Lego NXT Camera Platform
Members of Chinese Mindstorms site CMNXT made this excellent platform for controlling a camera. [via the NXTStep]
Fun & Games
The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
iPad Controlled RC Car
Wannes Vermeulen created an iPad app to control a modded RC car, complete with a remote point-of-view camera: I used two servo motors attached to the original remote control of the car to adjust speed and steering. These are controlled by an Arduino Uno, which gets the accelerometer data from the iPad through a socket server on my laptop. I also fitted my old Android smartphone to the car, which uses an IPCam app to stream the video to the iPad. The “camera”, the iPad and the laptop are connected to the same Wi-Fi network to share their data.
Lego Hadron Collider
This model by Bohr Institute physicist Sascha Mehlhase does not, of course, represent the whole Large Hadron Collider, which is a huge circular underground accelerator. Even at minifig scale, such a model would be enormous. Rather, it represents what is probably the most iconic part of the LHC, the ATLAS detector (Wikipedia). Dr. Mehlhase reports 80 hours of work in the build, about evenly split between design (in software) and physical assembly of its almost 10,000 bricks. [Thanks, Rachel!]
The Zombie Hammer, Now with Skull Ejector
Slingshot artificer Jörge Sprave is at it again. This time he’s made a vicious slingshot (no surprise there), but with a second business end — a deadly counter-weighted spike, aka the Zombie Hammer.
Skylanders Fish Sculpt
MAKE contributor I-Wei Huang, aka “Crabfu,” sent us the video for this fun sculpting project he did. It depicts a giant taxidermied “Leviathan” fish found in the wonderful Skylanders game.
The First Citizen of My Personal Robot Nation Has Arrived
Back in November at AnDevCon II, I met Jonathan Hirshon of Horizon Communications, who hooked me up with a complimentary robot from My Robot Nation. This had nothing to do with Android; it probably came up because we had a MakerBot running in OโReillyโs booth printing out little Androids (using casainhoโs Android magnet design from Thingiverse). Enough about androids and robots. As ST:TNGโs Lt. Commander Data is so fond of reminding us, there is a difference between the two!
Breaking into Making: A Meditation
At what point did you know you were a “maker?” Making springs from an insatiable need to learn about, dissect, and modify. For some this impulse came early, for others, it didnโt arise until later. Maybe you were the kid who could always fix a broken bike, or you dug into your familyโs first PC at a young age and didnโt stop until, years later, you had graduated to making complex gadgets using physical computing.
