The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
Peter William Wagner bounces across the fairgrounds at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011, delighting everyone whose path he crosses. The big purple eccentric-axled bike has two inflated all-terrain wheels that can also function as flotation for the aquatic parts of the annual Kinetic Grand Championship in and around Arcada, California, where this “whim-cycle” has appeared for the last six years. Even Peter’s baby granddaughter enjoys the ride.
My friend Karen Nazor send me a link to this video of animations being created, phenakistoscope/persistence of vision-style, on bicycle wheels, using paper cut-outs in the spokes. Really nifty.
YouTuber Alpinedelta32 created this simple but fun retro remix by combining a Nintendo Entertainment System controller with an Etch A Sketch. The drawing toyโs knobs are rotated by 12 volt stepper motors and theyโre controlled with the d-pad of the NES controller. Behind the scenes he has an Arduino for motor control and a computer power supply to provide the 12 volts needed by the steppers. Iโm guessing the next logical step is to rig the start button to flip the Etch A Sketch over and shake away the drawing.
FIRST® LEGO League @Google This is cool to see, imagine if every “tech company” hosted a LEGO league in some way? The kids at these events today, are the engineers of tomorrow…
As Lego-based cube solvers proliferate, they tend to use PCs or cell phones to do the actual solving of the puzzle, with Lego motors and sensors for the rest. David Gilday’s MindCuber uses only those elements found in a Mindstorms set, and with a sub-2-minute average solve time, still packs impressive results. [Via the NXT […]
For those of you who love using your smartphone while cycling in the rain, there’s this nifty hack from North Carolina maker jalexartis. After mounting your handset using your favorite method, cut the top off a plastic bottle, then make a slit down one side to accept the mounting hardware.
Neat idea from Instructables user Random_Canadian, whose mini metal lathe and homemade plastics extruder we have recently featured. His take on the classic physics toy uses five glass marbles, each illuminated by an attached LED and suspended by the wires that power it.
