Author Archives: John Baichtal

LEGO Train Explores a World of Sparkling Light

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[bananenbuurman] converted his studio apartment into a glorious four-minute LEGO train course equipped with lights, motorized effects, and creative displays.

The train car sports a 360-degree camera, giving us a minifigure’s view of the whole course: a series of themed “rooms”—one papered in what appear too be Euro notes, while others have laptops, power supplies, motherboards, and other pieces of old hardware. You’re reminded of the train’s small size when it passes by various LEGO-scale elements like minifigures, looming as if they were six feet tall.

There are lights everywhere, from the LED indicators from various pieces of equipment, to …read more

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Upgraded Roboceratops Still Not Extinct

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We first heard about [Robert Stephenson]’s robotic baby dinosaur a few years ago, and recently he made some upgrades.

Roboceratops V2 uses 10 servos in the jaw, neck, tail, and front and back legs with 16 degrees of freedom—the two front legs each got an additional degree of freedom in the upgrade. [Robert] is currently in the process of swapping out the Hitec HS645 MGs for higher-torque New Power XLDs.

The older version had aluminum legs covered with upholstery foam, but [Robert] has refined the design. The head, body, and legs are made from laser-cut MDF sanded to give a …read more

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Hacklab’s Logo Changes with the Habitat of a Beet Plant

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Zaragoza, Spain hacklab La Remolacha (“The Beet”) sports a logo which responds to human interaction with a beet plant growing in the space. Sensors keep track of temperature as well as humidity for both air and ground, while buttons add more water, plant food, light, and music.

The shape and activity of the visualization responds to the sensors. The higher the temperature, the more folds in the shape. More distortions appear when there’s more humidity in the soil, while rotation speed increases with air humidity. Adding food increases the size of the visualization, and music triggers more vibrations.

An Arduino …read more

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Translate Color to Smell with Bouquet

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Hope springs eternal for Smell-O-Vision. [Niklas Roy] recently taught a workshop called Communication Devices at ÉCAL in Lausanne, Switzerland. Four of his Media & Interaction Design students built a scanner that detects colors and emits a corresponding scent.

The project consists of an Arduino connected to a color sensor as well as a SparkFun EasyDriver. The EasyDriver controls a stepper motor which rotates a disc of scent swatches so you sniff the swatch corresponding with the color. The students chose strawberry for red, and blue ended up being “ocean”-scented room spray.

With design students involved it’s no surprise the project  …read more

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Translate Color to Smell with Bouquet

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Hope springs eternal for Smell-O-Vision. [Niklas Roy] recently taught a workshop called Communication Devices at ÉCAL in Lausanne, Switzerland. Four of his Media & Interaction Design students built a scanner that detects colors and emits a corresponding scent.

The project consists of an Arduino connected to a color sensor as well as a SparkFun EasyDriver. The EasyDriver controls a stepper motor which rotates a disc of scent swatches so you sniff the swatch corresponding with the color. The students chose strawberry for red, and blue ended up being “ocean”-scented room spray.

With design students involved it’s no surprise the project  …read more

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Hacking the Thotcon 0x8 Badge

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[Kenjo] attended Chicago’s Thotcon this past week and has started hacking the convention badge and detailing what he learned. Thotcon’s badge, designed by [Jedha] and programmed by [John Wallis] of Workshop 88, is packed with the requisite electronic hardware and cryptic clues. There are four NeoPixel LEDs, three pots, and a micro USB, all run by an ATmega32u4.

The stock firmware is a game called tesserHack, a maze game using the three pots for navigation. You can also connect via USB to play through the serial console, and this version includes a map view and help menu.

[Kenjo] who previously  …read more

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3D-Printed Tiger Lopes with the Help of a Motor

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[Greg Zumwalt], master of 3D-printed mechanisms, has published his Saber 2 project as well as an assembly Instructable telling you how to put it together.

Saber 2 is a 3D-printed gear-and-cam saber-toothed tiger that can be motorized to show an excellent loping movement. It’s 14” long and 10” tall and consists of 108 components of which 34 are unique parts, and it all moves with the help of a 6 VDC 60 RPM gearmotor. With threaded PLA rods to keep it all together, and tapped holes to secure the rods, one imagines the printer would have to be pretty finely …read more

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4-LED Octal Clock Demands Colorful Math

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We’ve all seen LED clocks where RGB LEDs are used to display time. It seems like the simpler the interface, the more likely you’d need to do math to figure out the time. This Octal Clock by [Alex Kurrasch] proves the point by using only four LEDs: the top two show hours and minutes, and the bottom two LEDs are multipliers.

Using octal numbering, [Alex] translates the data using a Venn diagram of color mixing. The mapping uses 1 as red, 2 as green, followed by yellow, blue, magenta, and cyan. It ends with 7 as white (all on) and …read more

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