Push Your Toy Train No More, With This Locomotive!

February 11, 2025 by Jenny List 8 Comments

One of the most popular evergreen toys is also one of the simplest, wooden track with push-along trains. We all know the brand name, and savvy parents know to pick up the much cheaper knock-off because the kid won’t know the difference. But a really cool kid shouldn’t have to push their train around by hand, and thus [Lauri] has given the wooden track a real, powered, locomotive.

In the 3D printed chassis goes a small geared motor driving one axle, with an ESP32 and a motor driver taking care of the smarts. Power comes from an 18650 cell, which almost looks like the right scale for a fake steam boiler. The surprise with this train comes in the front axle, this machine has steering. We’re curious, because isn’t the whole point of a train that the track directs it where it needs to go? Or perhaps a little help is required in the absence of a child’s guidance when it comes to points. Either way, with remote control we guess there would be few kids who wouldn’t want one. We certainly do.

RC Cars With First Person Video, All With An ESP32

February 6, 2025 by Jenny List 8 Comments

Those little ESP32-CAM boards which mate the WiFi-enabled microcontroller with a small parallel-interface camera module have been with us for years, and while they are undeniably cool to play with, they sometimes stretch the available performance in trying to process and stream video. [Mattsroufe] has made a very cool project with one of them, not only managing to stream video from a small model car, but also to control the steering and motor by means of servos and a little motor driver.

Sadly it’s not entirely a stand-alone device, as the ESP32 streams video to a web server with some Python code to handle the controls. The server can aggregate several of them on one page though, for perhaps a little real-life quad-screen Mario Kart action if you have enough of the things. We can see that this idea has plenty of potential beyond the mere fun of driving a toy car around though, but to whet your appetite there’s a demo video below.

We’ve seen enough of the ESP32-cam before, but perhaps more as a photographic device.

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Tensegrity construction with Adafruit led strands

The Jell-O Glow Tensegrity Toy You Didn’t Know You Needed

January 30, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 3 Comments

If you’re looking to add a pop of glowing whimsy to your workspace, check out this vibrant jiggly desk toy by [thzinc], who couldn’t resist the allure of Adafruit’s NOODS LED strands. [thzinc]’s fascination with both glowing LEDs and levitating tensegrity designs led to an innovative attempt to defy gravity once again.

The construction’s genius is all about the balance of tension across the flexible LED strands, with three red ‘arms’ and a blue ‘hanger’ arm supporting the central hub. [thzinc]’s early designs faced print failures, but by cleverly reorienting print angles and refining channel designs, he achieved a modular, sturdy structure. Assembly involved careful soldering, tension adjustments, and even a bit of temporary tape magic to perfect the wobbling equilibrium.

But, the result is one to applaud. A delightful, wobbly desk toy with a kind of a Jell-O vibe that dances to your desk’s vibrations while glowing like a mini neon sign. We’ve covered tensegrity constructions in the past, so with a little digging through our archives you’ll be able to find some unique variations to build your own. Be sure to read [thzinc]’s build story before you start. Feel free to combine the best out there, and see what you can bring to the table!

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Modding A Toddler’s Ride-On For More Grunt

January 17, 2025 by Lewin Day 6 Comments

Kids love their Power Wheels and other ride-on electric cars. Indeed, [Ashwin]’s son was digging his little ATV, but soon found that some care was needed on the pedal. It had no proper throttle control, instead turning the motor hard on or off and scaring the poor kid in the process. The solution? A bit of an upgrade from some off-the-shelf electronics.

Inspiration came from—where else—the /r/PowerWheelsMods subreddit. The main tweak was to install an off-the-shelf soft-start circuit to stop the motor banging hard on when the accelerator was pushed. Instead, when the accelerator is pushed, the module gradually ramps up its PWM output to the motor to smooth out the acceleration curve. This would make the ATV much easier to ride.

Implementing this off-the-shelf solution did take some doing, though. The first attempt ended with a short circuit and a blown fuse. However, [Ashwin] wasn’t deterred—a trip back online to do some research did the trick. With some careful wiring that took into account the crude forward and reverse circuit, [Ashwin] had a much smoother running ride-on for his son.

