Pulito: The LEGO Roomba

November 14, 2010 by James Munns 12 Comments

When [Dave] installed hardwood flooring in his house, he needed a solution to help automate the monotonous task of routine sweeping. Rather than go out and buy one of the many existing automated sweep robots out there, he decided to use his passion for LEGO Robotics to design and build a NXT based Swifferbot he calls Pulito. His version implements all the important features such as object avoidance using bump sensors, an IR beacon used to automatically return to the charging station, and a photoresistor to monitor the charge of the battery. [Dave] also includes a nifty LEGO sensor multiplexor, allowing him to save on I/O ports, which is almost worth sharing by itself.

Videos after the break.

Continue reading “Pulito: The LEGO Roomba” →

Gum Ball Maze Updated… Now With Robots!

November 11, 2010 by Mike Szczys 5 Comments

In what is surely becoming an ever-growing Rube Goldberg machine, [Dan] updated his gum ball dispenser to include a robot arm. We looked in on this human lab-rat experiment that rewards successful maze navigation with bubble-gum just about a year ago. As you can seen in the video after the break he’s added several new features to delight users. The original had a maze actuated by an accelerometer and that remains the same. But when the device fires up, the wooden ball is moved to the start of the maze by a Lynxmotion robotic arm. That arm is mounted on rails so it can also move to deliver the gum ball after a successful run. There’s also an anti-jamming feature that shakes the gum ball dispenser to ensure you don’t come up empty.

Whether playing chess or being controlled by a mouse the Lynxmotion has been quite popular lately. [Dan’s] solution uses a vacuum pump to grab onto the spheres (both wooden and gum), similar to the method used with the CNC pick and place from a while back.

Continue reading “Gum Ball Maze Updated… Now With Robots!” →

Monotron Openly Monophonic

November 10, 2010 by Joseph Thibodeau 17 Comments

Famous synth manufacturer Korg has released the schematics (get them here if you don’t like to fill out forms) for their wee little Monotron for all to see and use! This is great news for anyone looking to build up a synth from scratch or to circuit bend their existing monotron. The filter circuits alone would be fun to add to an existing electronics setup.

Granted there are already many examples of monotron mods out there, but that shouldn’t stop you from experimenting with your own variations. Now with the schematics you can make fundamental changes to the architecture of the synth all from the comfort of your own CAD software. Want more oscillators? Distortion? It’s all out there for you to explore. We’re very interested to see how far people will run with this. And big ups to Korg for recognizing the value of hacking!

[via Retrothing]

Continue reading “Monotron Openly Monophonic” →

LEGO Barcode Scanner

November 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 3 Comments

Playing store just got really, really fun because you can now build your own LEGO barcode scanner. As you can see after the break, it works well and it’s fast like a real barcode scanner. Unfortunately it doesn’t scan real barcodes. Or at least not traditional ones. As we learned in the Barcode Challenge, standard barcodes are a set of white and black bars that make up the ones and zeros of the code. This system uses the same white and gray bar system but it seems that it’s only the number of bars that identify an item, not a code created by a particular combination of light and dark. The items above are all scannable because the scanner counts the 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 white beams on the bottom of each package. Still, it’s incredibly clever and a great toy for the young hackers to build if they have a little help.

Continue reading “LEGO Barcode Scanner” →

3D Printing With LEGO

October 18, 2010 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

With 2400 LEGO bricks and a lot of patience, [Will Gorman] built a LEGO 3D printer. It’s similar to a RepRap or a Makerbot, but instead of extruding plastic, it uses pre-extruded building blocks (aka LEGO bricks). The grey wall extending far above the unit itself is a feed magazine which holds the raw material. A Java application takes an MLCad file and translates it into building instructions for the printer. Those instructions are then sent to the device via USB. See it happen after the break.

Now this just needs to be combined with the LEGO sorting machine for an inexhaustible supply of bricks.

Continue reading “3D Printing With LEGO” →

Brightest Day, Darkest Night, Charge It With Arduino’s Light

October 16, 2010 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

To userp the Green Lantern oath is a sacrilege. But calm your rage as you take in this Green Lantern battery and ring project. [Jon] built the power battery portion out of LEGO, but inside you’ll find an added bonus. An Arduino uses a set of LEDs and an RFID reader to bring the object alive. A matching ring contains the RFID tag that activates the lights when held up to the lantern’s lens. You can see this used to charge the power ring (and join in by saying the oath) in the video after the break.

Want to build something like this but don’t have an RFID reader? This would be easy to pull off by adding a magnet to the ring and a hall effect sensor in the lantern. Maybe this will make you rethink your Halloween costume this year.

Continue reading “Brightest Day, Darkest Night, Charge It With Arduino’s Light” →

LEGO Automatic Transmissions

October 13, 2010 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

[AviatorBJP] is building some impressive automatic transmissions using LEGO parts. Your best bet is to check out his YouTube channel as he’s got a slew of videos related to topic. We’ve embedded test footage of first and second generation vehicles as well as the most recent flywheel design after the break. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, let’s look at how the system works.

Each transmission centers on a mechanism that includes hinged arms attached to a central axle. The arms are held together with a rubber band but as the axle spins faster, they overcome the elastic force of the band and begin to pivot outward. This pulls the shaft in one direction, moving its gear up to the next position in the transmission box. To test the system [AviatorBJP] uses a treadmill. A string is attached to the front of the vehicle to keep it in place and the treadmill is switched on to simulate engine power.

This design is quite brilliant, and he’s not keeping it to himself. If you’ve grown tired of the manual LEGO transmission you built, you can follow his multi-video build process to make one of these for yourself.

Continue reading “LEGO Automatic Transmissions” →