Useless Box With Attitude Isn’t Entirely Useless

November 3, 2020 by Kristina Panos 3 Comments

What is it about useless machines that makes them so attractive to build? After all, they’re meant to be low-key enraging. At this point, the name of the game is more about giving that faceless enemy inside the machine a personality more than anything else. How about making it more of a bully with laughter and teasing? That’s the idea behind [alexpikkert]’s useless machine with attitude — every time you flip a switch, the creature of uselessness inside gets a little more annoyed.

In this case the creature is Arduino-based and features two sound boards that hold the giggles and other sounds. There are three servos total: one for each of the two switch-flipping fingers, and a third that flaps the box lid at you. This build is wide open, and [alexpikkert] even explains how to repurpose a key holder box for the enclosure. Check out the demo after the break.

We love a good useless machine around here, especially when they take a new tack. This one looks like any other useless machine, but what’s happening inside may surprise you.

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ESP8266 Does RC Without The Transmitter

October 30, 2020 by Tom Nardi 27 Comments

While the cost of a hobby-grade remote control transmitter has dropped significantly over the last decade or so, even the basic models are still relatively expensive. It’s not such a big deal if you only need to get one for personal use, but for a school to outfit a classroom’s worth of students their own radios, they’d need to have a serious STEM budget.

Which is why [Miharix], himself an educator with a decade of experience, developed a project that leverages the ESP8266 to create affordable RC vehicles that can be controlled with a smartphone’s web browser. There’s a bit of irony at play since the smartphones are more expensive than the RC transmitters would have been; but with more and more school-age kids having their own mobile devices, it takes the cost burden off of the educators. Depending on the age of the students, the teacher would only need to keep a couple of burner phones on hand for student that doesn’t have a device of their own.

A custom PCB makes connections easier for students.

In its fully realized form, the project uses an open hardware board that allows standard RC hobby servos to be connected to the GPIO pins of a ESP-12E module. But if you don’t want to go through the trouble of building the custom hardware, you could put something similar together with an ESP development board. From there it’s just a matter of installing the firmware, which starts up a server providing a touch-based controller interface that’s perfect for a smartphone’s screen.

Since the ESP8266 pops up as an Access Point that client devices can connect to, you don’t even need to have an existing network in place. Or Internet access, for that matter. [Miharix] says that in tests, the range between a common smartphone and the ESP8266 is approximately 85 meters (260 feet), which should be more than enough to get the job done.

In the videos after the break you can see this system being used with an RC car and boat, though the only limit to what you could control with this project is your own imagination.

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Making A Servo Tester Just A Bit Better

October 13, 2020 by Lewin Day 9 Comments

Servo testers are useful devices to have on hand, allowing one to quickly check a given part for proper operation. However, cheaper models can be quite limited, and may not output signals suitable for testing the full range of servos out there. [Buttim] had a few testers laying around, and wanted to see if they could be modified to do more.

Initial experiments with the cheapest model on hand came to naught, revealing nothing but a small IC with its markings scrubbed off. However, going a few more dollars upmarket, [buttim] found a servo tester packing a Nuvoton N75E003. An unfamiliar name to the hobbyist, Nuvoton microcontrollers are often found in mass-production designs due to their low cost.

The N75E003 is a 8051-based device, and [buttim] was able to source a programmer and tutorial resources on how to work with the chip. Armed with the right hardware and knowledge, the servo tester was first programmed with a basic blink sketch. With everything confirmed to be working as expected, [buttim] set about programming a custom firmware for the servo tester that would output a broader range of PWM signals to suit their needs.

It’s a great example of the learning possibilities available by simply cracking open the case of commodity hardware and diving in. Of course, if you need something even more capable, you can always build your own from scratch!

Building This Mechanical Digital Clock Took Balls

October 13, 2020 by Dan Maloney 26 Comments

In the neverending quest for unique ways to display the time, hackers will try just about anything. We’ve seen it all, or at least we thought we had, and then up popped this purely mechanical digital clock that uses nothing but steel balls to display the time. And we absolutely love it!

