Collaborate Disseminate
Clocks are a favourite project here, and we can say we’ve seen all conceivable types over the years. Just a software clock on a retrocomputer perhaps isn’t the coolest among …read more Continue reading An Apple ][ With A Pendulum
At the heart of all computers is a clock, a dedicated timepiece ensuring that all of the parts of the computer are synchronized and can work together to execute the …read more Continue reading Clock Runs Computer In Slow-Motion
That big grandfather clock in the library might be an impressive piece of mechanical ingenuity, and an even better example of fine cabinetry, but we’d expect that the accuracy of …read more Continue reading An Atomic Pendulum Clock Accurate Enough for CERN
Reaction wheels are useful things, typically used by satellites to keep themselves oriented the right way up in space. Turning the reaction wheel creates an equal and opposite torque in …read more Continue reading Building Reaction Wheels With Python and LEGO
Many musicians will be familiar with the metronome, a pendulum charged with generating a rhythmic tick to keep one’s performance in regular time. With PendulumSynth, [mrezanvari] takes the same basic …read more Continue reading PendulumSynth Ties Music and Physics Together
Talk about your mixed timekeeping metaphors: there are clocks, and pendulum clocks, and there are Nixie clocks, and persistence of vision clocks. But this is a Nixie pendulum POV clock, …read more Continue reading This POV Clock Combines a Nixie with a Pendulum
Rotating mechanisms can be a headache when it becomes necessary to deliver power through them. [Igor Brkic] faced just such a challenge when creating his double-pendulum build, and solved it with a little DIY.
The project is known as KLAATNO, inspired by the Croatian word for pendulum, klatno. It’s a …read more
[Dennis] aims to make robotic control a more intuitive affair by ditching joysticks and buttons, and using wireless gesture controls in their place. What’s curious is that there isn’t an accelerometer or gyro anywhere to be seen in his Palm Power! project.
The gesture sensing consists not of a fancy IMU, but of two potentiometers (one for each axis) with offset weights attached to the shafts. When the hand tilts, the weights turn the shafts of the pots, and the resulting readings are turned into motion commands and sent over Bluetooth. The design certainly has a what-you-see-is-what-you-get aspect to it, …read more
Continue reading Gesture Control without Fancy Sensors, Just Pots and Weights
Traditional mechanical clockmaking is an art that despite being almost the archetype of precision engineering skill, appears rarely in our world of hardware hackers. That’s because making a clock mechanism is hard, and it is for good reason that professional clockmakers serve a long apprenticeship to learn their craft.
Though crafting one by hand is no easy task, a clock escapement is a surprisingly simple mechanism. Simple enough in fact that one can be 3D-printed, and that is just what [j0z] has done with a model posted on Thingiverse.
The model is simply the escapement mechanism, so to make …read more
Continue reading Clock This! A 3D-Printed Escapement Mechanism
Once you step into the world of controls, you quickly realize that controlling even simple systems isn’t as easy as applying voltage to a servo. Before you start working on your own bipedal robot or scratch-built drone, though, you might want to get some practice with this intricate field of engineering. A classic problem in this area is the inverted pendulum, and [Philip] has created a great model of this which helps illustrate the basics of controls, with some AI mixed in.
Called the ZIPY, the project is a “Cart Pole” design that uses a movable cart on a trolley …read more
Continue reading Inverted Pendulum For The Control Enthusiast