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243 Articles

Developers posing with the J-Deite Quarter

Meet J-Deite Quarter, The 4-Foot-Tall Transformer

October 25, 2014 by 7 Comments

There’s just something about the idea of robots turning into everyday objects that fascinates us all. It seems Japan outdoes the world in that category, and the J-Deite project is no exception. J-Deite Quarter is the first transforming robot to come from the collaborative project between  [Kenji Ishida] of Brave Robotics, [Watur Yoshizaki] of Asratec Corp., and Tomy Co. Ltd. If Brave Robotics sounds familiar, that’s because this isn’t the first transforming robot [Kenji Ishida] has produced, nor the first featured on Hackaday.

The J-Deite Quarter weighs 77lbs (35kg) and can run for an hour on a single battery charge. It’s joints are powered by Futaba servos. It is controlled by the proprietary V-SIDO OS designed by [Watur Yoshizaki]. As a robot, it stands at 4.25 feet (1.3m). It walks at a rather slow speed of 0.6mph (1km/hr). It has several points of articulation; it can bend its arms and flex its fingers. In less than 30 seconds, the robot transforms into an equally long two-seat sports car with a maximum speed of just over 6mph (10km/hr). Overall, the J-Deite Quarter is no speed demon, but it is noteworthy for being functional in both forms.

The web site has a cute backstory featuring a green meteorite that allows the “real” J-Deiter to communicate with the developers trying to create a robot in its image. Along with the video, it resembles a marketing ploy for a toy, which could explain Tomy’s involvement. After all, Tomy, along with Hasbro, developed the original Transformers toy line. Unfortunately, the J-Deiter Quarter is just a prototype, with no plans for mass production at this time. Instead, the project’s focus is on making a bigger and better J-Deiter. There are plans for a J-Deiter Half (8-foot-tall) to be developed by 2016, with the final goal of creating a 16-foot-tall transforming robot by 2020.

Enjoy the video that shows what J-Deite Quarter is capable of (with added sound effects, of course) after the break. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a sudden hankering to watch some Transformers and Voltron cartoons.

[via SimpleBotics]

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Garage Door Opener

Capacitive Garage Door Opener Hides Behind Your Dash

October 25, 2014 by 26 Comments

[Pyrow] wanted to upgrade his garage door opener remote. It worked just fine, but changing those tiny batteries out can be an inconvenience. Plus, the remote control was taking up valuable storage space and would always rattle around while driving. [Pyrow] decided to make use of an Omron E2K-F10MC2 capacitive touch sensor to fix these issues.

[Pyrow’s] circuit still makes use of the original remote control. He just added some of his own components to get it to do what he wanted. The circuit is powered by the car’s battery, so it never needs a battery replacement. The circuit is protected with a fuse and the power is regulated to prevent electrical spikes from burning up the original remote control. The actual circuit is pretty simple and uses mostly discrete components. It’s all soldered onto proto board to keep it together. He only had to solder to three places on the original remote control in order to provide power and simulate a button press.

Next, [Pyrow] took his dash apart. He used double-sided tape to attach the touch sensor to the back of the dash.  After securing the electronics in place with tape, he now has a working hidden garage door opener. Full schematics are available in the writeup linked above. Also, be sure to watch the demonstration video below.

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Destroy Your Volkswagen Touch Adapter For Bluetooth’s Sake

October 23, 2014 by 52 Comments

[Mansour]’s Volkswagen Polo has a touch-screen adapter with voice recognition to control a bunch of the car’s features, but he wanted it gone.

Voice control of your car sounds like a great thing, right? Well, the touch adapter blocked other Bluetooth devices from connecting directly to the car, and prevented him from streaming music from his phone while he’s connecting it through the adapter. But if you simply throw the adapter away, the car won’t connect to any Bluetooth devices.

So what options are left? Other than a couple of expensive or complicated options, [Mansour] decided to open up the device and desolder the Bluetooth chip and antenna. Admittedly, it’s not the deepest hack in the world, but we’ve gotta give [Mansour] credit for taking the technology into his own hands.

Disabling unwanted functionality is not uncommon these days. Who hasn’t stuck tape over their laptop’s camera or kept an RFID card in a Faraday wallet? What other devices have you had to “break” in order to make them work for you?

