Wednesday Cool Links: The Flying Stuff, ...

Solar botics
March 20, 2013

Solarbotics and the Useless Box have been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article "Looking for Something Useful to Do With Your Time? Don't Try This"! It is dedicated to the historical overview of the uselessness starting with its invention in the 1950s to nowadays. The useless box can take many guises, names and materials to be made of, but the initial impulse for pure purposelessness keeps on fascinating " tinkerers and thinkers alike". It's an interesting read, check it out if you haven't already. And now to our traditional portion of links:

"Wings" by Dukno Yoon
Not sure whether these would qualify as jewellery, mobile or art piece, I think - a little bit of everything, but definitely these look cool. By using this mechanical structure jeweler and metalsmith Dukno Yoon explores the nature of movement of the wing, and the interactive relationship with the body.
This is What Happens When You Run Water Through a 24hz Sine Wave
First it might seem that the water stream is vibrating only because the hose is doing the same, but when you get to about 1:43 in the video, it gets almost eerie, as if the water is running upwards.
A Hovering Magnetic Cloud and Other Kinetic Sculptures by Laurent Debraux
Kinetic sculptures by artist Laurent Debraux using primarily magnets, ferrofluid and metal objects with a touch of vintage. More stuff on his youtube channel.
A million times (Time Dubai) by Humans since 1982
What happens if you orchestrate 288 clocks to wave their hands in a specific fashion? Pretty mesmerizing, I say...
Retrotechtacular: flying foot-soldiers are coming for you (sixty years ago)
Here's a remarkable piece of the 1950s experimental military technology- a single-rider flying platform. Two rotors are mounted underneath and provide enough lifting power to hover the platform above the ground.

Also, according to the Wall Street Journal Useless Box  has also been called a "green machine" as one of its inherent attributes is energy efficiency. Our links are also very… green! They last only until you click them, leave minimal environmental footprint, with the exception of, maybe, brain. But, you know, that regenerates, so grow some more neurons by the next time we'll see you here!

MORE POSTS

September 19, 2000
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 […]

September 14, 2000
Minor Additions and New Links

Boy, there's work to do on new websites. Link checking, spell checking, image links - all sorts of crap that doesn't have anything to do directly with robots! Even so, we've been able to put up a few new images of Mark Tilden's "Projectorbots" on the Photovores page. Yuck. Must do something about how hard […]

February 14, 2020
FUSES! We've got FUSES!

So why do we suddenly have over 100 kinds of fuse for the website? It's one of the easier products for us to bring across from our Active Tech Calgary store location into our website. Start with the easy stuff, then ramp up. Increase power gradually, so you don't blow a... well you know...

January 11, 2017
Heated Car Seat Teardown and Repair

Here's a little makeover of an inexpensive aftermarket heated car seat heating pad that stopped working. Designed to activate and warm up when sat upon, the electronics face a fair amount of abuse: since the seat is a soft frame, the wires inside constantly move and flex with the body. They are also subject to […]

Solarbotics Ltd Logo
Solarbotics has been operating for more than 25 years, bringing electronics know-how and supplies to both the electronics professional and hobbyist. We'll be happy to help you too!

Solarbotics, Ltd. is not responsible for misprints or errors on product prices or information. For more information, please see our Terms and Conditions.

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.

cart