Here’s a novel way to take measurements using sound waves with an iPhone. German developer Florian Student’s Acoustic Ruler Pro for iOS will measure distances up to 25 meters by clocking the time delay of emitted sound waves. You can use the app with either a pair of headphones or with another iPhone to measure the distance between the two handsets.
The Egg-Bot is an art robot designed by Bruce Shapiro that’s fun to watch as it draws intricate designs on eggs or any other round objects 3cm–10cm in diameter, including ornaments, golf balls, and light bulbs. You design the patterns in the free app Inkscape, and the bot draws them using fine-point Sharpies, engraving tools, […]
I’ve been building OWI robot kits since the mid-1980s. Some have been good, a few not worth the box they came in. Every once in a while, OWI does a kit that’s great — their 3-in-1 All Terrain Robot (ATR) is one of these. This entertaining kit, suitable for kids 12 and up, lets you […]
This kit is amazingly cool and easy to use. POV (persistence of vision) displays show words or patterns that seem to float in mid-air; if you’ve ever seen one, you know what a great effect it is. A line of LEDs flashes the Y component of what you’re displaying, and you provide the X by […]
LeoneLabs on Instructables posted this fantastic how-to on adding 14 lasers to a regular tennis ball to make a Laser Ball. Why? He says that it’s fun to build, it can be done in an afternoon, and “lasers are cool.” The lasers are driven by a Teensy USB Development Board, which is stuffed inside the ball and controlled from outside with an infrared remote control. The Instructable shows you how to make your own in painstaking detail, but you can also follow the build step-by-step in this fun video.
The Rainbow Cube is a nerdy but gorgeous accent light consisting of a 4×4×4 cube of red-green-blue LEDs. Depending on how it’s programmed, colors appear to move, pulse, or wash through the cube in all directions, which is fascinating to watch. The LEDs connect to the PCB base via an ingenious structure consisting of thin […]
Owwwww, my head. I am still recovering from what will almost certainly be the best Elevensday celebration of my life. Unless I make it to 11/11/2111, that is. Fingers crossed. Anyway, to commemorate the event, and because Gronk think rainbows pretty, our featured image this week is johngineer’s 11.11.11. But it was a hard choice, because…
