If you need to explore a tight space or pull something from one point to another this Squeeze Exploratory Robot looks like it would be up to the task. The older Holio Robot was taller and had wheels instead of treads.

Via: HG Comments

” He crawls around between rafters and floor boards. His main role is to pull network cables and alarm across roof spaces too small for people.  His alternative role is to explore such spaces for cable routes.

• Small and flat: 3.25″ tall, 7.25″ long and about 8″ long to the bottom of the antenna pivot.
• Images are returned via a 2.4GHz camera.
• The treads are motivated by digital servos modified for continuous rotation. They are built into the tread frame as not to take up any space in the central body. Yes, he’s slow but actually very powerful.”

Take one Apple iPad processor, some gentle abrasive action and look what you can see. The folks over at iFixit partnered with Chipworks to get a closer look inside the iPad to see what makes it tick. Turns out the iPad is basically a huge version of the iPhone 2G. The Apple A4 processor is in a POP package, this stands for package-on-package. The first package is for the microprocessor and one for the DRAM memory.

If you need to monitor a fan on a piece of equipment this PC Fan Failure Alarm from PCB Heaven should fit the bill. The RPM monitor line is used to determine what the RPM of the fan is and if it falls below an adjustable threshold the alarm is tripped. Heat buildup due to a faulty fan can do some serious damage in a short time, this simple circuit could save you some headaches. The schematic is provided here so you can build your own.

Luis sent in this neat game that he built using an ATmega 328 microcontroller.  He is from Honduran and this system was featured as the first video game system made in Honduras on several local newspapers and some local TV programs.

“This is a monochrome game with monaural sound I created using an atmega328. The circuit has 3 MCUs (One for composite video, the IR receiver de-codifier, and the last one for sound) and 3 LEDs (R-G-B LEDs) that turn on depending on some events of the game.

The controller has an atmega168, an infrared light emitter diode that transmits the signal to the game, and also uses an Memsic 2125 accelerometer.”

Our friend Edo who brought us the cool 64 RGB LED Table has just installed some stair lights into his stairwell.  Edo has started a new Youtube account which will contain all of his interactive furniture creations. I spoke to Edo about his creation and he didn’t know about the stair lighting controller that we sell, all I can think is that creative minds think alike. Our original prototype Stair Lighting system has a bunch of detail available here. Keep up the great projects Edo!

Buy Automatic LED Stair Lighting Here

or

Reactive Lighting Stair Lights

Owen sent in his cool Touch Screen Hack for his TI 84 Plus Calculator. He is using an Arduino to read in the data from a Nintendo touch screen, the touch data is then sent to the calculator’s serial port so that it can then graph images based on where the screen is being touched. Did I mention that Owen is 16! I am trying to think what I was doing when I was 16, I am thinking something like adjusting the chain on my mountain bike.

“An especially cool thing that I managed to do was to hook my UART code into the calculator’s BASIC programming environment, so that I can send and receive bytes over the serial connection using a BASIC program (the programs that I am using to draw in the youtube video are written in BASIC). That also means that I don’t have to have a computer to write programs that use the serial port, turning the calculator into a sort of pocket universal interface for serial devices. I have written a small assembly program that automatically detects the speed of a serial connection, so you don’t necessarily need to know that piece of information for the device you want the calculator to talk to.”

Thanks to Senario (the makers of Zibits) for sponsoring the contest this week. They will be providing 4 lucky contest winner a Zibits robot. Have a look at the video below, the robots are IR controlled and I thing with a bit of hacking they could be sent random forward and turn commands which would make your cat or dog go crazy.

“Product Details

• Mini Collectable Zibits come to life with the Z-mote!!
• Race your Zibit forward and turn at a 360 degree radius
• Awesome Zibit sound effects”

This contest will run for one week (April 3, 2010 – April 9, 2010) . Ending time is based on central standard time. To enter, identify the item pictured above and give an example of what can be done with it.

Please do not give the answer in the comments.

Send an email to contest @ hackedgadgets.com with “Name the Thing Contest” as the subject, and the message body consisting of:

• The name of the item in the above picture
• An example of what the item pictured above can be used for

The winner will be chosen at random from all of the correct entries.

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Added Apr 28, 2010

The item to guess was the inside of an iPad

The winners are Cory R., Daniel B., Roman K., Steve C. (there were 193 entries)

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Below is a picture and video of the prize.