Jacques Sperwer from Jacques Productions in the Netherlands shows us how he is building his Heavylift Hexacopter. Have a look at the video footage of the windmill below to get an idea of what these copters can do. This build is using a Wookong control system which looks to have all the bells and whistles. 

“Wookong Multi-Rotor stabilization controller is a complete flight system for all multi-rotor platforms for commercial and industrial AP applications. Unlike others, WooKong allows the use of regular ESC commonly used in RC helicopter without any wiring modification; Heli mode setup providing a seamless transition for current Ace One AP professionals. WK-M utilizes high quality components precisely calibrated with temperature compensation in all gyros and sensors, industry renounce flight algorithm in autopilot and UAV. IMU damping system is rated for gas engine best in the class.”

If you are in the Bay Area you better be checking out the Maker Faire this weekend. It is running May 19th and 20th. The Light Cycle above from Frog is sure to be a big crowd draw! This device is loosely based on the light bikes from Tron, the two players are back to back riding one their own light cycle and has a dedicated view, this is a great spectator project since there is a center screen which shows the aerial view of the playing field. The bike is based on a Schwinn bike and was hand welded by the crew. The electronics are Arduino based and are networked together to allow sharing of game sensor data.

If you are into modded consoles have a look at this WiiCube that Hugo Dorison build and sent in.

“It is a heavily modded gamecube, trimmed to fit in a much smaller case than the original, with controls and a screen. It also is equiped with a wiikey fusion, a chip normally made for the wii, that has been adapted. Enabling the portable to play games off of SD cards, and remove the disk drive which takes a lot of space.  As for the case, I built it from scratch using Vaccum forming on sheets of plastic and implementing various pieces of official Nintendo gamecube controllers.”

Humberto from Nerd Kits has built a DIY Sous-Vide Cooker. They are not touching any high voltage with their design, instead they are using a dimmer switch to power a crock pot and simply turn the dimmer switch with a small motor that is controlled using a microcontroller. A few small temperature sensors provide feedback so that the water bath temperature can be kept at the desired level. We have seen this method of interfacing with high voltage before with the Adafruit soldering skillet design.

 Here is a great looking Open Hardware High Resolution 3D Printer. I think we will see a lot more 3D printers this year! The more the merrier since I would love one but I currently can’t justify the cost. With this kickstarter you could have one of these for under $2500. You can read more about it on the project site.

Via: Electronics Lab

“Specifications

 Building a robot requires many things but movement is something that is common in all robots. There are many motor options when building a robot but no matter what type of motor you select they can’t be powered directly from microcontroller pins since most pins can only provide 20 or 25mA of current. The solution is quite simple, the microcontroller simply needs to send a signal to a motor driver chip and you let the motor driver chip do the high current work that is needed when dealing with motors.  Chris from PyroElectro written a great tutorial on how to control robot motors.

 ”The microcontroller that we will use for this part of the Building A Robot series is the PIC 18F252 8-bit microcontroller. It is manufactured by microchip, and most of my tutorials/projects on this website use the PIC. The motor controller IC that we will use is the same as some other tutorials, the SN754410NE Quadruple Half-H Driver.”

Thanks to EEWeb for featuring an interview they did with me on their site.