Sonic The Self-Balancing Robot: Face-Plants And The Challenges Of Sensor Integration

Watching a child learn to run is a joyous, but sometimes painful experience. It seems the same is true is for [James Bruton]’s impressive Sonic the Self-Balancing robot, even with bendable knees and force sensitive legs.

We covered the mechanical side of the project recently, and now [James] has added …read more

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Sonic The Hedgehog Self-Balancing Robot Can Bend At The Knees

Building your own self-balancing robot is a rite of passage for anyone getting into the field of robotics. Master of robots, [James Bruton] has been there, done that, and collected a few T-shirts. Now he’s building a large Sonic the Hedgehog self balancing robot that can bend at the knees …read more

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This Two-Wheeled RC Car Is Rather Quick

Radio control cars have always been fun, it’s true. With that said, it’s hard to deny that true speed was unlocked when lithium polymer batteries and brushless motors came to the fore. [Gear Down For What?] built himself a speedy RC car of his own design, and it’s only got …read more

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PID Controlled Charcoal BBQ – Put an Arduino on it!

At Maker Faire Milwaukee this past weekend, [basement tech]  was showing off his latest build, a PID controlled charcoal grill. While it hasn’t QUITE been tested yet with real food, it does work in theory.

PID (a feedback loop with some fancy math used to adjust the input to get a consistent output) controlled cooking is commonly used for sous vide, where one heats up a water bath to a controlled temperature to cook food in plastic bags. Maintaining water temperature is fairly easy. Controlling a charcoal barbecue is much more difficult. [basement tech] accomplishes this with controlled venting and …read more

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