[AntonB] has modified a servo into a powerful linear actuator (think: changing rotational motion into linear motion). The process is simple enough, modify a servo for continuous rotation and then add the custom built actuating shaft. You do of course lose the precision of the servo, but a small price to pay to be able to lift ~20 pounds straight up. Inspiration for such a cheap solution came from his Planetary Surface Exploration Rover. Check out a video of both after the break.
[Thanks Eric]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUqRcLjFOUc]
[StudioJooj] is trying to torture or test his colleagues in his office. A lot of folks leave a candy jar on their desks for all to enjoy but he’s making his friends work for their reward. Like cubicle-dwelling lab subjects, they must successfully navigate his maze to be rewarded with chocolate. The game piece is an amazingly orb-like peanut M&M candy. The maze is constructed from plywood and moves on two axis with the help of a couple of servos. The user interface includes a couple of NES console buttons to release the game piece and a PS2 joystick to control the maze. [StudioJooj] was nice enough to include a music video in his project clip.
We wonder the M&Ms will disappear faster or slower than they would from a candy jar.
[via SparkFun]
[Alan] did an extraordinary job building a computer controlled model gearbox. His project from several years back is based on a dual-clutch Direct Shift Gearbox that was developed for VW and Audi vehicles. His design uses a gear head motor to provide the locomotion to this transmission. Shifting is computer controlled through serial cable, with servo motors providing the physical motion to change gears. Seeing all these moving parts in the clip after the break might make you a bit dizzy.
This is some extreme model building. It reminds us of the guy who built that aluminum aircraft model that was all over the Internets in December.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z86V_ICUCD4]
[Brett] posted about his most useless machine build. His project gives us a chance to massacre the language in the title because it uses the lowest parts count we’ve see with these machines. The logic is controlled by our friend, the 555 timer. Add to that just one servo motor, two switches, three resistors, two caps, a diode, and a battery pack and you’re in business. The hardest part to find locally is the servo but check at a hobby/RC store. If you don’t have to put in a parts order this can be your next impulse project.
[Qdot] came up with a simple way to dosing out liquids to use in his Bartris project. As you can see above, flexible tubing is connected to some inverted bottles that house the liquid. A chopstick is attached to a board on one end, and via string to a servo on the other. When the servo turns it pulls the chopstick tight against the board, cutting off the flow of liquid through the tubing. This isn’t as elegant as the system the Bar2D2 uses but it’s a heck of a lot less expensive.
You can check out some of the build pictures in his Flickr pool. He’s included this concept in a project he calls Adult Mario. Watch the video after the break but the quick and dirty is that the more coins you score in Super Mario Brothers, the more beverage is rationed out into your cup. Ah, human lab rats, is there nothing they won’t do for booze?
Continue reading “Simple Liquid Dispenser For Auto-cocktails”
[Keith Baxter] has undertaken something of a ‘Mount Everest’ of guitar modifications. He’s developing a Servoelectric guitar that trades frets for a keypad. It is still a guitar in the sense that it has a body, strings, and pickups to sense the strings vibrations and pass them to an amplifier. The left hand, which traditionally would shorten the strings as needed by pressing them against a fret, now changes string pitch using a keypad. This is an interesting fusion between traditional guitar and 80’s phenomenon, the keytar.
Each string is connected to a different servo motor. When a key on the keypad is pressed, the corresponding servo adjusts the tension of that string, bringing it in tune at the new pitch. His original design involved a lot of custom circuitry but he’s evolved the project to include an Arduino controller. This second generation both simplifies the control circuitry and improves upon it.
We’ve embedded some video after the break. In the first example you can see the strings adjusting for each new pitch. In the second, take a look behind the guitarist… what do you think he’s got planned for those giant capacitors?
Continue reading “Servoelectric Guitar Is A Keytar With Strings”
Starting a new robotics project and want to find the perfect servo for the job? It can be a real pain in butt sometimes. This is where ServoDatabase.com comes in. They’re compiling specifications and reviews on servos. We love seeing these databases pop up. Remember the online chip reference? You simply can not have too much reference material.
[via makezine]
