I Am NXT 3-Point Bend Tester. Please Insert Girder.

December 29, 2013 by Kristina Panos 3 Comments

Learning with visuals can be very helpful. Learning with models made from NXT Mindstorms is just plain awesome, as [Rdsprm] demonstrates with this LEGO NXT 3-point bend tester that he built to introduce freshmen to flexural deflection and material properties. Specifically, it calculates Young’s modulus using the applied force of a spring and the beam’s deflection. [Rdsprm] provides a thorough explanation in the About section of the YouTube video linked above, but the reddit comments are definitely a value-add.

[Rdsprm] built this from the Mindstorms education base set (9797) and the education resource set (9648). Each contestant endures a 5-test battery and should produce the same result each time. The motor in the foreground sets the testing length of the beam, and the second motor pulls the spring down using a gearbox and chain.

This method of deflection testing is unconventional, as [Rdsprm] explains. Usually, the beam is loaded incrementally, with deflection measured at each loading state. Here, the beam is loaded continuously. Vertical deflection is measured with a light sensor that reads a bar code scale on the beam as it passes by. The spring position is calculated and used to determine the applied force.

[Rdsprm] analysed the fluctuation in GNU Octave and has graphs of the light sensor readings and force-deflection. No beams to bend with your Mindstorms? You could make this Ruzzle player instead.

Continue reading “I Am NXT 3-Point Bend Tester. Please Insert Girder.” →

Full-size Lego Car Can Hit 30km/h!

December 21, 2013 by James Hobson 20 Comments

[Steve Sammartino] is a Melbourne entrepreneur, and he had an idea: could it be possible to design and make a functional full-size Lego car?

He sent out a single tweet to try to crowd fund the project:

Anyone interested in investing $500-$1000 in a project which is awesome & a world first tweet me. Need about 20 participants… #startup

Not one, not two, but forty Australians pledged money to start this crazy idea dubbed the #SuperAwesomeMicroProject. With the money raised, [Steve] and [Raul Oaida] purchased over 500,000 Lego pieces and began the build in Romania, where [Raul] lives.

Now before you get too excited, the car is not “fully” made out of Lego. It features real tires and some select load bearing elements. That being said, the entire engine is made completely out of Lego. It features four orbital engines utilizing a total of 256 pistons. The top speed they tested it to was about 20-30km/h — it might go faster, but they didn’t want to risk a catastrophic failure.

Since its completion (it took nearly 18 months to build), it’s been shipped back to a secret location in Melbourne, but the team has made an excellent video showcasing the project. Stick around after the break to see your childhood dreams come to life.

Continue reading “Full-size Lego Car Can Hit 30km/h!” →

Particle System Busy Box Keeps Baby Occupied

December 17, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 20 Comments

Busybox

Any child born today has a bright future ahead of them—mostly consisting of watching glowing rectangles for 80 or 90 years. To give his progeny a jump-start on a lifetime of watching LEDs flicker, [Dan] created a busy box. It’s really just an Arduino, RGB LED matrix, and a programmed particle system, but if we’re fascinated by it, it will probably blow an infant’s mind.

The idea for this busy box originated with an earlier Hackaday post that used an 8×8 matrix of RGB LEDs to create a moving color cloud. [Dan] took this project as a jumping off point and created an infant’s busy box with four modes that are sure to be entertaining.

Inside the is a Rainboduino: an Arduino compatible board capable of driving an 8×8 RGB LED matrix. Also stuffed inside the busy box is a 9V battery, rocker switch for the power, and four arcade buttons that cycle through each mode. The first mode is some sort of ‘plasma cloud’ simulation, the next is a ‘painter’ light display. The final two modes spell out [Dan]’s spawn’s name, and all the numbers and letters of the alphabet.

Continue reading “Particle System Busy Box Keeps Baby Occupied” →

Building Mosaic LEGO Lamps

December 14, 2013 by Kevin Darrah 10 Comments

Looking for a throw back to your childhood, or maybe you just appreciate things that light up and look amazing? Well, [Baron] has a really impressive project for you. Not only does it look stunning and incorporate all of the things we love, it’s actually a pretty novel design. These lamps are built completely out of LEGO Technic pieces, the brand of LEGO that have holes drilled through them so you can build more advanced creations.

