Meet Stompy, your new robotic overlord

May 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In case you weren’t already depressed about not starting a summer project already, a couple of guys are building a gigantic rideable hexapod they call Stompy.

The project leaders, [Gui Cavalcanti], [Dan Cody], and [James Whong] have worked on a few crazy robotics projects before like PETMAN and BigDog. Stompy won’t be a military-backed project like the others (we sincerely hope), so they’re enlisting the help of fellow makers at Artisan’s Asylum to complete a 15-foot diameter, 1-2 ton rideable hexapod before the end of August.

Right now, the team is still in the planning and preliminary testing stages. So far, they’ve built a 1/2 scale model of one leg to figure out the control systems, and getting the repurposed forklift motor up and running. It may not look like much now, but we’re sure the team is going to have a very fun time building Stompy.

You can check out the updates and progress of Stompy on the Project Hexapod blog

Filed Under: robots hacks Tagged With: , ,

A fantastic acrylic light display

May 3, 2012 By Leave a Comment

As a retired industrial designer, [Dave] has a lot of time to do what we’d all like to do: sit around in a workshop and make stuff. His latest project, an acrylic light display of an Indian motorcycle looks fantastic and betrays his designer heritage.

The base of the light display is made up of a laminate of a few 1/4″ pieces of Poplar carved on [Dave]’s CNC machine. These pieces were glued together with a slot routed into the top for the arcylic panel. Instead of going with a few LEDs for the light source, [Dave] used a small cold cathode fluorescent lamp with the requisite inverter tucked away inside the base. This is the same setup he used in an earlier project, and judging from that the Indian motorcycle display looks great on the inside.

After giving the wooden base a few coats of lacquer, [Dave] milled a piece of acrylic with an Indian motorcycle motif he created himself. It’s a great piece of work, sure to brighten up his very awesome workshop.

Filed Under: misc hacks Tagged With: ,

Arduino can program PIC too!

May 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This is a wiring diagram that [Soranne] put together when developing a method of programming PIC microcontrollers using an Arduino board. You can see that he takes care of the 12V issue by connecting the Master Clear (MCLR) pin to an external source. This comes with one warning that the Arduino should always be reset just before making that connection.

He’s tested this with a 16F628 and is happy to report that he can successfully flash the program memory, but hasn’t implemented a way to write to the EEPROM as of yet. This should work for any of the 16F family of chips, but we’d bet this will be extended if some knowledgeable folks decide to lend a hand.

On the PC side of things [Soraane] has been working on a program to push code to the Arduino via the USB connection. He’s developing it in C# and even has a GUI worked up for the project. You can get your hands on the software in the second post of the thread linked above but you’ll have to be logged into the Arduino forum to see the download link.

We think the 12V issue is why we don’t see more roll-your-own programmers for PIC. But there are a few solutions out there like this ATmega8 version.

Filed Under: arduino hacks, Microcontrollers Tagged With: , , ,

Sun-powered Stirling engine with automatic tracking

May 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Check out this solar-powered Stirling engine (translated). The build is part of a high school class and they packed in some really nice features. The first is the parabolic mirror which focuses the sun’s rays on the chamber of the engine. The heat is what makes it go, and the video after the breaks shows it doing just that.

But the concept behind the mirror makes for an interesting challenge. The light energy is focused at a narrow point. When the sun moves in the sky that point will no longer be at an efficient position to power the engine. This issue is solved by a pair of stepper motors which can reposition the dish. It’s done automatically by an Arduino Uno which makes readings from four LDR (photoresistors) in that cardboard tube mounted at the top of the dish. If the light intensity is the same for all four, then the tube is pointed at the sun. If not, the motors are tweaked to get the best angle possible.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: green hacks Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Surround Sound system controller replacement includes home automation

May 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Neoxy] always wanted surround sound for his computer, and one day he managed to get a hold of a dead 5.1 system. Why buy one when you can repair someone’s rubbish, right? That turned out to be easier said than done, but after several false-starts he managed to resurrect the audio system by replacing the microcontroller.

We find his trouble-shooting technique interesting. The amp would power up without a hitch but no sound would come out of it. So he took a headphone cable and used the L and R conductors as probes. That cable was fed from an MP3 player, and by touching the probes to the audio inputs for the pre-amp and amplifier circuits he could get great sound out of the speakers. Reasonably certain that those boards were working fine he narrowed down the troubles to three chips that mix, select inputs, and control the system.

A lot of prototyping with an ATmega328 and an Arduino led him to the functionality you see in the video after the break. Not only did he get the system working, but he’s using the Arduino to add Internet control for the device.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: digital audio hacks, home entertainment hacks Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Simple trick for replacing Game Boy cart batteries while retaining game saves

May 2, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Adr990] wants to make sure his Game Boy game saves aren’t lost to aging batteries. They’re stored in SRAM with a small coin cell inside the cartridge to keep the memory energized when the game is not being played. But if you pull out the battery in order to replace it the data will be lost in the process. It turns out that you can hot-swap the battery without too much effort. As shown in the video after the break, he disassembled the case of the cartridge, then replaced the battery while the Game Boy is switched on. The edge connector feeds power which will keep the SRAM active while the backup battery is removed. We’re sure this could be done with a bench supply as well, but you’ll need to do your own testing before risking those prized game saves.

The other option is to backup your SRAM before replacing the batteries. We’ve seen an AVR-based cartridge dumper, and also one that uses an Arduino. Both should be able to read and write SRAM data. [Read more…]

Filed Under: gameboy hacks, repair hacks Tagged With: , , , , ,
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