A Mobile Radio Power Controller

October 10, 2014 by 24 Comments

[Pete], a.k.a. [KD8TBW] wanted to install his Yaesu radio in his car. From experience, he knew that having a radio in a car inevitable led to leaving it on once in a while, and this time, he wanted a device that would turn his rig on and off when the key was in the ignition. He ended up building a mobile radio power converter. It takes the 12V from the car when the alternator is running, and shuts everything off when the engine has stopped.

The Yaesu radio in question – an FT-8800 does have an automatic power off feature, but this is a terrible way of doing things. There is no way to turn the radio back on, and the radio must be left in a non-scanning mode.

In what he hopes to be his last design in EagleCAD, [Pete] whipped up a board featuring an ATtiny85 that measures the voltage in the car; when it’s ~14V, the alternator is working, and the radio can be switched on. When it drops to ~12V, it’s time to turn the radio off. It’s a great project, and with the 3D printed case, it can easily be shoved inside the console. Video below.

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Open Source Electric Car, CarBEN, Produces No Carbon

June 11, 2014 by 74 Comments

Raise your hand if you have designed and built a full size car…. Nobody? Doing so would be a huge task considering car manufactures have thousands of people involved with designing and building a car model. Eager beaver [Neil] has stepped up and taken on that challenge. He’s started an open source project he’s calling the CarBEN.

The plan is for the car to hold 5 people comfortably while being just a tad larger than a Scion xA. The body is made of foam and will be covered with fiberglass. The car is designed in a shape that tapers in towards the rear of the car and has features like a smooth underside and covered wheels to create a low coefficient of drag. The goal is for this beauty to get 300-400 miles per charge with an Miles Per Gallon Equivalent of over 224.

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A Simple, Overkill, Electric Car

November 18, 2013 by 47 Comments

If you’re building an electric car nowadays, you’re probably looking at taking a normal, gas-powered car and replacing the engine and transmission with an electric motor and batteries. [Gahaar] thought this is a rather dumb idea; all the excesses of an internal combustion-powered car, such as exhaust, cooling, differential, and fuel storage is completely unnecessary. Building a new electric car from the frame up is a vastly more efficient means of having your own electric car. So that’s what he did.

[Gahaar] build his new chassis around a single box made of 3mm aluminum sheet. Attached to this box are two AC induction motors at the rear of the car, negating the need for a differential, with 45 lithium cells stuffed into the middle of the box. There’s no gearbox here, greatly reducing the complexity of the build, and with the batteries providing 145V and 100Ah, this simple car has more than enough power for a lot of fun.

The suspension and steering were taken from a wrecked car, in this case a Mazda MX5, or Miata for those of us in North America. The Miata suspension easily unbolts from the frame of the wrecked car, and with just a little bit of welding can easily be attached to the new electric chassis.

Even though [Gahaar]’s car is basically just a bit of aluminum, motors, suspension, and batteries, he’s getting some awesome performance out of it; he estimates a top speed of 100mph with about 60 miles per charge. It’s an awesome way to get around the farm, and with a custom fiberglass body, we can easily see this being one of the coolest electric vehicles ever made.

Printing An Aston Martin DB4

August 2, 2013 by 27 Comments

CAR

With 3D printers finding their way into the workshops of makers the world over, it was bound to happen sooner or later. [Ivan Sentch] is making an Aston Martin DB4 with a 3D printer.

Before we board the hype train, let’s go over what this is project is not: [Ivan] isn’t making any metal parts with his 3D printer, and the chassis and engine will be taken from a donor car. Also, the printed plastic parts won’t actually make their way into the final build; the 3D printed body panels will be used to pull the final panels in fiberglass. That being said, it’s still an impressive undertaking that’s going to cost [Ivan] $2250 NZD in plastic alone.

[Ivan]’s body panels are made by taking a DB4 model in Solidworks, slicing it up into 105mm squares, giving each square extruded sides, and finally securing them to the wooden form after the parts are printed. There’s still an awful lot of work to be done once the 3D printed parts are all glued together, but it’s still an amazingly impressive – and cheap – way to create a replica of a very famous automobile.