Wednesday Cool Links: Dragon Fly, Prince...

Solar botics
April 10, 2013

Weeee, its Wednesday again. And that means time to stare at internet more! While in other parts of the world (or so we are told) things are growing, springing and budding, here we are, with overcast greyness and last year's stuff (grass - as a best case scenario) poking from underneath the dirty snow. So not to waste our time on staring at such unsightly things, check out our links:

Robotic Dragon Fly
Festo does it again. If you haven't seen their Bionic creations, this is just the tip of the iceberg!
Graphene aerogel is world’s lightest material
Freeze dry some single-layer carbon atoms, and you got a graphene aerogel! This experimental substance developed by the Chinese researchers is lighter than air.
Prince Rupert’s Drop: The Curious Properties of a Molten Glass Blob Dropped in Cold Water
It's a drop! Of molten glass! That will do things that glass is not supposed to do, for example not break when hit with a hammer, or literally shatter in an explosive chain reaction. Check out the video at the end for more scientific explanation.
Hacker sends this through the mail to record a video of the process
Wanna know what the package sees during its travels through the mail system? Ruben van der Vleuten threw together a clever mix of components including the camera, motion sensor, controller circuit and a battery.
Kindle weather and recycling display
A e-ink display is hacked to fetch the weather information from internet, and remind of the recycling day. Extra points for the cherry wood hardware!

This is all for today, and now I wanna go make one of those e-ink displays, so that the internet could tell me what to do next, weather an' all.

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Although according to some sources Canadians in general (and Solarbotics in particular) have long since gone into hibernation, some autonomous robots (or Russians) are still purchasing new product and producing content, through some coincidence of stray electric impulses. Among the wandering flickering lights of deserted offices, with Canadians gently tucked away in the corners and […]

July 12, 2007
Circuit: Herbie by Randy Sargent

Although not a true BEAM robot, this simple schematic by Randy Sargent is small, simple, slick, and effective. My own version uses a pair of pager motors and three cells from a 9V rechargeable battery. Hard to get any simpler than this device!

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Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.