Herbie the Mousebot, that lovable robotic rodent of ours, is a pretty popular critter. Seeks light, avoids obstacles, chases other Herbies (when modified), and is generally a swell robo mus musculus. He doesn't whistle and can't quite drive a steamboat like certain other mice, but he's gets by alright. What most people probably don't know about […]
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.
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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
New Yellow Treads
Want a bumble-bee look to your robot tank? Intersperse our new GMT-Yellow treads into the link chain! You should even be able to use a yellow link as a opto-reflector in a wheel (err...tread?) encoder circuit. ALSO, we're the only place in North America you can get these new yellow tread links!
Resistance is Futile if < 1ohm
Hey, look at us! We made a witty, over-used joke! But seriously, this week we have a schwack-load of resistors for you. Normally we save most of these for our internal use, but what's so fun about that? So we've gone ahead and opened up our entire inventory of 5% accuracy, 1/4 watt resistors. There […]
Microsoft ... BEAM Robots?!?
Solarbotics held a few workshops and lectures at the MAKEr faire April 22/23rd. After giving a workshop, a nice man from Microsoft invited me over to see their BEAM robots. Obviously intregued, I found their display at the Microsoft pavilion where Microsoft encouraged all their engineers with "MAKE"-style hobbies to exhibit, including this squad of […]
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