Maze-solving Robo Mouse

October 29, 2010 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

Looking for something to build that will be challenging and interesting to laypersons at the same time? Take some inspiration from this maze-solving robot mouse. It take the idea of a line-following robot, and makes it infinitely more cool. The tiny rover uses sensors to map out a physical maze. Once it figure it out, you put it back at the beginning for a speed run to the finish. We’ve embedded the video below showing the whole process. Looks like the speed-run is completed in just under five seconds.

Now that you’ve enjoyed a virtual mouse in a real maze, check out a real mouse in a virtual maze.

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$500 Craigslist Car Competes Against $400,000 Race Car…

March 25, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 23 Comments

…and wins. Well, 3rd in class, but still surprisingly well for such a cheap entry. This is truly a show that with enough elbow grease and headlight fluid anything can be accomplished money just makes it a ton easier.

Everything from the roll cage to the 5 minute gas tank fix was fabricated by [Bill Caswell]. Well — fabricated is a rough term for duct tape at that point, but this is still an awe-inspiring and truly motivational story for any hacker and car enthusiast alike.

[Thanks TJ Walker]

USB Accelerometer Controller

November 20, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 10 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szZv2YYQm0U]

As you can see above, there is no wiimote in that accessory steering wheel. There is, instead, a home-made accelerometer controller that connects to the pc via USB. Based around a PIC 18F2550 and a 2 axis accelerometer, this device is detected by windows as a standard controller. The schematic and source code are available on his website. He says it can also be used as a “motion mouse”. You can see a video of that after the break.

When we first saw the video, we thought it might be the same person as the accelerometer controlled maze project, due to the wiimote steering wheel casing.

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Metal Race Combines Operation And Calculator Game

October 9, 2009 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

metal_race

[Greg] was feeling nostalgic about the game RACE for to TI-83 graphing calculator. In the game, your car is stationary with controls to move the scrolling maze from side to side in order to avoid a crash. He set out to build a physical version of the game with a don’t-touch-the-side concept that reminds us of Operation.

The game board is a wire frame constructed from paperclips then attached to a motorized frame. The vehicle is also metal and is attached to the lens sled from a scrapped CD-ROM drive. The maze scrolls from left to right with up and down vehicle motion controlled by two arcade buttons. An Arduino controls the motors and monitors the button inputs. He has plans to add a buzzer that sounds when the metal car “crashes” in to the wire walls of the maze. We’ve embedded video of the working game after the break. For more build photos take a look at his flickr set. Continue reading “Metal Race Combines Operation And Calculator Game” →