Robot Dares You To Snatch The Pebble From This Flower

June 29, 2012 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

This pleasant-looking plant may try to take your hand off if you’re not careful. The robot flower (translated) includes sensors that cause the petals to move in reaction to external stimuli.

You can just make out the distance sensors as black rectangles on two of the petals. These let the flower track an object by rotating the flower stem. But if they determine the object is getting a bit too close for comfort, the servo motor on the back of each petal will cause the flower to suddenly clamp shut.

The video after the break starts off with an in-depth look at the hardware that went into the project. An Arduino clone called the GRoboduino makes this project a lot easier since it has a bunch of extras on the board aimed at things like sensors and servo motors. The mounting technique for the petal-powering-servos is quite attractive, and we enjoy the Snapple lid (probably not the actual brand but you get the picture) which has been coated with yellow felt for the center of the bloom. The final look is normal enough to fit in with home decor, but it still has enough geek in it to melt our hacker hearts.

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Flower With PCB Pot And LED Blossoms

January 3, 2011 by Mike Szczys 12 Comments

[Johannes Agricola] recently held a workshop at the Peace Mission in Goettingen, Germany where he shared his RGB LED flowers. The small round PCB hosts an ATmega88 microcontroller which is running the V-USB stack so that the unit can be controlled by a computer. Each flower blossom is an RGB LED connected with four enameled wires which, when twisted together, make up the stem of the flower. [Johannes] took tons of pictures during the assembly while offering soldering advice along side the illustrations. The PCB is single-sided helping make this a great project for someone trying out surface mount component soldering for the first time. Or if you want something a little more free-formed try out this lemon-juice powered LED flower.

Simple, Elegant, Lemon Battery

April 5, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 16 Comments

[Madaeon] pointed us toward this entry for the Instructables Epilog challenge. While this may not be extremely complex, or have as many wires as our typical post, it is a fantastic example of thinking outside the box. How many lemon batteries have we seen? A lot. This one stands out as being more elegantly displayed and functional at the same time. In its final form, you sprinkle lemon juice on it’s petals and it lights up. If you ever find yourself in the position of teaching someone about electronics, remember this project. Sometimes aesthetics can make a dull simple project take on a life of its own.