For all of you holding out to get your Valentine's Day Lantern in red, the wait is over! It's now back in stock and ready to order. You can get your HexPummer Lantern right here.
You want a simple Photovore? This very tidy design by Solarbotics' own Grant McKee is based on a technique developed by Mark Tilden - Shok architecture:
Here's video of the test robots being tuned as a 177kB Windows Media Format (WMV) file or as a 168kB RealMedia (RM) file.
ShokPopper V1.0 (click for circuit diagram) - GrantM Aug 2001
Theory of operation:
"Shok" architecture is a technique pioneered by Mark Tilden describing controlled state changes of Bicore style circuits via chip power or enable toggling. When a Bicore circuit is powered on, it will resume a state opposite to what it was when it was powered off, this effect can either be duplicated by pulsing the enable line or by pulsing power to the chip itself. This is called "shoking" the Bicore. The power-on state can also be pre-determined by biasing the voltage across the Bicore capacitors. A photodiode attached directly across the Bicore charge capacitor will pre-bias the shoked output. The addition of tactile sensors is easily implemented by attaching a switch from the input of the Bicore to +Vdd. When the switch is closed, it forces that side high, presetting the state of the Bicore on the next pulse cycle.
Probably one of the simplest photovore circuits to date, the core circuit consists of a 6 part count and a solar-engine. Either 74AC240 or 74HCT240 will work but we recommend using the AC series for better output drive current. The ShokPopper will not work under battery power unless the enable line is pulsed.
Solar Engine to use with Shok:
The best solar-engine to use is the Miller engine. For the ShokPopper Photovore we used a Miller engine consisting of:
The Bicore Circuit Consists of:
The Miller engine switches the ground line of the circuit.
The theory of operating is very similar to that of the shok popper except that the head now only uses one motor, the photo head does not "lock" on but will continually seek for the brightest source of light. Nice effect if you want a continually seeking, dynamic device on a stationary base.
For all of you holding out to get your Valentine's Day Lantern in red, the wait is over! It's now back in stock and ready to order. You can get your HexPummer Lantern right here.
Brief summary of today's short issue: it is about squishy mice robots that feed on the dark matter, live in weird motors and make TVs smile. Smile TV Pretty retro-looking 4-legged TV leaves you smiling like an idiot in order to watch anything. (Via Designboom) How Squishy Would You Like Your Robot? Finally science moving […]
We had an unexpected delay in San Francisco - so we are not shipping any orders on Tuesday, May 7th. But we are set for tomorrow so normal shipping will resume on Wednesday May 8th, our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.
We've just recently been given the go-ahead to unveil more Wowwee BIOBugs - the toy that Mark Tilden had direct involvement in! This is footage we shot while down in New Mexico this Spring at the 2001 LANL workshop. The first video shows the BIOBug Beetle's ability to maneuver and respond to obstacles. The second […]
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Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.