Etch-A-Sketch Camera is Open Source
The Etch-a-Sketch was a great toy if you were somehow born with the talent to use it. For the rest of us, it was a frustrating red brick filled with …read more Continue reading Etch-A-Sketch Camera is Open Source
Category Archives: motors
R/C Smoke Grenade Rolls With the Changes
[Davis DeWitt] gets to do something that many of us only dream of — build cool working props for movies. This time, the director asked for a realistic smoke grenade …read more Continue reading R/C Smoke Grenade Rolls With the Changes
Keebin’ with Kristina: the one with the Mad Model M
Hand-Wired Hell Help Do you dream of building a curvy ergonomic keyboard or macro pad, even though the idea of hand wiring gives you nightmares? You can make it a …read more Continue reading Keebin’ with Kristina: the one with the Mad Model M
Robot, Sudo Fold My Laundry
[Ty Palowski] doesn’t like folding his many shirts. He saw one of those boards on TV that supposedly simplifies folding, but it does require you to manually move the board. That just won’t do, so [Ty] motorized it to create a shirt folding robot.
The board idea is nothing new, …read more
Cat Robot’s Secret to Slim Legs? Banish the Motors!
The first thing to notice about [Bijuo]’s cat-sized quadruped robot designs (link is in Korean, Google translation here) is how slim and sleek the legs are. That’s because unlike most legged robots, the limbs themselves don’t contain any motors. Instead, the motors are in the main body, with one driving a half-circle pulley while another moves the limb as a whole. Power is transferred by a cable acting as a tendon and is offset by spring tension in the joints. The result is light, slim legs that lift and move in a remarkable gait.
[Bijuo] credits the Cheetah_Cub project as …read more
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A Dynamometer For Measuring Motor Power
If you have ever ventured into the world of motor vehicles you may be familiar with a dynamometer, possibly as a machine to which your vehicle is taken for that all-important printout that gives you bragging rights (or not) when it comes to its ability to lay down rubber. A dynamometer is essentially a variable load for a rotating shaft, something that converts the kinetic energy from the shaft into heat while measuring the power being transferred.
Most of us will never have the chance to peer inside our local dyno, so a term project from a group of Cornell …read more
Hackaday Prize Entry: Modular Stepper Control
Stepper motors are a great solution for accurate motion control. You’ll see them on many 3D printer designs since they can precisely move each axis. Steppers find uses in many robotics projects since they provide high torque at low speeds.
Since steppers are used commonly used for multi-axis control systems, it’s nice to be able to wire multiple motors back to a single controller. We’ve seen a few stepper control modules in the past that take care of the control details and accept commands over SPI, I2C, and UART. The AnanasStepper 2.0 is a new stepper controller that uses CAN …read more
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KFC Winged Aircraft Actually Flys
[PeterSripol] has made an RC model airplane but instead of using normal wings he decided to try getting it to fly using some KFC chicken buckets instead. Two KFC buckets in the place of wings were attached to a motor which spins the buckets up to speed. With a little help from the Magnus effect this creates lift.
Many different configurations were tried to get this contraption off the ground. They eventually settled on a dual prop setup, each spinning counter to each other for forward momentum. This helped to negate the gyroscopic effect of the spinning buckets producing the …read more
The Little Things I Didn’t Know About Small DC Motors
We’ve all taken apart a small toy and pulled out one of those little can motors. “With this! I can do anything!” we proclaim as we hold it aloft. Ten minutes later, after we’ve made it spin a few times, it goes into the drawer never to be seen again.
It always seems like they are in everything but getting them to function usefully in a project is a fool’s errand. What the heck are they for? Where do people learn the black magic needed to make them function? It’s easy enough to pull out the specification sheet for them. …read more
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