Atmel

115 Articles

Robotic Beer Launching Fridge

February 26, 2007 by 13 Comments

This robotic beer launching fridge is one of those ultimate projects that you are guaranteed to see posted all over the internet today. Robots, beer, the possibility of maiming innocent bystanders… what’s not to love? I’d be lying if I said my mechanical engineering friends and I weren’t contemplating this at many points during college. Kudos to John W. Cornwell of Duke for actually pulling it off. The mini-fridge has three servos: one to elevate beer from the 10 can magazine, one to rotate the turntable, and one for cocking. Spring power is used to catapult the beer across the room. The brains of the system is an ATMega8535 and 3 intelligent H-bridges. It’s controlled by an adapted key-less entry system. It looks like they’ve wisely placed it pointing away from the tv, but I don’t know if referring to your apartment as the “man-pit” is nearly as smart. Check out some of John’s other projects: the Mentos booby-trap and the touch activated paintball gun.

[via Dirk]

Design Challenge Prize Update Delta

November 29, 2006 by 12 Comments


OK guys, I can finally announce all of the prizes for the Hack-A-Day Design Challenge! I’ve been waiting to get things in hand before announcing them all – Everything’s arrived, and it’s a pretty sweet haul.

  1. Fabienne’s Hack-A-Day iPod Nano
  2. MAKE Controller
  3. MAKE Daisy mp3 player kit
  4. SUMO Omni Beanbag
  5. 120 LED Assortment Package

If you’re busy, maybe you just don’t know how sweet some of this stuff is.

Fabienne kindly consented to give up her very own Hack-A-Day engraved iPod nano. It’s been used and the inside thoroughly inspected, but it’s otherwise unmodded.

MAKE gave us one of their new open source MAKE controllers – I opened up the one they sent and it’s pretty sweet. The 55Mhz Atmel SAM7X CPU is on a daughter-board, and the main board has terminals for every connection you could want, along with USB, Ethernet, CAN, Serial… They also sent along one of their new Daisy MP3 player kits. Unlike the controller, this one has to be put together.

Andrew over at sumolounge.com hooked us up with one of their SUMO Omni bean bags. This thing is awesome. It’s the biggest bean bag I’ve ever seen. (I may have to buy the winner another one, my daughter has been going nuts over it )

Finally, [Alan] of Alan’s Electronic Projects sent us a set of his 120 LED assortments along with a handy resistor pack for using them with 5vdc to get things going. The set even includes some 13000mcd white LEDs for making your own portable tanning device.

How do you win all this sweet stuff? You send in a design! You’ve got until December 25th!

Thinkpad Style Keyboard Light

October 30, 2006 by 14 Comments


[Sprite_tm] keeps coming up with nice work. This time he sent in his thinkpad style keyboard LED lighting solution for his toughbook. I know, you’re thinking… ‘it’s a LED…’ He used an ATtiny13 to monitor the caps lock LED. If it’s operated two times in succession, the LED is turned on and off. Nice, clean and effective.

[By the way, Part 2 of my diy projector how-to is up on engadget. Look for part 3 later Tuesday.]