Dino, of Dinofab, has been getting cheap Roombas off of eBay (as low as $20) and using their parts to make other bots, like this “RoverBot” above. I found the motors in the Roomba to be very user friendly. The have a belt driven planetary gear reduction transmission that provides very high torque and they […]
Have you always wanted to build a robot but didn’t know how? Have you always wanted to turn those old Debbie Gibson CDs into something useful? Got a use for a $500 gift card? For all these reasons and more, you should check out The Make: Robot Build Contest. As we announced last week, the […]
Have you ever wondered what exactly is involved in building a working, radio-controlled R2-D2 robot replica? This vid documents the two-year process of Victor Franco, of Southern California, and his friends building an R2, mainly from scratch-built parts of varying materials, including wood, styrene, resin, and aluminum. He also used some parts provided by members […]
Kevin Haw created this Robosapien web server, using an Arduino he bought in the Maker Shed. He writes: In late 2009 I bought an Arduino from the Maker Shed Store and began playing with it. Early on I was very intrigued by two separate projects: Karl Castleton’s RoboSapienIR and the basic WebServer that came with […]
We here at MAKE are thrilled to have teamed up with the fine folks at Jameco to bring you The Make: Robot Build. Over the next eight weeks, we’ll be featuring a series of tutorials here on the site about the basics of robot building, from overall design considerations to mechanical construction, electronics, and programming. […]
Solarbotics has posted some video from its vault, portions of the 1995 BEAM Games, with BEAM inventor Mark Tilden talking about his VBug 1.5 (built from little more than a couple of Sony Walkmans and an Oven Timer Unit). I bought a BEAM VHS tape back then (I think of this event), which included this […]
Over at the Robot Room, Dave Cook has a brief piece on removing the eccentric weight from pager/cellphone/force-feedback joysticks motors. It really is basically a firm pull with a pair of locking pliers, but you need to do it correctly so as not to bend the drive shaft or mar the motor casing. Tiny Motor […]
