Collaborate Disseminate
Oh, dominoes — the fun of knocking them down is inversely proportional to the pain of setting them all up again. [DIY Machines] is saving loads of time by automating the boring part with a remote control domino-laying machine. If only it could pick them back up.
This machine can …read more
Do you need a to find a more sanitary way to roll the dice at your next socially-distanced board game gathering? [CJA3D]’s pop-o-matic mason jar dice roller can roll the bones two different ways — either by hitting that big, inviting arcade button, or though a web app that everyone …read more
Continue reading Dice Roller Keeps Germs Out of Your Snake Eyes
Over the past few weeks, a new season of Mars fever kicked off with launches of three interplanetary missions. And since there’s a sizable overlap between fans of spaceflight and those of electronics and 3D printing, the European Space Agency released the ExoMy rover for those who want to experience …read more
Continue reading ExoMy Is A Miniature European Mars Rover With A Friendly Face
Anyone who shops for robotics kits would have come across a few designed by Lynxmotion. They’ve been helping people build robots since 1995, from robot arm kits to hexapod chassis and everything in between. We would expect these people know their motors, so when they launched their own line of …read more
One thing 3D printers excel at is being able to easily create objects that would be daunting by other methods, something that also allows for rapid design iteration. That’s apparent in [Canino]’s palm-sized, gatling-style, motorized 32-elastic launcher.
The cannon has a rotary barrel driven by a small motor, and a clever sear design uses the rotation of the barrels like a worm gear. The rotating barrel has a spiral formation of hooks which anchor the stretched elastic bands. A small ramp rides that spiral gap, lifting ends of stretched bands one at a time as the assembly turns. This movement …read more
Continue reading Palm-Sized Gatling Gun Has 32 Mini Elastics With Your Name On Them
[NathanKing] has a cute, rambunctious pupper who eats way too fast for her own good. He’s tried various distribution methods intended to get her to slow down, but she’s just too excited to eat. [Nathan]’s latest solution is to launch the food piece by piece using a catapult. The dog loves the gamified feeding method, which is sort of like one-way fetch. She gets a bit of exercise, and everyone is amused for the half hour it takes to fling 1.5 cups of food one piece at a time.
Electronics-wise, this food flinger doesn’t use much more than three servos …read more
Continue reading Dog-Or-Catapult Controls The Speed Of The Feed
When we need actuators for a project, a servo from the remote-control hobby world is a popular solution. Though as the number of servos go up, keeping their wires neat and managing their control signals become a challenge. Once we start running more servos than we have fingers and toes, it’s worth considering the serial bus variety. Today we’ll go over what they are and examine three products on the market.
Remote control hobby servos are remarkable little devices. Each one is a self-contained closed-loop actuator, available across a wide spectrum of price and torque. …read more
Continue reading Wrangling RC Servos Becoming a Hassle? Try Serial Bus Servos!