A Simple Servo Hack For An Iron Man Helmet

November 12, 2013 by James Hobson 12 Comments

iron man helmet

[James] makes some seriously awesome Iron Man props. In one of his latest helmet builds, he came across a handy hack to lock the faceplate servo in place.

You see, as awesome as it is walking around like Iron Man all day, you’re going to want to keep your faceplate up for extended periods of time. Simply holding the servo in place electronically is a waste of power, and results in the annoying sound of a servo under strain. On the other hand, cutting power to it will keep it in place momentarily — but it will also start to close under the force of gravity.

The solution is actually quite simple, by reprogramming the Picaxe-08M microcontroller, the board now shorts the motor terminals to hold it in place. This is called magnetic motor braking, and it works by creating a closed loop that makes it much harder to induce a current under load. We once added this feature to a motorized push-scooter — it’d stop on a dime, although you wouldn’t…

Stick around after the break to see an extremely in depth video on how he setup the entire system.

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Robotic Sloth Haunts Your Dreams

November 11, 2013 by James Hobson 52 Comments

robotic sloth

Have you ever seen a wet sloth? They’re pretty scary. If that’s not bad enough, how do you feel about a robotic one?

Named the X-4 “Sloth”, this is one of [222Doc’s] hardest projects to date — a highly experimental quadra-ped that can climb up and across ladders. It makes use of a Lego Mindstorms NXT controller, 8 servo motors for the joints, 4 Power Function Motors for the hands, and a whole lot of Lego. Due to the number of motors, he also had to multiplex the Power Function servos to make it all work!

Sure, it’s Lego, but it was far from an easy project, as [222Doc] estimates he spent well over a hundred hours on it, and it still isn’t complete. He says he’ll never say to himself “this will be easy…” ever again.

Stick around after the break to see it scale this ladder — we wish they sped up the video though, it appears the movement speed is modeled after a real sloth…

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GameBoy Color Costume

November 7, 2013 by James Hobson 7 Comments

game boy costume

Okay, okay. We know it’s November now, but when [John] sent this project in, we just had to share it. He made a fully functional Gameboy Color costume!

The costume makes use of a Raspberry Pi (located on his back), running RetroPie, which is an open source project dedicated to creating a universal console emulator. To create the controllers he used two Teensy microcontrollers in his gloves, setup to emulate two USB keyboards on the Pi. Since he’s using Teensy 3.0, it supports capacitive touch sensing, so all he had to do was wire pieces of aluminum to the input pins to create touch-sensitive metal buttons on the gloves. He then slapped a cheap 10″ LCD from Adafruit onto his chest, stuffed a few 12V LiPo batteries in his pockets, and was ready to be the hit of any party he went to.

The costume was a great success, although a pesky pair of Mario and Luigi kept holding his hands all night… Stick around after the break to see a demonstration video!

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Remote Control FPV Cockpit

November 7, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

cockpit

FPV flying, for how awesome it actually is, still consists of fiddling around with a remote control transmitter and either wearing video goggles or squinting into a screen. Awesome, yes, but not as cool as [Brett Hays]’s enclosed cockpit ground station. It’s a trailerable flight sim that allows you to have the same experience of flying an aircraft over your local terrain without actually leaving the ground.

The centerpiece for this build is a 42 inch flat screen TV that was picked up for $160. This was placed at the front of a large plywood and 2×2 box along with a computer joystick, throttle, and rudder controls.

The pots inside the controls needed to be switched out to match the resistance of the ones inside an old Futaba transmitter. From there, completing the the cockpit was just a matter of fabricating a few panels for a video switcher, gear retract lever, flaps. and RC radio settings.

It’s a truly amazing build and when placed on a trailer towed by [Brett]’s jeep, has the potential to be the closest thing to flying a manned aircraft you can get without a pilot’s license.

Videos of the cockpit in action below.

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POV Airsoft Turret On A RC Plane

October 16, 2013 by James Hobson 28 Comments

To be honest, we’re surprised this hasn’t been tried before — then again, maybe it has! But what we do know is that the folks over at Flite Test have rigged up an electric Airsoft gun to a large RC airplane, aptly called The Kracken.

The planes are a scaled up version of their own FT Versa Wing, which feature two props, giving them the ability of differential thrust. Not only were they able to strap a semi-automatic Airsoft pistol on top, they also have two GoPros filming the action and giving the gunner a POV for shooting down the enemy plane! Don’t worry though, the enemy plane features its own weapon — A permanent marker! This hardly seems fair though, as the closer the marker gets, the easier shooting down the plane will be!

Don’t take our word for it though, check out the awesome video for yourself, after the break.

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Have A Router? Build A Skeeball Machine

October 4, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 17 Comments

skee

There are a lot of hackerspaces and maker labs all around the world that have amazing capabilities for manufacturing. Mills, lathes, drill presses, laser cutters, and CNC routers are no stranger to the any maker’s arsenal of tools. Do you know what isn’t? A DIY Skeeball machine.

This, ‘should be a project for every hackerspace’ project is the brainchild of [fungus amungus] over on Instructables. Despite what you might think about the complexities of building a Skeeball machine, [fungus’] build is actually rather simple, and also easily transportable.

The main material used in the build is seven sheets of 3/4″ plywood. These sheets were cut out on a ShopBot CNC router, and held together with screws in a tab-and-slot construction scheme. The playfield is covered with cork for what we assume is a proper Skeeball experience, and all the electronics controlled by an Arduino and Laptop.

The electronics for this build are very simple – just a few IR distance sensors mounted under the holes. The laptop is running a Processing sketch to display the score on a TV above the cage, allowing for some improvements in the gameplay and scoring system of the original Skeeball machines.

It’s a really fantastic project, and something that we’re sure will be the center of attention wherever [fungus] brings it.

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Rubber Band Blaster Shoots 10 Rounds A Second

October 3, 2013 by James Hobson 18 Comments

rubber band blaster

Office warfare has just been stepped up a notch and it’s time to hide in your cubicles! Enter the Rubber Band Blaster-32, a fully automatic rubber band handgun with switchable barrels for quick reloading.

It features a unique trigger release design that we haven’t seen before. By using a pull string release, [Dave] the inventor was able to load multiple rubber bands per barrel for individual firing, one by one. Hold down the trigger and as the firing wheel spins up, you can start shooting up to 10 rounds a second!

According to [Dave], reload time is around a minute per barrel, but the barrels can be stored loaded and ready to go, so pack a few mags and hang out behind the water cooler. That’s the last time [Bill] from accounting steals my stapler!

To see this puppy in action, sit tight after the break!

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