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We have seen a Ball Balancing Robot before but this one takes the cake! It was developed by Masaaki Kumagai and Takaya Ochiai from the Robot Development Engineering Laboratory and Department of Mechanical Engineering and Intelligent Systems at the Tohoku Gakuin University in Japan. “The robot they built rides on a rubber-coated bowling ball, which is driven by three omnidirectional wheels. The robot can not only stand still but also move in any direction and pivot around its vertical axis.”
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If you are looking for a new piece of test gear to help you with your next design have a look at what Matt from Openschemes has come up with. He has taken a Top2005 EPROM Programmer and hacked into a Desktop Test Bench! “Do you ever find yourself wanting an IC tester? Some way to power up an IC and apply various voltages and signals to different pins, in order to either check functionality or to explore the inner workings of some mystery chip..? What we’ve done is traced out and bus-snooped a cheap EPROM programmer to decipher it’s inner workings in order to create an open, super-low-cost platform for digital IC testing and development.” |
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Isn’t it great when technology is allowed to mesh together. With this iHabitat technology your house would become one large connected sensor and control network, you would be able to control it with anything from a cell phone to your laptop. The data that would be collected could show you things like where your bad energy habits are. Thanks Jatinderjit. “iHabitat is a home automation system based on the concept of “Internet of Things”, wherein every kind of gizmo (appliance,wall-socket,sensors etc) in the house is connected together as a network. The iHabitat system consists of several nodes installed/placed around the house. Each node is capable of communicating with any other node in the house. Gateway nodes are capable of connecting to the outside world over the internet. Each node is responsible for one of more functions which can include sensor data collection, appliance control or user-interface.”
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Robert Oschler sent in this cool video which allows you to control a Rovio Robot using Mind Control. It uses the Emotiv system to allow the monitoring of your mind and other facial gestures. It isn’t a cheap technology yet but I think as this type of application catches on the pricing will fall. “The Emotiv SDK is a full-featured, professionally executed toolkit for quickly integrating the EPOC headset’s rich detection suite into your applications. As with any SDK, you do have to be a programmer (or at least know one) to make full use of it. But I believe even an advanced beginner would be able to do a lot. As for non-programmers, quite a few people have added support to other applications for the EPOC headset using the time-honored technique of keyboard stuffing.“ |
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This cool PIC Microcontroller based IR to Remote Control Project allows you to program codes from a standard remote control to control this small module. When setup you will be able to control two items from across the room. If you attempt this project make sure you are careful since line voltage is involved. Thanks Muris. “Features of current beta version of firmware: - Controlling two independent appliances via remote controller and wall push-button 
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If you need a cool way of monitoring your computer performance this DIY Computer Performance Monitor which is based on the PIC18F2550 should fit the bill. “The USB Performance monitor is a PIC18F2550 based device which shows the performance of your computer using two analogue meters and a RGB LED. The design is based around a stock Hi-Fi VU-meter which is controlled using PWM from the PIC18F microcontroller.”
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Thanks to Joshua for sending in this familiar tune being played in a not so familiar way. A PIC18F4520 is connected to an H-Bridge and is pulse width modulating two brushless DC motors to create the Super Mario Brothers theme! |
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