easter

4 Articles

What Can You Learn From An Eggbot?

April 17, 2019 by 32 Comments

An eggbot is probably the easiest introduction to CNC machines that you could possibly hope for, at least in terms of the physical build. But at the same time, an eggbot can let you get your hands dirty with all of the concepts, firmware, and the toolchain that you’d need to take your CNC game to the next level, whatever that’s going to be. So if you’ve been wanting to make any kind of machine where stepper motors move, cut, trace, display, or simply whirl around, you can get a gentle introduction on the cheap with an eggbot.

Did we mention Easter? It’s apparently this weekend. Seasonal projects are the worst for the procrastinator. If you wait until the 31st to start working on your mega-awesome New Year’s Dropping Laser Ball-o-tron 3000, it’s not going to get done by midnight. Or so I’ve heard. And we’re certainly not helping by posting this tutorial so late in the season. Sorry about that. On the other hand, if you start now, you’ll have the world’s most fine-tuned eggbot for 2020. Procrastinate tomorrow!

I had two main goals with this project: getting it done quickly and getting it done easily. That was my best shot at getting it done at all. Secondary goals included making awesome designs, learning some new software toolchains, and doing the whole thing on the cheap. I succeeded on all counts, and that’s why I’m here encouraging you to build one for yourself.

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Glowing Easter Eggs More Fun Than A Dye Job

April 15, 2013 by 9 Comments

glowing-easter-eggs

This is a project to keep in mind for the kids next Easter. It uses electronics to light up your eggs instead of dying them (translated).

The project still has one foot in the old tradition as it starts by blowing out the eggs. The larger hole on the bottom, which was used to evacuate the yoke an albumen, ends up being just the right size to insert an LED. You could simply hook these up to a battery and resistor, but [Rene] decided to add some functionality by hiding an Arduino board in the fake grass of the Easter basket. This way the way the RGB LEDs can glow, blink, and rotate through different colors. And the foil covered chocolate bunnies aren’t just for show. He wired them up to the I/O pins of the Arduino to use as a switch. When they’re both placed on the same piece of foil it completes the circuit and starts the light show. See for yourself in the clip after the jump.

Of course for the older kids you’re going to need something more complicated to keep their attention.

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CNC Egg Decorating

March 30, 2010 by 17 Comments

Lacking the patience to do it by hand, GeekPhysical built a CNC machine to decorate Easter eggs. We do mean eggs from chickens used to celebrate the Christian holiday of Easter, not hidden nuggets in technology used to amuse geeks. The results seen in their video (after the break) are quite impressive considering that the printing medium is not perfectly round nor perfectly smooth. The hardware design is ingenious; one servo rotates the egg, another is mounted on one side of the egg and moves a track in an arc so that a felt-tipped pen will follow the curve of the shell. The pen moves in an out along that track through the use of a third servo physically removed by a Bowden cable. We were able to get a closer look at the hardware via their Flickr set and the device is indeed Arduino powered. This fun build is a great way to celebrate the season!

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Easter Egg Challenge

October 12, 2009 by 72 Comments

Beer

Often, hardware designers include nonfunctional additions into designs to make them feel more personal. Commonly known as easter eggs, these additions can often go unnoticed by the public for years. While taking apart an Atari San Francisco Rush: The Rock sound board, reader [Jason] noticed a hidden message on the PCB (see above). Other more recent hardware easter eggs include the inside of the Zune HD, which has the inscription “For our Princess” to commemorate a development team member who passed away, or the Amiga 1000 which features the signatures of the design team on the inside if the case (Pictures after the break).

What we want from you: We want to see the best HARDWARE easter eggs you have found or seen. Leave us a comment with a video, picture, or article that explains what you found, and possibly the background story behind it. Anyone can google easter eggs, and we all know about the easter eggs all over DVDs, video games, etc, but we prefer the kind you find when you are busy voiding your hardwares warranty.

Edit: good catch, that was the Amiga 1000 not an Atari 1000. Thanks to all the commentors.

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