Here’s a homemade remote control pan and tilt system mounted on a competition class RC car. All controlled wirelessly, with the video piped into a head mounted display. We’ve all seen those minicameras mounted on RC cars but never like this. Awesome mod! Link.
Dissident75 shows how to set up a cheap xm radio in your house without buying the “home kit”. All done with cheaper/free parts. “This weekend I was bored and needed to do something. I had purchased a Roady2 XM Reciever for a exgirlfriend but broke up with her before giving it to her. Seemed like a shame to let it go to waste, and I had been curious about satellite radio for a while. Examining the package, it was a standard car install kit. Including the receiver, the antenna, 2 types of mounts (vent and pedestal), a tape adapter, dc power supply (cig lighter), and a few colored faceplate accents. Standard fare really. Useful for a car install but useless for a house install.” Link. In MAKE volume 01 we show how to make your own battery pack too (for XM radios).
C Connors writes – “A student had a need for sound while running with his friends. Over several revisions, he has made several portable audio systems to provide entertainment at track meets and other running events. The latest is a waterproof boom pack made for a buddy now studying at West Point. He also has documentation of his computer aided design process for developing the files used to create the fabricated parts. If you would like to recreate his process and have access to Pro Desktop and a ShopBot, then check out the wiki here. His classmates computer aided design work is visible here.”
GoRobotics confirms our suspicions. “It seems to be pretty self-evident that pets are good for their owners. But, what about robot pets? Some scientists at the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue’s Veterinary school say yes, robot pets do benefit humans. Petting an Aibo caused the human stress hormone cortisol to decrese in patients, much like a real dog, although the effects weren’t as pronounced.” [via] Link. Here’s our robot dog with a meat dog.
I was about to do a round up of all the Survial Research Lab photos and video from Saturday, but Scott over on Laugh Squid has most of them “Blog reports and photos from Saturday’s SRL mini-show in Los Angeles are starting to trickle in: SRL show in LA Chinatown: photos and phonecam video (Boing Boing), Chinatown Survival Research Labs (IvyMike), Photos of SRL in Chinatown (Metroblogging Los Angeles), Survival Research Labs goes Fringe in Chinatown (Resize), Images from an SRL show (Satori), SRL Jan 2006 (bluematt).” Link.
This looks handy for collaborative CAD work, but a little pricey at $995 – “Adobe’s Acrobat 3D software lets people view three-dimensional objects with the Acrobat reader, append notes to the images and send them to colleagues. Typically, design engineers today create a two-dimensional image and send them via e-mail, Bhalla said. Having an embedded 3D image, which people can rotate to view and append with notes, will speed up the design collaboration process and reduce errors…” Link.
Pavel and Richard writes – “Last summer, we had a a lot of fun controlling RoboSapien robot using the serial infrared tower from LEGO Mindstorms version 1.5 kit. However, this required the tower (and thus also a PC) to be in the robot vicinity. Still, thanks to the feedback from the new WowWee family robots owners, we were very keen on seeing that the same program with small modifications can be used for RoboSapien V2, RoboPet, and RoboRaptor …” Here’s how to walk your robo dog with a LEGO bot! [via] Link.