While most of the mods we see for these little ride-ons are all about power and speed, we do appreciate the occasional attempt to make the things a bit safer for younger drivers. If you’re brewing up your own fancy kidmobile at home—don’t hesitate to let us know!

Turning GLaDOS Into Ted: A Tale Of A Talking Toy

January 14, 2025 by Heidi Ulrich 7 Comments

What if your old, neglected toys could come to life — with a bit of sass? That’s exactly what [Binh] achieved when he transformed his sister’s worn-out teddy bear into ‘Ted’, an interactive talking plush with a personality of its own. This project, which combines the GLaDOS Personality Core project from the Portal series with clever microcontroller tinkering, brings a whole new personality to a childhood favorite.

[Binh] started with the basics: a teddy bear already equipped with buttons and speakers, which he overhauled with an ESP32 microcontroller. The bear’s personality originated from GLaDOS, but was rewritten by [Binh] to fit a cheeky, teddy-bear tone. With a few tweaks in the Python-based fork, [Binh] created threads to handle touch-based interaction. For example, the ESP32 detects where the bear is touched and sends this input to a modified neural network, which then generates a response. The bear can, for instance, call you out for holding his paw for too long or sarcastically plead for mercy. I hear you say ‘but that bear Ted could do a lot more!’ Well — maybe, all this is just what an innocent bear with a personality should be capable of.

Instead, let us imagine future iterations featuring capacitive touch sensors or accelerometers to detect movement. The project is simple, but showcases the potential for intelligent plush toys. It might raise some questions, too.

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Gaze Upon This Omni-directional Treadmill’s Clever LEGO Construction

January 7, 2025 by Donald Papp 16 Comments

Want to see some wildly skillful LEGO construction? Check out [Banana Gear Studios]’ omni-directional treadmill which showcases not only how such a thing works, but demonstrates some pretty impressive problem solving in the process. Construction was far from straightforward!

A 9×9 grid of LEGO shafts all turning in unison is just one of the non-trivial design challenges.

In principle the treadmill works by placing an object on a bed of identical, rotating discs. By tilting the discs, one controls which edge is in contact with the object, which in turn controls the direction the object moves. While the concept is straightforward, the implementation is a wee bit more complex. LEGO pieces offer a rich variety of mechanical functions, but even so, making a 9×9 array of discs all rotate in unison turns out to be a nontrivial problem to solve. Gears alone are not the answer, because the shafts in such a dense array are a bit too close for LEGO gears to play nicely.

The solution? Break it down into 3×3 self-contained chunks, and build out vertically with gimbals to take up the slack for gearing. Use small elastic bands to transfer power between neighbors, then copy and paste the modular 3×3 design a few times to create the full 9×9 grid. After that it’s just a matter of providing a means of tilting the discs — which has its own challenges — and the build is complete.

Check out the video below to see the whole process, which is very nicely narrated and illustrates the design challenges beautifully. You may see some similarities to Disney’s own 360° treadmill, but as [Banana Gear Studios] points out, it is a technically different implementation and therefore not covered by Disney’s patent. In an ideal world no one would worry about getting sued by Disney over an educational LEGO project posted on YouTube, but perhaps one can’t be too careful.

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The Helicone: Toy Or Mathematical Oddity?

January 7, 2025 by Al Williams 7 Comments

We always enjoy videos from the [Mathologer], but we especially liked the recent video on the Helicone, a toy with a surprising connection to mathematics. The toy is cool all by itself, but the video shows how a sufficiently large heliocone models many “natural numbers” and acts, as [Mathologer] puts it, acts as “microscope to probe the nature of numbers.”

The chief number of interest is the so-called golden ratio. A virtual model of the toy allows easy experimentation and even some things that aren’t easily possible in the real world. The virtual helicone also allows you to make a crazy number of layers, which can show certain mathematical ideas that would be hard to do in a 3D print or a wooden toy.

Apparently, the helicone was [John Edmark’s] sculpture inspired by DNA spirals, so it is no surprise it closely models nature. You can 3D print a real one.

Of course, the constant π makes an appearance. Like fractals, you can dive into the math or just enjoy the pretty patterns. We won’t judge either way.

We’ve seen math sequences in clocks that remind us of [Piet Mondrian]. In fact, we’ve seen more than one of those.

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