Wednesday Cool Links: Spiderbot, Solar S...

Dave Hrynkiw
October 17, 2012

It's Wednesday! Hooray! Huzzah! We're celebrating because... Well, ok, we have nothing big to celebrate right now. So we're going to celebrate having nothing to celebrate with the traditional and only appropriate way possible... BROWSING THE INTERNET! Indeed, we've been celebrating this time-honoured tradition with steadfast dedication, and it's our pleasure to share it with all of you.

Four-Legged Spiderbot
As the website puts it, this is "a walking machine, radially symmetrical, having four legs with two degrees of freedom each, controlled through a wireless link from a hand-held controller based on two Wii Nunchucks." Very impressive articulation and range of motion. Be sure to check out the video.
The Almost Useless Machine
A solar-powered... Reciprocating saw? Make sure you have lots of patience and a cold one to enjoy while you "work"! Seriously though, while this might not be too functional, it certainly has some great craftsmanship.
Solar "Death Ray": Power of 5000 suns!
Mirrors. Lots of mirrors. 5800 of them, to be precise. It's pretty cool (and a LOT scary) what kind of power can be harnessed by arranging mirrors onto a fiberglass satellite dish and aligning it to the sun.
6 Rubens Tubes Visualizer
Hrm, a flame visualization for music? SIGN ME UP. Turn it into a handy-dandy plug-in accessory for the iPod, for the best on-the-go pyrotechnics you can possibly imagine. Might want to make sure you turn it off before tucking it away in your pocket, though.
Solar Engineer Badge on DIY
So, you think you like DIY? Well, it's time to prove your chops by completing challenges over at diy.org. They even have a Solar Engineer Badge that features a bunch of project ideas, including our Instructable for the Solar Powered Miniball.

We were once hoping that we could instead celebrate by racing giraffes through obstacle courses, but that didn't pan out. Too bad. I was planning on decking mine out with some sweet black and white racing stripes, to make it look like a very oddly proportioned zebra.

MORE POSTS

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Small batteries!

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November 28, 2012
Wednesday Cool Links

Here we go, it’s the W day again. Seems like the previous one was two infinities ago. During that infinite time we had plenty of opportunities to pick the interesting stuff floating around internets, and bring it to you: Headphone Light Show EL (electroluminescent) wire is a cool thing. Add it to the headphones and […]

June 24, 2004
Solarbotics at PDXBot04

Grant and I have been back from PDXBot a few weeks now, and I put together a wee movie showing off some of the (limited) video I shot. You get to see Grant winning 2nd place in Mini-sumo, me NOT using a camera correctly (I got record on/off reversed during a Grant/me match), and some […]

November 2, 2009
Oomlout - Solarbotics Edition!

Good news, good news! We've been following the Oomlout system of learning Arduino since last February, and we've finally finished putting together our own Solarbotics Edition of the open-source ARDX Arduino Experimenter's Kit. Besides just working with the fine folks at Oomlout to make sure our edition meets their high standards, we've also been contributing […]

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