Author Archives: James Hobson

The Enchanting Power Of SDDSbot

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Who doesn’t love a good robot? If you don’t — how dare you! — then this charming little scamp might just bring the hint of a smile to your face.

SDDSbot — built out of an old Sony Dynamic Digital Sound system’s reel cover — can’t do much other than turn left, right, or walk forwards on four D/C motor-controlled legs, but it does so using the power of a Pixy camera and an Arduino. The Pixy reads colour combinations that denote stop and go commands from sheets of paper, attempting to keep it in the center of its field …read more

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A Solar-Powered Headset From Recycled Parts

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Solar power has surged ahead in recent years, and access for the individual has grown accordingly. Not waiting around for a commercial alternative, Instructables user [taifur] has gone ahead and built himself a solar-powered Bluetooth headset.

Made almost completely of recycled components — reducing e-waste helps us all — only the 1 W flexible solar panel, voltage regulator, and the RN-52 Bluetooth module were purchased for this project. The base of the headset has been converted from [taifur]’s old wired one, meanwhile a salvaged boost converter, and charge controller — for a lithium-ion battery — form the power …read more

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Taking A Robot For A Drive

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Instructables user [Roboro] had a Mad Catz Xbox steering wheel controller he hasn’t had much use for of late, so he decided to hack and use it as a controller for a robot instead.

Conceivably, you could use any RC car, but [Roboro] is reusing one he used for a robot sumo competition a few years back. Cracking open the controller revealed a warren of wires that were — surprise, surprise — grouped and labelled, making for a far less painful hacking process. Of course, [Roboro] is only using the Xbox button for power, the player-two LED to show the …read more

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Your Internet of Things Speaks Volumes About You

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If only Marv and Harry were burglars today; they might have found it much easier to case houses and — perhaps — would know which houses were occupied by technically inclined kids by capitalizing on the potential  vulnerability that [Luc Volders] has noticed on ThingSpeak.

As an IoT service, ThingSpeak takes data from an ESP-8266, graphs it, and publicly displays the data. Some of you may already see where this is going. While [Volders] was using the service for testing, he realized anyone could check the temperature of his man-cave — thereby inferring when the house was vacant since the …read more

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Simple and Effective Car Lock Jammer Detector

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[Andrew Nohawk], has noticed a spike of car break-ins and thefts — even in broad daylight — in his native South Africa. The thieves have been using remote jammers. Commercial detectors are available but run into the hundreds of dollars. He decided to experiment with his own rig, whipping up a remote jamming ‘detector’ for less than the cost of a modest meal.

Operating on the principle that most remote locks work at 433MHz, [Nohawk] describes how criminals ‘jam’ the frequency by holding down the lock button on another device, hoping to distort or outright interrupt the car from receiving …read more

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Toast-Bot Butters For You (Sometimes)

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Sometimes — despite impracticality, safety, failure, and general good sense — one has an urge to see a project through for the sake of it. When you’re sick of buttering your toast every morning, you might take a leaf out of Rick Sandc– ahem, [William Osman]’s book and build a toast-bot to take care of the task for you.

[Osman] — opting for nail the overkill quotient — is using a reciprocating saw motor to hold the butter while the toast moves underneath the apparatus on a platform controlled by a linear stepper motor. The frame and mounts for Toast-Bot …read more

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What Is This, A Battle-Bot For Ants?

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Instructables user [Team_Panic] — inspired by the resurgence of robot battle arena shows — wanted to dive in to his local ‘bot building club. Being that they fight at the UK ant weight scale with a cap of 150 grams, [Team_Panic] built a spunky little Arduino Mini-controlled bot on the cheap.

The Instructable is aimed at beginners, and so is peppered with sound advice. For instance, [Team_Panic] advises building from “the weapon out” as that dictates how the rest of the robot will come together around it. There are also some simple design considerations on wiring and circuit boards considering …read more

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MacGyvering Test Lead Clips

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Okay fellow Make-Gyvers, what do you get when you cross a peripheral power cable jumper, a paperclip, springs, and some 3D-printed housings? DIY test lead clips.

Test clips are easily acquired, but where’s the fun in that? [notionSuday] started by removing the lead connectors from the jumper, soldering them to stripped lengths of paperclip, bent tabs off the connectors to act as stoppers, and slid springs over top. Four quick prints for the housings later, the paperclip assembly fit right inside, the tips bent and clipped to work as the makeshift clamp. Once slipped onto the ends of their multimeter …read more

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MacGyvering Test Lead Clips

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Okay fellow Make-Gyvers, what do you get when you cross a peripheral power cable jumper, a paperclip, springs, and some 3D-printed housings? DIY test lead clips.

Test clips are easily acquired, but where’s the fun in that? [notionSuday] started by removing the lead connectors from the jumper, soldering them to stripped lengths of paperclip, bent tabs off the connectors to act as stoppers, and slid springs over top. Four quick prints for the housings later, the paperclip assembly fit right inside, the tips bent and clipped to work as the makeshift clamp. Once slipped onto the ends of their multimeter …read more

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Live Counter Revives Old Nokia Phone’s Utility

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Old hardware you may have on hand cannot only inspire projects in their own right, but can facilitate the realization of any ideas you have been planning. Using a Nokia N900, [MakerMan] concocted a light-up sign with a live subscriber and view count of his videos.

[MakerMan] milled out the logo used on the sign with his DIY CNC machine — built from rotary bearings and recycled stepper motors off industrial Xerox printers. The meticulous application of a jigsaw, rotary tool, and grinder resulted in a sturdy frame for the sign while a few strips of RGB LEDs imbue it …read more

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