MakerFaire K.C.: Incredible Wasp Wings

June 28, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

First off let me say that the Redbull contest has consumed ALL of my time and I haven’t been able to get these Makerfaire coverage posts out as quickly as I’d hoped. Please be patient, there are several more to come I promise.

As I was walking around, I glanced up and saw a really cool set of wasp wings on a mannequin flapping away. The motion was quite nice, but I was really blown away when they folded down to a different position when not in use. I managed to track down the creator at the even and asked him some questions.

[Jordy] was commissioned to build these as part of a costume. He started by just googling ornithopter designs and ended up coming up with a rather nice contraption. Many of the bits are 3d printed specifically to his needs, including the drive gears. This must have saved tons of time and effort. As you can see in the video after the break, the motion is really nice and the fact that they fold down is really cool.

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RickRolled By RedBull

June 27, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

As you’ve already seen, we’ve been invited to participate in the Redbull creation contest. While we were deep into our work today, hacking things apart and soldering things together while trying not to blow ourselves up, we received a second package! It had a hand written note explaining that this was the last of its type, reserved for only the most awesome teams. We got the very last one.

In this box was another bullduino. This one had a shield on it with a fancy display in the middle and a few scattered LEDs. Upon plugging it in, we were greeted with a “simon” style game that you can play using the resistive touch pads on the pcb. You can see the result in the video above. Also, my nose doesn’t work very well, but my wife informed me that the red bull mail smelled like bacon. I’m unsure if this was intentional or not.

Our project is coming long nicely. Preliminary tests today yielded fantastic results with minimal sub dermal hematoma. We look forward to unveiling this beast to the public. Stay tuned!

An Etsy For Electronics

June 27, 2012 by Brian Benchoff 29 Comments

A few months ago we caught wind of Tindie, a site that gives builders, tinkerers, makers, and hackers a place to sell their projects. Well, Tindie has gone live and it looks to be cooler than we expected.

Already there are some pretty awesome projects available on Tindie such as a truly awesome MIDI keyboard, an Arduino synthesizer, and even a robot that plays Angry Birds.

In addition to giving makers a place to sell their wares, Tindie also offers a place to post want ads. If you have an idea for a project but don’t have the skills or tools to pull it off, Tindie is just the place for you. Any builder is free to make a bid for jobs that include a sonic screwdriver TV-b-gone or a Pip boy

Hopefully, Tindie will pick up some steam and fill the role of a much geekier Etsy. For now, though, we eagerly await the eventual Tindie/regretsy mashup showcasing perpetual motion machines and alien overlord detectors.

HackaDay Is Entering In The Redbull Creation Contest

June 26, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

When I returned from MakerFaire Kansas City I was very pleased to find a Bullduino waiting on my doorstep! Hackaday has been accepted into the first round of the Redbull Creation Contest. I’m doing the physical building while the other writers are consulting for this round. I’m also pulling people from around me here at SquidFoo (my local hackerspace) that can help.

Today, I got lucky enough to run into [Tony Sherwood] from MakerBot. I told him my idea and he eagerly volunteered to lend his brains and his brawn… as well as his Makerbot Replicator. He’s been extremely helpful so far offering very good ideas on how we can get this thing operational as fast as possible.

I’m not going to share exactly what we’re building yet. I can tell you it will not be the most complex project, but it will be really fun, and most likely dangerous. We’re starting today, which means we have very little time to build. Lets hope we can make something interesting enough to go to round two!

Strange Login Request At Hackaday.com

June 25, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 43 Comments

We’ve received numerous messages about this new login popup on our site. This is NOT our doing. It is most likely some ancient script from our ancient template that has finally become outdated or expired. We’re working on a resolution. If you hit cancel it will go away.

We are truly sorry for the inconvenience and are working to get rid of this immediately.

Update: It is gone. It was a site statistics script from sitemeeter that suddenly had issues on many sites. We try VERY HARD to make sure our advertisements are unobtrusive since we rely on those ads to support us. Anything that gets in the way of you reading our site is bad.

NC Maker Faire 2012: Robot Hockey

June 21, 2012 by Jeremy Cook 9 Comments

Robot combat has inspired makers probably since the first one was conceived. Whether it’s an epic struggle between two future superpowers, or simply a friendly match of robot hockey, it’s always fun to watch. NC Maker Faire 2012 was no exception as [Carolina Combat Robots] had a small arena with remote control robots going at it. The matches were incredibly popular, and I was glad to be able to see some of it from my table next door!

Check out the video after the break for some footage of these ‘bots in action! Continue reading “NC Maker Faire 2012: Robot Hockey” →

AVC From The Vehicle’s Perspective

June 20, 2012 by Mike Szczys 4 Comments

Team 0x27 was the winner of this year’s AVC, the Autonomous Vehicle Contest put on by SparkFun Electronics. You’ll find video of the two runs from this entry (the third run did not finish). We love it that there’s an on-board camera recording both video and sound of the race from the vehicle’s point of view. They haven’t updated their team page yet but we’re sure they will once their done celebrating.

On the first run the team opted not to use obstacle avoidance, and here you can see it annihilating one of the barrels from the course (this is the second one it took out with hulk-like rage). These collisions didn’t keep it from finishing the circuit. On the second run it didn’t slam into anything. Because of the hoop-deduction (a bonus for threading the needle during the run) the official time came in at 2.08 seconds. Still, the unadjusted time of 32.08 seconds is a course record and beat the fastest finisher from the airborne group of compeititors. Nice.

Seriously, this video just cracks us up!

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