Collaborate Disseminate
Want to do a bit of good this holiday season without leaving your couch or battle station? Well step right up and try your hand at Santa Claws, the charitable claw machine created by UK-based firm Liberty Games. For every toy you can maneuver to the chute, Liberty Games will …read more
Continue reading Santa Claws: Sharpen Your Skills For a Good Cause
The entirety of Silicon Valley is predicated on the ability to ‘move fast and break laws’. Have an idea for a scooter startup? No problem, just throw a bunch of scooters on the curb, littering and e-waste laws be damned. Earlier this year, Swarm Technologies launched four rogue satellites on an Indian rocket. All commercial satellite launches by US companies are regulated by the FCC, and Swarm just decided not to tell the FCC. This was the first unauthorized satellite launch ever. Now, Swarm has been fined $900k. Now that we know the cost of launching unauthorized satellites, so if …read more
Remote administration of machines is a very useful tool for all manner of commercial, industrial, and home applications. Now, it’s available for claw machines, too – thanks to [Code Your Venture Free].
The project uses an ESP32 board that includes a battery case on the back for a standard 18650 lithium battery that makes getting small battery powered projects off the ground much easier. You can find them at Banggood and AliExpress, but we’re not 100% sure that they’re kosher because they’re branded WeMos, but don’t show up on WeMos’ website or their official online retail store. Anyway, it’s a …read more
Have you ever been seduced by a claw machine in an arcade, only to have your hopes of a cuddly toy dashed as it fails to hang onto your choice? Then you’re in luck, because now you can play to your heart’s content online. [Ryan Walmsley] wants you to control his Raspberry Pi-driven claw machine.
Hardware-wise he’s replaced the original 8052 microcontroller and relay control with the Pi and a custom H-bridge PCB. We particularly light the warning: “Highish voltage”, and we feel it should appear more often. There is some code in his GitHub repository, but we suspect it …read more
[Ryan Bates] apparently really likes building claw machines. We noticed his latest build with a new PCB, but then we scrolled down and found other incarnations of the machine going back to 2015.
The laser-cut claw is interesting looking and the brains are an Arduino. You can see the action in the video below and there are plenty of older videos on the project page.
Without the PCB, the machine was a mess of wires. With the PCB, a single ribbon cable connects the Arduino to the board, and the board has a layout of screw terminals. This results in …read more
