Collaborate Disseminate
[James] is designing an open-source 3D printed keyboard switch, with the end goal of building a keyboard with as many printed parts as possible. Since keyswitches are meant to be pressed quite often, the DIY switches ought to be tested just as rigorously as their commercial counterparts are at the …read more
Continue reading Switch Tester Servo-Slaps Them ’til they Fail
We’ve all been there. A big bag of resistors all mixed up. Maybe you bought them cheap. Maybe your neatly organized drawers spilled. Of course, you can excruciatingly read the color codes one by one. Or use a meter. But either way, it is a tedious job. [Ishann’s] solution was …read more
Join us on Wednesday, May 20 at noon Pacific for the Animatronics Hack Chat with Will Cogley!
While robots have only a made a comparatively recent appearance on the technology timeline, people have been building mechanical simulations of living organisms for a long time indeed. For proof, one needs only …read more
We all have our new and interesting challenges in lockdown life. If you’ve had to relocate to ride it out, the chances are good that even your challenges have challenges. Lockdown left [Kanoah]’s sister in the lurch when it came to feeding her recently-adopted pet rat, so he came up …read more
Continue reading Piston-Powered Pellet Pusher for Peckish Pets
[Harrison] has been busy finding the sweeter side of quarantine by building a voice-controlled, face-tracking M&M launcher. Not only does this carefully-designed candy launcher have control over the angle, direction, and velocity of its ammunition, it also locates and locks on to targets by itself.
Here comes the science: [Harrison] …read more
After this pandemic thing is all said and done, historians will look back on this period from many different perspectives. The one we’re most interested in of course will concern the creativity that flourished in the petri dish of anxiety, stress, and boredom that have come as unwanted side dishes …read more
Continue reading Nightmare Fuel Telepresence ‘Bot May Become Your Last Friend
[a-RN-au-D] was looking for something fun to do with his son and dreamed up a laser blaster game that ought to put him in the running for father of the year. It was originally just going to be made of cardboard, but you know how these things go. We’re happy …read more
Continue reading Open Laser Blaster Shells Out More Bang for the Buck
Sundials, one of humanity’s oldest ways of telling time, are typically permanent installations. The very good reason for this is that telling time by the sun with any degree of accuracy requires two-dimensional calibration — once for cardinal direction, and the other for local latitude.
[poblocki1982] is an amateur astronomer …read more
Continue reading Sun-Seeking Sundial Self-Calibrates in No Time
For many people, these last few weeks have been quite an adjustment. When the normal routine of work or school is suddenly removed, it’s not unusual for your internal clock to get knocked out of alignment. It might have started with struggling to figure out if it was time for …read more
Continue reading Quarantine Clock Answers the Important Question
Of the 43 muscles that comprise the human face, only a few are actually important to speaking. And yet replicating the movements of the mouth by mechanical means always seems to end up only partly convincing. Servos and linkages can only approximate the complex motions the lips, cheeks, jaw, and …read more
Continue reading This Animatronic Mouth Mimics Speech With Servos