Click to embiggen (you’ll be glad you did)

One glimpse at the still images or the brief video below shows you exactly how [Eric Nguyen] managed to pull this off. Each segment of the display is made up of four 0.25″ (6.35 mm) steel balls, picked up and held in place by magnets behind the plain wood face of the clock. But the electromechanical complexity needed to accomplish that is the impressive part of the build. Each segment requires two servos, for a whopping 28 units plus one for the colon. Add to that the two heavy-duty servos needed to tilt the head and the four needed to lift the tray holding the steel balls, and the level of complexity is way up there. And yet, [Eric] still managed to make the interior, which is packed with a laser-cut acrylic skeleton, neat and presentable, as well he might since watching the insides work is pretty satisfying.

We love the level of craftsmanship and creativity on this build, congratulations to [Eric] on making his first Arduino build so hard to top. We’ve seen other mechanical digital displays before, but this one is really a work of art.

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World’s Smallest Version Of World’s Fastest Bumper Car

October 12, 2020 by Kristina Panos 6 Comments

A few years ago, YouTubing madman [Colin Furze] took an old bumper car and made a 600-horsepower beast of a go-kart that managed to clock 100MPH with a headwind. This isn’t that. It’s a miniaturized, remote-control homage to [Colin]’s go-kart that is equally awesome.

[Forsyth Creations] started by CAD-modeling the chassis right on top of a still from the video. The entire body is 3D-printed in four large pieces, which took several days because each piece took around 24 hours. Inside the car there’s an Arduino brain driving a motor in the back and a servo in the front. This bad boy runs on a couple of rechargeable battery packs and can be controlled with either a Wii balance board or a PS2 controller. This thing really moves, although it doesn’t quite reach 100MPH. Watch it zoom around in the video after the break.

Got a Segway lying around that just doesn’t do it for you anymore? You could always turn it into a go-kart. Never had a Segway to begin with? Just roll your own.

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Classical Poultry Conditioning Is A Bird-Brained Scheme

October 9, 2020 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

A while back, [Kutluhan Aktar] was trying to hack their chickens, quails, and ducks for higher egg production and faster hatching times by using a bit of classical conditioning. That is, feeding them at the same time every day while simultaneously exposing them to sound and light. Once [Kutluhan] slipped enough times, they hatched a plan to build an automatic feeder.

This fun rooster-shaped bird feeder runs on an Arduino Nano and gets its time, date, and temperature info from a DS3231 RTC. All [Kutluhan] has to do is set the daily feeding time. When it comes, a pair of servos and a pan-tilt kit work together to invert a Pringles can filled with food pellets. A piezo buzzer and a green LED provide the sound and light to help with conditioning. Scratch your way past the break to see it in action.

If [Kutluhan] gets tired of watching the birds eat at the same time every day, perhaps a trash-for-treats training program could be next on the list.

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Dice Roller Keeps Germs Out Of Your Snake Eyes

October 5, 2020 by Kristina Panos 5 Comments

Do you need a to find a more sanitary way to roll the dice at your next socially-distanced board game gathering? [CJA3D]’s pop-o-matic mason jar dice roller can roll the bones two different ways — either by hitting that big, inviting arcade button, or though a web app that everyone can access on their own phones.

We think this looks great, and is a great reuse of a glass jar. The brains of this operation is an ESP8266, which drives a continuous-rotation servo underneath the dice. Push the button or use the web app and the servo disturbs the plate, moving the dice around.

Besides the sanitary aspect, one benefit of using the web app is that there are four different speed presets for the servo. As a bonus, [CJA3D] included the files for a pair of printed 6-sided dice. Click through to the project to see it in action.

We know you take games seriously, and so do we. Just look at this dice roller that uses machine vision to ensure fairness.