Daily Digest June 13, 2010

June 13th, 2010 - No Responses

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  • Toddler android
    We came across a couple of videos of this toddler android. It sits up, rolls over, and responds to humans around it using visual, audio, and sensor inputs. After the break you will see that the movements are quite like that of a young child. The giveaway is the weight of the robot which is [...]
  • Gaming system for less than three bucks
    [Rossum's] latest project just hit and as usual, he doesn’t disappoint. Using an ARM cortex M0 he built a gaming system for less than $3 in parts. The M0 is a bit underpowered for this but at $1 it can’t be beat in price. He worked some video generation voodoo to get the signal he [...]

Daily Digest June 12, 2010

June 12th, 2010 - No Responses

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  • Wireless accelerometer project
    [Jerome Demers] sent us his extremely detailed semester project. The two part system consists of PICs connected to XBee modules and accelerometers. By using the device a coach can monitor an athlete and correct their minute mistakes. Did we mention [Jerome] was very detailed? He also goes into the particulars of designing the circuit, using [...]
  • LEGO hand controller
    [David Hyman] built this device to control a LEGO claw. One one end of things is the part you wear, that measures movement of two fingers and your thumb. On the other end of things is a LEGO claw with three opposing digits. You move, it moves. The claw uses light sensors and a gradient [...]

Daily Digest June 11, 2010

June 11th, 2010 - No Responses

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  • Cockroach pimps a sweet ride
    This giant Madagascar hissing cockroach rides proudly atop his three-wheeled robotic platform. This project from several years ago is new to us and our reaction to the video after the break is mixed. We find ourselves creeped out, delighted, amazed, and saddened. The cockroach controlled robot uses a trackball type input. A ping-pong ball is [...]
  • Printed circuit board minus the printed traces
    Reader [Osgeld] is a board-layout ninja. He populated this 4×4 LED matrix board without having a layout plan to start with. Watch it develop in slideshow format to see the art work he performs. The display is driven by a shift-register and he’s included all the proper parts like resistors and transistors, yet he makes [...]

Daily Digest June 10, 2010

June 10th, 2010 - No Responses

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  • Dingoo A320 RAM upgrade
    [Stephanie] beefed up the hardware on her Dingoo A320. She enjoyed the features that the A320 handheld gaming system offered, but wanted the 64mb of RAM available in its bigger brother, the A330. A comparison of the two led her to believe a swap might be possible and after sourcing a pair of replacement chips [...]
  • Making liquid nitrogen at home
    If you’ve got some time to scour eBay and $500 sitting around you can build your own liquid nitrogen plant. [Ben Krasnow] figured it all out for you and estimates he can produce a liter of the stuff for around $1.15. The process depends on a membrane to separate nitrogen from the other materials in the [...]

Daily Digest June 9, 2010

June 9th, 2010 - No Responses

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  • (mini)How-To: Refill your DTG inks
    The number one and number two things asked after presentation of our DIYDTG were… “How does it hold up in the wash?” and… “How did you change out the inks?” While we’ve explained the first several times (regular ink washes out, DTG ink gets a little lighter but survives) we can hopefully answer the second [...]
  • Building a glue stick flashlight
    Building an LED flashlight is simple, right? Take a battery, connect it to an LED by way of a resistor. Alright wise guy, now make one that steps up the voltage for multiple LEDs and don’t use a boost-converter IC to do so. [fede.tft] shares a flashlight built inside of a  used glue stick case. [...]

Daily Digest June 8, 2010

June 8th, 2010 - No Responses

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  • Getting your message across at commencement
    [Yomagaocho] is graduation from Northwestern University on June 18th (wow that’s late in the year… they must be on quarters). He decided to spice up his mortarboard for the commencement ceremony. A normal message wasn’t good enough, and even a solar-powered diorama wasn’t going to suit him. Instead he added 256 addressable LEDs to the [...]
  • WiMax antenna with auto-positioning system
    [Andrew] certainly brings a bit of a James Bond feel to connecting to your WiMax base station. He built this antenna along with an auto-positioning system to get the strongest signal possible. The device, which appears a bit fragile, breaks down into a nice little case. When you get to your next checkpoint you can [...]

Daily Digest June 7, 2010

June 7th, 2010 - No Responses

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  • Augmenting a cheap Android MID
    We’ve been on the prowl for a low-cost Android MID that, you know, works well. We were originally excited by the Eken M001 but early reports about poor battery life, coupled with the fact that it only runs Android 1.6 soured our interest. [Carnivore] didn’t let those things turn him away, instead he modified the [...]
  • Furniture bots, transform
    This mechanized table automatically expands from seating for six to seating for twelve. We tried to capture the action with the three images above but don’t miss the transforming goodness in the video after the break. Alas, we’ll never see something like this in real life because it resides on a yacht worthy of Robin [...]

Daily Digest June 6, 2010

June 6th, 2010 - No Responses

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  • Drawbot produces portraits… very slowly
    This robot artist, the Drawbot, produces images using an Arduino and Processing. A piece of paper is attached to a wall as a stylus connected to a couple of stepper motors scribbles out patterns that gradually become the image seen above. Each drawing is different and can take several weeks of constant operation to finish. [...]
  • Fake Nixie clock
    [Barry] didn’t want to deal with the voltages involved in using a Nixie display so he built this clock to look like it has Nixie tubes. He’s made 7-segment LED displays using some channel material, and mounted them so they look like they’re hovering above the clock base. Once everything was hooked up he added [...]

Daily Digest June 5, 2010

June 5th, 2010 - No Responses

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  • Adding Compact Flash to an old sequencer
    [Shoji Ito] has a beloved sequencer that went out of production ten years ago. Unfortunately the storage options are also 10 year out-of-date as SCSI is the stock option for storing his loops. Using a series of adapters he added Compact Flash storage to his Akai MCP-2000 Classic. The board has a connector for 25-pin [...]
  • 3D Printed MakerBot
    [Webca] has made a 3D printed MakerBot with his MakerBot. Using five pounds of plastic, the design replaces all of the plywood used to create a regular MakerBot. This complements the existing designs for the 3D printed extruders, dinos, and other parts already on Thingiverse. An interesting mile marker in the history of 3D printing. [...]

Daily Digest June 5, 2010

June 5th, 2010 - No Responses

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  • Adding Compact Flash to an old sequencer
    [Shoji Ito] has a beloved sequencer that went out of production ten years ago. Unfortunately the storage options are also 10 year out-of-date as SCSI is the stock option for storing his loops. Using a series of adapters he added Compact Flash storage to his Akai MCP-2000 Classic. The board has a connector for 25-pin [...]
  • 3D Printed MakerBot
    [Webca] has made a 3D printed MakerBot with his MakerBot. Using five pounds of plastic, the design replaces all of the plywood used to create a regular MakerBot. This complements the existing designs for the 3D printed extruders, dinos, and other parts already on Thingiverse. An interesting mile marker in the history of 3D printing. [...]