break.

Continue reading “You Are A Sack Of Meat, Easily Punctured By Stompy” →

Telepresence Robot With Skype Connectivity

August 1, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

[Claire] sent in a project she’s been working on for the past few years. It’s called Botiful and aims to turn any Android phone into a mobile telepresence robot.

Botiful is built around the IOIO Android to Arduino dev board and provides a very clean way to interface your current cell phone with a tiny – and cute – robotic platform. The big feature of Botiful is its integration with Skype; just call a Botiful owner’s phone or tablet, and a panel pops up allowing you to control the robot, tilt the camera up and down, and even robotic yes, no, and ‘dance’ gestures.

Because Botiful is based on the IOIO, there’s a few pins available inside the bot for an I2C bus, PWM control, and even a serial output. It’s also possible to develop your own apps for Botiful, making for a neat mobile robotics platform.,

Right now, Botiful is only for Android but if [Claire] gets $100,000 out of her Kickstarter, she’s promised to add iDevice support. That seems fairly likely, as more than $60,000 has been pledged with three weeks to go. Pretty cool, and we can think of a few very useful asocial applications of the Botiful including running cable in a drop ceiling, and checking out that thing under your car.

Growerbot Turns Gardening Into A Science

July 23, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

A backyard vegetable garden can be a hit-or-miss game. You’re really not sure if your crops are getting enough sun, shade, or water until it’s time for harvest and you see the results of a season of hard work. Growerbot, a hardware project by [Luke] that’s up on Kickstarter now, hopes to change that. This box will pull down how much sun and water your crops should get, and is smart enough to correct any deficiencies.

On board the Growerbot is a soil moisture sensor, light, temperature, and humidity sensors, as well as WiFi connectivity and a few relays to run pumps and turn on grow lights. The idea is to learn from mistakes and achieve optimal growth for everything connected to the Growerbot. If you’re trying to grow some heirloom tomatoes in the midwest, you can go online and get the growth profile for your area and precisely control environmental variables for the perfect crop.

As of now, there are settings for in-ground gardens, raised beds, and hydroponic setups. There’s not much in the way of ideal growing conditions aside from what is available from the USDA, but once Growerbot is released we expect the data to start flowing in.