Hackaday Podcast 056: Cat of 9 Heads, Robot Squats, PhD in ESP32, and Did You Hear About Sonos?

Hackaday editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys gab on great hacks of the past week. Did you hear that there’s a new rev of the Pi 4 out there? We just heard… but apparently it’s release into the wild was months ago. Fans of the ESP8266 are going to love …read more

Continue reading Hackaday Podcast 056: Cat of 9 Heads, Robot Squats, PhD in ESP32, and Did You Hear About Sonos?

Gyro Controlled RGB Blinky Ball Will Light up Your Life

[James Bruton], from the XRobots YouTube channel is known for his multipart robot and cosplay builds. Occasionally, though, he creates a one-off build. Recently, he created a video showing how to build a LED ball that changes color depending on its movement.

The project is built around a series of 3D printed “arms” around a hollow core, each loaded with a strip of APA102 RGB LEDs. An Arduino Mega reads orientation data from an MPU6050 and changes the color of the LEDs based on that input. Two buttons attached to the Mega modify the way that the LEDs change color. …read more

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Electric LEGO Longboard Now Complete with Epic Road Test

We recently posted about [James Bruton]’s most excellent oversized LEGO electric longboard. Well, now he has completed the project by tidying a few things and building oversized versions of classic light-up bricks to serve as headlamps and the tail light. Most importantly, he’s hitting the road with it!

He built a LEGO-looking enclosure for the battery as well, based on a 2×6 brick. The battery pack sits behind the motor with the tail light on top and holds the radio control receiver as well the twin LiPos. The head and tail lights pack 24-LED discs and are controlled by [James]’ …read more

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Hackaday Links: January 29, 2017

A 3D printer and laser cutter were cited as cause in two deaths. A couple (and two cats) were found dead in their apartment this week. The cause of death was carbon monoxide poisoning. Police and the gas company investigated the residence and found no other source of carbon monoxide besides a 3D printer and a laser cutter. Be sure to check out the people who know more about these deaths than the people who actually investigated these deaths in the comments below. In the mean time, get a CO detector. It’s nasty stuff.

At CES last this month, Lulzbot …read more

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Speed Run [James Bruton’s] Star Wars Builds

We’ve been following [James Bruton]’s builds here on Hackaday for quite a while and he has built some impressive stuff. We love how he often doesn’t cover everything up, leaving enough room to admire the working bits under the hood. Just in time for the release of the new Star Wars movie, Rogue One, [James] put together an overview of his Star Wars robot builds.

The build summary includes his R6 droid, his GNK walking droid and the third revision of his BB-8 droid. [James Bruton]’s videos have tons of detail in them over many, many parts (for example, his …read more

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Perfecting The DIY BB-8

Until about a year ago, the Droid Builder’s Club had just about everything figured out to build any sort of robot from Star Wars. Building an R2D2 clone was easy, and even R5 and R6 droids were common. There were even a few attempts to clone IG-88. Then Disney happened, The Force Awakens was released, and the world was introduced to the hero of the third trilogy, BB-8. Several people have gone to incredible lengths to replicate BB-8 as a unique homebrew robot, but no one has put in more effort than [James Bruton]. He’s wrapping up his third DIY …read more

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