That’s No Moon Pumpkin, It’s A Space Station

October 26, 2015 by James Hobson 5 Comments

Every year, Vitamin T holds a #ATXPumpkinChallenge for creative agencies in and around Austin. Each team was given a fake pumpkin and the challenge of making a 15-60 second video. As the reigning champions from last year, [SiteGoals] had to up the ante. So they launched a pumpkin into space.

When first given the challenge, it only took the team 3 simple words to get started. Pumpkin. In. Space. What followed was a week-long frenzy of preparing the pumpkin for its maiden flight.

The pumpkin itself is pretty simple. A plastic jack-o-lantern painstakingly painted and detailed to look like the third Death Star. This is makes the title of the project a double-meaning: “Return of the Pumpkin”. They even included iconic spacecraft flying around the equator of the immensely powerful yet questionably vulnerable orb of destruction. Simply launching the pumpkin into space wasn’t enough. They built in a telemetry system and GoPro for recording the voyage. Stick around after the break to see the very entertaining making-of video, set the tune of the Cantina Band.

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The BB-8 Builds Begin

May 1, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

Yes, the new Star Wars film coming out in December has x-wings, dogfights through the engines of star destroyers, space battles, a dead Jar Jar, and [R2D2]. It will also have the coolest droid yet, [BB-8], the rolling sphere protagonist that will surely be sold as a remote control toy by Christmas 2016.

[James] of XRobots doesn’t want to wait until the [BB-8] toys arrive, so he’s building his own. Right now, it’s just a prototype, but it’s the beginnings of the mechanics and control system of a very, very cool droid.

We’ve seen the first BB-8 droid that was basically putting some magnets on a Sphero robot, but this bot doesn’t exactly have the same functionality of the real-life [BB-8]. The real [BB-8] is actually two parts, a remote control ball-body, and a separate remote-controlled head. [James] is focusing on the head for his prototype, replacing the remote-controlled body with a dummy stand in, a big styrofoam ball.

The head of [James]’ [BB-8] is 3D printed, with some especially clever design features. The electronics are just four DC motors, an Arduino, and some motor drivers. In the future [James] will probably be looking at either steppers or servo motors, but for now his [BB-8] bot can stand up straight and serves as a great platform for testing out control schemes.

All the code and parts are available on Github, with some videos below.

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Mini BB-8 Droid Made From A Sphero

April 19, 2015 by James Hobson 23 Comments

Hot on the heels of discovery that the BB-8 Droid from the new Star Wars movie is real, [Christian Poulsen] has made the very own miniature version of it!

It’s a brilliantly simple hack actually. Remember the Sphero? It’s a remote controlled ball you can drive around with your phone — great fun, but surprisingly not many people have hacked it…

The ball has an internal structure that allows it to roll around with ease. Which also means it has a fixed up direction — at least inside of the ball. All [Christian] had to do was crack it open and throw a magnet on the top of the inner-assembly. He then machined the droid’s head out of foam with another magnet (or metal, we’re not too sure) and boom-bada-bing it stays in place as the ball rolls.

Stick around after the break to see some GIFs of it adorably rolling around — and into things.

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BB-8 Is Real! But How Did They Do It?

April 19, 2015 by Adam Fabio 110 Comments

BB-8 the new droid in the star wars franchise made his first public appearance (YouTube link) at Star Wars Celebration last week. While cast and crew of the movie have long said that BB-8 is real, seeing it up on stage, driving circles around R2D2 takes things to a whole new level. The question remains, how exactly does it work?

Our (and probably any other tech geek worth their salt’s) immediate reaction was to think of xkcd’s “New Pet” comic. All the way back in 2008, [Randall Munroe] suggested omnidirectional wheels and magnets could be used to create exactly this kind of ‘bot. Is this what’s going on inside BB-8? No one knows for sure, but that won’t stop us from trying to figure it out!

BB-8’s family tree may actually start with Sphero. Fortune reports that Sphero was part of Disney’s accelerator program in 2014. Each company in the accelerator program gets a mentor from Disney. Sphero’s mentor was Disney CEO Bob Iger himself.

