Ball Bot Constructed From Power Tools And Pet Toys

April 11, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

ballbot

Hackaday forum member [machinelou] says he’s been fascinated with remote controlled hamster balls for quite some time. Inspired by a ball bot he saw on a BBC show, he finally picked up a 12″ plastic ball and got to work.

He used a small drill to provide the power required to roll the ball, and an Arduino is used as the brains of the device. This is his first major project outside of simple I/O and servo control, so he’s taking things slowly. While all this is a bit new to him, he already has things up and running to a degree as you can see in the video below. In its current state, the ball is programmed to roll forward and backwards for a few seconds before going back to sleep.

His future plans include adding a servo-controlled weight to allow him to steer the ball as well as using a pair of Zigbee modules in order to control the ball remotely.

It’s a neat little project, and definitely one that would be a fan favorite among kids. Stick around to see a quick video of his bot’s progress thus far.

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IR Remote Control Jammer Makes You Lord Of The Livingroom

April 7, 2011 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Bring communications jamming technology into your TV viewing experience by building this infrared LED driver circuit. You’re probably familiar with the TV-B-Gone, which let’s you turn off any television at the touch of a button. But what if you actually want to watch the program that’s currently on the screen when the person with remote-in-hand doesn’t? That’s where this little marvel comes in.

[KipKay’s] IR jammer uses a 555 timer to constantly transmit infrared traffic. The signals it’s sending out don’t correspond to commands the TV (or any other IR remote-controlled device) will respond to. But if the light intensity is strong enough, they will interfere with any signals coming in from a remote or even from a TV-B-Gone. [KipKay] wisely hides this circuit inside of another remote control so that the other couch potatoes you are thwarting won’t get wise to what’s happening. If they want to watch something else they’ll have to get up and walk over to the entertainment center to do something about it, and what’s the chance that’s going to happen?

Don’t miss [KipKay’s] infomercial-esque presentation of this gadget after the break.

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Gun Turret Built Into A Cake Box

April 3, 2011 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

Couch potatoes have a new line of defense thanks to this remote-controlled turret. The gun itself is a hacked down airsoft model. The mount started with a servo motor in the center of a plastic cake box. A thin strip of plywood was added, along with a couple of sliding furniture feet to stabilize the platform as it rotates. A second servo mounts to that platform, which allows the trajectory of the projectile to be adjusted up or down. A PIC 18F4520 controls both of the motors, as well as the firing of the airsoft module, all while listening for commands from an IR receiver. Just adjust the firmware to match an unused device on your universal remote and the power to annoy your roommates will be at the tips of your fingers.

You can see an overview of the build process, as well as a demonstration of the final project in the video after the break. The page linked at the top has a very detailed build log but some of the ‘next’ buttons on that page don’t work for us. Luckily you’ll see a table of contents in the right column which lets you navigate around these bad links.

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Coming Soon To A Store Near You: Remote-control Cockroaches

March 8, 2011 by Mike Nathan 36 Comments

roboroach

Given a box full of cockroaches, the first thing most of us would do is try to locate the nearest source of fire. Lucky for the roaches, the team over at Backyard Brains look at things a bit differently than we do.

Their latest effort combines cockroaches and electronics to create a bio-electrical hybrid known as the RoboRoach. Using control circuitry donated from a HexBug inchworm and some 555 timers to create properly timed pulses, they have been able to control the gross movement of cockroaches. Stimulation is directly delivered to the antennae nerves of the cockroaches, enabling them to tell the roach which direction to turn and when.

Currently there are some ahem, bugs in the system, which they are working diligently to resolve. Only about 25% of the roaches they wire up can be controlled at present. Once that ratio improves however, they will be looking to offer RoboRoach as a beta product. If you are aiming to add a beetle air force to supplement your remote-controlled cockroach army, be sure to check this out.

Continue reading to see a video of the RoboRoach in action.

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Remote-controlled Robot Toy From Air Freshener Parts

March 7, 2011 by Mike Nathan 6 Comments

[jcopro] is pretty fond of Glade automatic air fresheners. Using a pair of them, he built a simple remote-controlled toy which he shared with us over the weekend. You may remember that he built a remote shutter release system for his camera using these air fresheners, which we featured a few weeks ago.

Instead of throwing away the shell of the air fresheners after gutting them for motors and gears, he decided to use the excess plastic as a robot chassis. Using a pair of pencils for legs, he constructed his robot, “Limpy.” He removed a pair of motors and control board from an old toy, mounting it to his creation with a few strips of electrical tape.

He admits that he’s reluctant to even call the toy a robot, but he had fun building it, and suggests that it would make a great beginner project. We agree – it would make a great project for kids, especially if you are looking to reuse an old remote-controlled toy they no longer play with.

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Reverse Engineering Radio Controlled Outlets

January 26, 2011 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

[Chr] picked up a pack of remote control outlets in order to reverse engineer them and build control into his own projects. These can be plugged into outlets around your house and a relay inside each module will switch whatever device is plugged into it after receiving a command from the remote. Once he cracked open the control housing it was easy to find the data line for the RF module which was on its own board. He used a logic analyzer to capture data from various button presses and then spent some time deciphering the communication protocol. He used what he learned to roll the module and code into an interface box where an ATmega8 connects via USB and passes commands from a computer to the RF board. Now he’s added home automation via a computer quite inexpensively. After the break you can watch a clip of the outlets switched using a smartphone.

So why not just patch into the buttons on the remote? Well, this same project was attempted at our local hackerspace earlier this month and the buttons don’t just pull a pin to ground. They use tri-state logic and are arranged into a matrix that is a lot harder to mimic (if not impossible) with a microcontroller. Analyzing the communications going into the RF module is definitely the less labor-intensive of the two approaches.

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Adding Pan And Tilt To A Webcam

November 21, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Brent] and his wife wanted a way to provide more family time for Grandparents that lived far away. They tried a webcam, but their daughter just didn’t oblige by staying in the frame. Instead of chasing her around the room with with the camera he added pan and tilt features to the device. He settled on IR control using a common television remote, similar to our USB remote control receiver tutorial except that it drives servo motors instead of forwarding signals over the serial connection. [Brent] used a Picaxe 08M, connecting two servos together as a base on top of the project box. If you try this yourself there’s a lot of room to grow. Once you’ve assembled the hardware it wouldn’t be too hard to make this web enabled so that Grandpa can click on a web interface to look around the room.