Not so much a post for wintertime, but hey, you can make one now and use it next summer! You can plug this flexible blower in a cigarette – lighter socket in a car, and aim it where you want. I used a 12V computer fan, some epoxy glue and a tie-wrap.Read more
Old ball-type Mice make perfect resources for rotational encoders. There are however numerous different sensors. Some have plain photodiodes, some have IC’s which do part of the converting to TTL signals. Last is the case with plain old logitech mice (the ones with encoder wheel). Simply hook up the first two wires to Vcc andRead more
Finally, the holy grail in physical computing and interaction design. Lo and Behold, the internet enabled furby! Whenever you need an email-warning you can stroke, or a furry newsreader, here’s the starting point for your project.. ahum. I used a lantronix Xport ethernet-to-serial interface to connect a normal Arduino duemillianove board to the internet. TheRead more
So much for the ‘paws’, on to the whiskers. I used old guitar string which is very flexible (but does not permanently deform that easy) so it stays in shape nicely. The switch is made out of one loop of wire which normally does not touch the feeler-wire. As soon as the feeler is bendedRead more
The first RetroInterface is a fact!. I used an Ottantotto to convert the signals to and from a T100S telex by Siemens to ‘modern day ASCII’ at 9600 baud. The system works well. Any type of terminal emulator on PC can be used to write and read data (half duplex) to the telex. Apparently theRead more
After some useful hints and tips from Tom Igoe, I am happy to present the small atmega88 board aimed at servo-control. Since it is using the mega88 I dubbed the board ‘Ottantotto’ which is Italian for Eighty eight. More on this board can be found on the wiki page.Read more
Connecting everything with everything… Here a computer playing Pong with itself. The motorfaders from the Behringer BCF2000 can either used as user-input or taken over by the PC. Check the processing example hereRead more
Okay.. by common consent my simpleWalker has been dubbed flatpack walker according to hack a day. Who am I to disagree.. It got posted on hack-a-day after my first-time-ever ‘instructable‘ I posted on this topic.Read more
At the protospace fablab I made a laser-cut wood version of the simpleWalker. It took only 5 minutes on the laser cutter, instead of an hour behind the bandsaw! I used 4mm birch plywood. The robot works well (and smells like a campfire … oh well…) Again, it can be seen walking on YouTube (butRead more
In the first version of the simple walker I used a custom atmega32 based board. I replaced it by a ‘custom’ version of the Arduino which I dubbed ‘ottantotto’ The microcontrollerboard is a breadboard version of the ‘ottantotto’ controller. It uses an ATmega88 instead of mega168 (mostly because they are cheaper, they sell forRead more