Hackaday Links: Tuesday, July 19th

July 19, 2011 by Jeremy Cook 8 Comments

Here’s another “useless machine” variant. The trick to this one is that it has dual “fingers” and can work either way. Which way it turns off is selectable via a switch on the side, and the fingers can both be turned on to “fight” each other. Check out the video here.

This video depicts the assembly of a Gameboy MAME-style cabinet. For those wanting to try something like this, this video may fill you in on some of the required assembly techniques, such as how to put decals on the side of your cabinet.

This video featuring the “Autonomous Ultimate Wall-E” shows this robot’s navigational skills around the house. Additionally, it has some nicely actuated arms.

The Verbalizer is a microphone designed to be used with Google’s voice search. It’s also designed with Arduino compatibility in mind and is open-source. Could be a good tool for your next hack.

These clever multimeter probes were built using pogo pins used in electrical test equipment. The springs inside of these pins help keep them planted firmly on the test point in question and reportedly gives a very good connection.

Autonomous Wall-E

October 28, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 25 Comments

[djsures] went crazy on his Interactive Wall-E toy. Wall-E just didn’t have enough bounce in his step, so [djsures] decided to give him an overhaul. He went through the entire robot and replaced most of the joints with servos, giving much more control and adding head tilt. All of this was wired to a microcontroller housed in Wall-E’s body. The distance sensor was mounted in Wall-E’s neck, so when he turns his head, he’s actually surveying his surroundings. Check out the video after the break.

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Dancing Wall-E And Rhythmic Synth

July 10, 2008 by Juan Aguilar 9 Comments

Whether you loved, hated, or didn’t see Wall-E, it’s hard not to fall in love with the iDance Wall-E toy. Connect him to an audio source and Wall-E will dance around like an epileptic Billy Bass.

[Gian Pablo Villamil] at NYC Resistor wondered whether it would work with his custom made Rhythmic Synth, and to his and our delight, it does! The Rhythmic Synth is an older project of his; it is a simple rhythm generator with 4 pitch knobs, 4 modulation knobs, and 4 phase switches. The case was taken from an old external Iomega CD-ROM drive.

Getting the Wall-E to dance isn’t much of a feat, but something about the dancing combined with a synth with embedded lights just screams robot dance party, and that can never be wrong. We’d love to see the Wall-E dancing to a cleaner, more complete synth: maybe this one. Check out Wall-E busting a move after the break.

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