[ross], a reader is working on a CD changing and ripping robot. The arm picks up a CD and the platform then rotates, stopping in front of the tray to drop the CD. A JB welded tire pump provides the vacuum pick up, while a brake light acts as a resistor to trick a PC power supply into operation. A Motor Shield beefs up an Arduino in order to drive the servos.
[sprite_tm], whose projects we have covered in the past, took the popular bristlebot to an extreme and created a controllable version. A bristlebot consists of a small vibrating motor mounted with a battery on the head of a toothbrush. These micro-robots buzz around randomly, and he attempted to tame them. He used a platform of twin bristlebots and added an optical sensor from a laser mouse and an ATtiny13. The optical sensor is used to determine the relative motion of the robot, so that the motors can be adjusted accordingly. He also has a video of the bot using the sensor to find a mark on the floor and stay within bounds. Although it isn’t as accurate, it acts like a traditional line-following robot.
Those of you who have played with a Pleo know exactly where this is going. The Pleo averages about 30 minues per 2-3 hour charge. Just swap batteries you say? Nope, the battery packs aren’t available. Fortunately, you can make your own pretty easily. The basic frame is a standard battery pack for 6 AA’s. There are only a few modifications necessary to line up the leads and make it fit once you’ve loaded it with batteries.
We all want our very own personal bagpiper. Playing it ourselves is too much effort, and keeping a full time bagpiper around can be a pain. You have to feed them, clothe them, give them union breaks, etc. Luckily, modern technology has come to the rescue again. You can have your very own robot bagpiper. McBlare plays the bagpipe with technical proficiency that would be impossible for most humans. But lets hear it put some soul into it.
[via BotJunkie]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n8LNxGbZbs]
[Scott] runs gamesbyemail.com. One of his biggest hurdles was producing real random numbers for the games. He had tried various methods like math.random and random.org, but kept getting complaints about the quality of the random numbers. His solution was to build an automatic dice roller. His initial attempts were made from Legos and were never quite reliable enough to be put into the system. The Dice-O-Matic however has proven to be a random number generating monster. It is 7 feet tall and capable of 1.3 million dice rolls per day. Wow.
[thanks Troy]
[blip.tv ?posts_id=2133808&dest=-1]
After making a few units for the new Discovery t.v. show called Weaponizers, [Jeremy] decided to release this video showing how to modify a golf cart for radio control. The radio and controller are basic off the shelf R/C gear, running some linear actuators.
[thanks Divide]
At Berkeley, they’re coming up with new ways to make their itty bitty hexapods. These are basically tiny flatpacked bodies cut from cardboard. The end goal is to not only make them smaller and faster to build, but to reduce the friction in the joints. You can download the files on their site as well as download movies of them in action. For a larger and somewhat less complicated flatpacked robot, check out the flatpacked 2 motor walker.
[thanks Thuli]
