We were pleased to see the Kickstarter for Ringo, the Photopopper-ish but much smarter version of our own ~17 year old design robot kit. The video showcases some pretty cool behaviors, and is easily one of those projects where we think "Jee, why didn't we do that?"
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
SSK Head to SW2 instructions / schematic...
Still slogging through the backlog of "things to add to the website". One of them is the ScoutWalker/SunSeeker interface instructions, in PDF format (as per usual). So if you want to see exactly how we get the head "talking" to the body, and what the exact circuitry is, come take a look! We also are […]
Wednesday Links: Smile TV, New Materials...
Brief summary of today's short issue: it is about squishy mice robots that feed on the dark matter, live in weird motors and make TVs smile. Smile TV Pretty retro-looking 4-legged TV leaves you smiling like an idiot in order to watch anything. (Via Designboom) How Squishy Would You Like Your Robot? Finally science moving […]
BEP Application: Wilf Rigter Solar Power...
The following instructions detail how to build a Solar Power Smart Head version 3. The Head will seek light and when it finds the brightest source it will go into a low current standby mode. This version also comes with an low power FLED circuit to indicate when the head is active.
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Warning: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Please visit www.P65Warnings.ca.gov for more information. This item was manufactured prior to August 31, 2018.