The Head

So if BB-8’s body is based on a Sphero, how does the head work? The Disney crew has been mum on this so far, but there is plenty of speculation! If you watch the video in HD, several flashes can be seen between the body and head gap. These might be status LEDs on BB-8’s electronics, but they could also be IR LEDs – possibly part of an optical mouse style sensor. Sensor fusion between gyroscopes, accelerometers and the optical flow sensors would make for a robust solution to the inverted pendulum problem presented by BB-8’s head.

How do you think BB-8 works? Is it magnets, motors, or The Force? Let us know in the comments!

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The Making Of The Hackaday Prize Video

March 10, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

As you’re probably aware, there’s a video announcing the launch of The Hackaday Prize blocking the front page of Hackaday right now. This is by design, and surprisingly we haven’t gotten any complaints saying, ‘not a hack’ yet. I’m proud of you. Yes, all of you.

Making this video wasn’t easy. The initial plans for it were something along the lines of the new Star Wars trailer. Then we realized we could do something cooler. The idea still had Star Wars in it, but we were going for the classics, and not the prequels. As much as we love spending two hours watching a movie about trade disputes, we needed to go to Tatooine.

I just wanted to go to Toshi station

This meant building a prop. We decided on the moisture vaporators from Uncle Owen’s farm. It’s a simple enough structure to build at the Hackaspace in a weekend, and could be broken down relatively easily for transport to the shooting site. I’ve created a hackaday.io project for the actual build, but the basic idea is a few pieces of plywood, an iron pipe for the structural support, and some Coroplast and spray paint to make everything look like it’s been sitting underneath two suns for several decades.

Oh, I was the only person at the hackaspace that knew what greebles were. That’s not pertinent in any way, I’d just like to point that out.

The Suit

The vaporator is the star of the show, but we also rented a space suit. No one expected teflon-covered beta cloth when we were calling up costume rental places, but the suit can really only be described as a space-suit shaped piece of clothing. The inlet and outlet ports are resin, and the backpack is a block of foam. If anyone knows where we can get an Orlan spacesuit, or even a NASA IVA or Air Force high altitude suit, let us know.

Credits

[Matt Berggren] led the prop build and starred in the assembly footage. [Aleksandar Braic] and [Rich Hogben] rented a ridiculous amount of camera equipment. On set for the hijinks was [Aleksandar “Bilke” Bilanovic], [Brian Benchoff] (me), [Jasmine Bracket], [Sophi Kravitz], and [Mike Szczys].

LED Sound Board Is Not Your Father

February 26, 2015 by James Hobson 10 Comments

Who doesn’t like Star Wars, LEDs, and music? [Stathack] was looking for a unique piece of art to put in his living room… so he decided to make his own Vader EQ.

The EQ is a massive 4′ x 5′ piece made from plywood and MDF. [Stathack] traced the familiar helmet onto it by using a projector to project the outline onto the surface. Not having access to an extra large CNC or laser, he then painstakingly used a jigsaw to cut out all the white pieces of the design — holy cow.

This process only took weeks and weeks of sanding, filling and sanding again due to the excellent precision of a jigsaw.

Once that was all done, he created the backing plate out of MDF to provide structural support and mounting locations for the LEDs. Bit of spray paint later and a simple circuit with the Arduino and it’s both done, and awesome.

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Dead Simple Hologram Effect

February 8, 2015 by Rick Osgood 32 Comments

We’ve all seen holograms in movies, and occasionally we see various versions of the effect in real life. The idea of having a fully three-dimensional image projected magically into space is appealing, but we haven’t quite mastered it yet. [Steven] hasn’t let that stop him, though. He’s built himself a very simple device to display a sort of hologram.

His display relies on reflections. The core of the unit is a normal flat screen LCD monitor laid on its back. The other component looks like a four-sided pyramid with the top cut off. The pyramid is made from clear plastic transparency sheets, held together with scotch tape. It’s placed on top of the LCD with the narrow end facing down.

[Steven] then used the open source Blender program to design a few 3D animations. Examples include a pterodactyl flying and an approximation of the classic Princess Leia hologram from Star Wars Episode 4. The LCD screen displays the animation from four different angles at once. The images are displayed up and onto the transparency sheet, which then get reflected to your eyes. The result is an image that looks almost as if it’s floating in space if viewed from the proper angle. If you move around the screen you can see the image from all four sides, which helps to sell the effect. Not bad for a few dollars worth of parts. Continue reading “Dead Simple Hologram Effect” →