The Wowwee RoboSapien

After we have survived recent natural disasters like floods and thunderstorms, mosquitoes are another disaster that needs elimination. I don’t like mosquitoes. They are evil vampires lurking in the dark. Flies on the other hand are jovial and rich in protein. Cats usually specialize in them. But cats don’t tackle mosquitoes very well.. . I […]

Every year a group of my friends have an engineering Secret Santa. The rules are simple: make something cool for under $20 that requires engineering to complete. In years past we’ve seen Google cardboard VR headsets that are 6DOF, match stick rockets, 3D printed fans that explode when used, 3D printed rockets with cardboard launch […]

Unlike Sparkfun, who actually manage to find fake Atmel ICs, we just get strange batches. The Atmel ATMega328 is the power behind the Arduino/Freeduino/*duino, and we have to set up a programming system to burn the venerable Arduino Bootloader into these chips. We normally use an AVR STK500 in HVSP (high voltage serial programming) mode, […]

It's pretty amazing to see the adoption rate of 3D printers in the last few years, and the kind of creativity they bring out in people. I've seen quite a few variations, particularly while walking through the 3D printer villages at the MakerFaires I've already attended (either as a vendor or just a visitor), but […]