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

October 21, 2003
Robothon workshop almost full!

We've got 20 spots, and 17 seats are filled. If you're planning on being at the Seattle Robothon and want to get in on an introductory Sumovore Workshop, now's the time to check out the registration page! Read More...

February 5, 2003
New Stuff!

We've been busy little elves at Solarbotics. New to our product listing is a fair number of parts and ICs that have been requested of us. Like what? Wellll...: You always need new chips. Especially when somebody on the BEAM list has made something cool: LM324 Op-amp (happy now, Bruce?) LM393 Dual comparator LM386 Audio […]

August 4, 2006
Heritage Day Monday

Monday is Heritage Day here in Alberta, Canada, so we will all be out Heritage-ing it up, and enjoying our all too short summer. So if you want to go all Heritage on BEAM, and buy a SolarRoller kit, we'll ship it to you when we are back in the office Tuesday!

January 13, 2006
Belated Xmas list...

Ever wonder what an evil (toy) genius wants for Christmas? The goons at GadgetMadness asked Mr. Mark Tilden, father of BEAM Robotics and the RoboSapien line of toys from Wow-Wee... (Ok, so I was too busy over the holidays to notice the link - sorry!) Read More...

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