[Baron] used these parts with the drilled holes to create a dot matrix in which he placed colored transparent LEGO dots in the holes. The method of creating patterns is very similar to the way it’s done on the “Lite-Brite”. We especially love the theme of these lamps and they would match well with your LEGO mystery box. What’s really great about this tutorial is that it lays down the foundation for LEGO-built lamps that could be more interactive, involve more control (like RGB LEDs), or even introduce some LEGO mechanics!

HDD Driven Table Tennis Robot

December 12, 2013 by James Hobson 12 Comments

Need to hone up your ping pong skills? Nobody to play with? That’s okay, you could always build a hard drive powered ping pong ball launcher!

[Vendel Miskei] must like 3D modeling. He’s drawn up his entire project in some kind of 3D CAD program (the textures look vaguely like Sketchup?). It makes use of two HDDs, a computer power supply, a bunch of PVC pipe, a microwave synchronous motor, and an overhead light projector!

In order for the hard drives to grip the ping pong balls, it looks like [Vendel] removed all but one of the platters, then glued some foam to it, and what looks like the rubber from a table tennis paddle on top. He’s also made use of the original hard drive case by cutting the end off to expose half of the platter. It seems to be pretty effective!

The overhead light projector is actually just used as a convenient weighted stand for the entire project. The recycled microwave motor indexes the balls in a bucket, allowing for a huge number of balls to be queued up! Stick around after the break to see some of the awesome 3D renderings of the project, and the actual table tennis robot playing a game with its master!

Continue reading “HDD Driven Table Tennis Robot” →

Turning A Building Into A Rubik’s Cube

December 12, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 9 Comments

cube

[Javier] must have an awesome academic adviser. For his master’s thesis, he turned a building into a Rubik’s cube.

The Ars Electronic Center in Linz, Austria, is a building with a whole bunch of colored, programmable lights on the facade. [Javier] thought this would make for an excellent Rubik’s cube, and set to work convincing his thesis advisers this idea was possible, and building the hardware and software.

Since only two sides of the building are visible at any one time, [Javier] needed to build a controller for this project. The solution was to build a normal Rubik’s cube and stuff a microcontroller and a FreeIMU in the center. This setup senses the twists and turns of the Rubik’s cube, as well as it’s position in space, effectively creating an interface between the hand and a giant light-covered building.

The Rubik’s cube interface connects to a computer running an app written in openFrameworks. By sensing the direction the cube is oriented, it can automatically display the two sides of the cube facing the user.

There’s a great video showing just how this building-sized Rubik’s cube works. You can check that out below.

Continue reading “Turning A Building Into A Rubik’s Cube” →

Ion Wind Propelled Star Trek Enterprise

December 9, 2013 by James Hobson 28 Comments

[Steven Dufresne] recently demonstrated ion propulsion using high voltage, and someone pointed out it kind of looked like the warp drives on the Star Trek Enterprise… so he went out and bought a model Enterprise and rebuilt his demonstration!

His original video on Ion Winds gives a good summary of the beginning of his experiments. In fact, it’s actually a recreation of a design he saw at the International Symposium on New Energy back in 1996 of the Electrokinetic Apparatus which was patented in 1960.

By creating a high voltage arc of electricity, it appears that the resulting “ion wind” propels the Enterprise with respect to the fixed testing apparatus. Did we mention he made the high voltage power supply himself?

[Steven] also points out that the propulsion might be occurring due to dielectrophoresis, but hasn’t discovered any conclusive evidence to prove that. Even the patent is rather vague on how this works:

The invention utilizes a heretofore unknown electrokinetic phenomenon which I have discovered; namely, that when a pair of electrodes of appropriate form are held in a certain fixed spaced relation to each other and immersed in a dielectric medium and then oppositely charged to an appropriate degree, a force is produced tending to move the pair of electrodes through the medium.

Regardless of how or why it works, it’s a fun video to watch, so make sure you stick around after the break to see it!

Continue reading “Ion Wind Propelled Star Trek Enterprise” →