Welcome to the first Friday of 2013. This is better than the first Tuesday, because as you may have guessed, after the first Friday comes the first Saturday! And that leaves me endlessly satisfied that everything is as it should be, and the new calendar doesn't need "convincing" for what order the days should go […]
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 Solar Cell!
As Panasonic is no longer manufacturing their line of Sunceram solar cells, we've been on the hunt for suitable replacements. Here's our first find - the SCC3733! It's a polycrystaline cell in an epoxy casing, so it's a bit heavier, but much, much less prone to breaking or burning off of the solder-pads. It's also […]
Solarbotics.net server v2!
Yup, the Solarbotics.NET server we sponsor for the BEAM community is now online, offering more storage, RAM, speed, and open-source software to make your .net experience... better! (Well, we think so). No teething pains to report yet, although I'm sure we'll see some come up shortly. Stay tuned for more functionality as work continues...
Content Added
Well, it's not exactly news, but we have managed to import most of the old content back into the site. There are still a few more additions to go, but this should keep you tinkering on new projects until then. Head over to the BEAM Resources section for the added BEP Applications, Photo Galleries, and […]
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