Servo Surgery Teaches Us DIY Encoder Implants

The modified servo being calibrated on the left half of the screen, with some graphs of its operation being shown on the right half.

Today, we shall talk about how [Adam Bäckström] took a DS3225 servo and rebuilt it to improve its accuracy, then built a high-precision robot arm with those modified servos to …read more Continue reading Servo Surgery Teaches Us DIY Encoder Implants

The Adorable Robot Spot, Now In Affordable Form

If you’ve been following the Boston Dynamics project Spot, you’ve seen its capabilities and how we’re starting to see it being used in public more since its official release last year. But in a true display of how hobbyist electronics have been evolving and catching up with the big companies …read more

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ExoMy Is A Miniature European Mars Rover With A Friendly Face

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

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Compliant Quadruped Legs Using Servos

Walking robots that move smoothly are tricky to build and usually involve some sort of compliant leg mechanism — a robot limb that can rebound like natural physiology for much better movement than what a stiff machine can accomplish. In his everlasting quest to build a real working robot dog, …read more

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New Part Day: Lynxmotion Smart Servos

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

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Wrangling RC Servos Becoming a Hassle? Try Serial Bus Servos!

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.

Our Friend the RC Servo

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

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Evolving the 3D Printed Linear Actuator

Our open source community invites anyone with an idea to build upon the works of those who came before. Many of us have encountered a need to control linear motion and adapted an inexpensive hobby servo for the task. [Michael Graham] evaluated existing designs and believed he has ideas to advance the state of the art. Our Hackaday Prize judges agreed, placing his 3D Printed Servo Linear Actuator as one of twenty winners of our Robotics Module Challenge.

[Michael]’s actuator follows in the footstep of other designs based on a rack-and-pinion gear such as this one featured on these pages, …read more

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Simulating VR Obstacles with Wheelchair Brakes

[Joey Campbell] is studying for his PhD at the Bristol Interaction and Graphics Lab, focusing on the interplay between real and virtual objects within the realm of exergaming–“gamercising” where physical motion and effort drives the game. The goal is to make the physical effort seem to correspond with what’s seen on the headset.

[Joey] set up a test rig where an exercise bike’s gears were adjusted based on the terrain encountered, seeking to find out if that realism inspired a greater feeling of immersion. He also provided some test subjects a HUD with their heart rate and other stats, to …read more

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