This Step-a-Sketch project is sure to bring back some memories if you are around my age. I remember having one of these growing up, I think I got it for a Christmas present one year. Unfortunately it was killed when I was going through my how does this work phase. Almost everything with screws around me got taken apart, some were even put back successfully. By using a PIC 16f84a microcontroller tied to a home made unipolar stepper driver Chris from Powered By Nerd was able to allow a computer is able to send CNC pulse data to the PIC and the PIC then controls the stepper motors to draw a 2D image on the Etch a Sketch. We have seen a similar project before and the same project in reverse, something about a toy from my childhood brought to life with modern electronics that is a pleasure to see. If you want to build one for yourself Chris has provided the code and schematic to give you a head start.

Thanks for the tip Jeff.

“This code works fine, but it would need some work before it’s connected to an industrial machine.  The most glaring problem is that the PIC will not take the same amount of time to execute the code every pass through the program, due to whether or not one or both of the motors have been instructed to move.  This could also account for some of the hesitation I occasionally see.  An easy solution to this would be to add delay loops into the code, when no real work needs to be done.”

If you love old video games this new version of PONG is sure to make you smile. The guys over at Evil Mad Scientists Laboratories have knocked this one out of the park! It is mostly laser cut plywood and plastic with only a touch of electronics.

Via: Hack A Day

“Inside the wooden paddle box are two timing belt pulleys. One is turned directly by a knob that will be added to the top, and the othe is free spinning. As the timing belt turns it slides the paddle assembly, which is mounted to the linear slide system and can move up and down the slot.

The overall feeling that you get turning the knob is a lot like operating foosball controls.”

The team over at Gadget Gangster have been real busy. The Super GrooveAxe a new product that is now available on their site.

“Percussion in your pocket. Feel the tiny boom! With your Super GrooveAxe, the beats will always be with you, so you’ll never feel lonely again. The Super GrooveAxe is a simple to build project that uses a Picaxe microcontroller to make looping drum patterns. It includes a 3.5mm jack to output audio to headphones, a stereo, or directly power small speakers.”

Hacked Gadgets went to Island Tech 2009 which was on Vancouver Island British Columbia Canada to check on the technology that was being demonstrated. Camosun College had some cool robots on display. Unfortunately the only ones that they had operational were two sumo-bots. The very large GPS robot was there for looks only. That’s too bad since it would have been very interesting to see it in operation. The robot is packed full of electronic from the GPS sensor right down to the processing power of a desktop processor. There were no markings on the motherboard that indicated what processor was on there and the demonstrator did not know but by the looks of it I am thinking it may be a Pentium processor?

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The guys over at the Project Lab have made a cool Computer based Etch a Sketch project called Hack a Sketch. Looks like it works just like a real one. This project is basically the reverse of this Etch a Sketch hack that we have seen before.

Thanks for the tip Jack.

"An Arduino board reads the inputs from two potentiometers (the knobs), and sends the information via USB to a Processing sketch which displays the path of the stylus on the screen. This was extremely easy to build because the Arduino is just running the StandardFirmata firmware."

Hack-a-Sketch from nootropicdesign on Vimeo.

If you like classic video games and robots you need to have a look at this Roomba Pac-Man system. At a glance it may look like a fun game where the Roomba cleaners are being controlled by a bunch of remote controls that people are controlling. That low tech scenario could not be further from what is actually happening here. There is lots of tech making these Roomba robots play!

"By utilizing service discovery and ad-hoc networking, all of the robots operate independently and autonomously. There is no centralized controller controlling the game, each robot makes its own decisions and sends its own commands. Pac-Man is the only robot that takes human input, and this is simply in an "augmented control capacity" where user input is limited to valid directions of travel (no passing through boundaries). The laptop and GUI provided for the operator provide no computational support for the game, its simply a node that allows the operator to issue commands. A good example of the level of autonomy in the robots is when a ghost kills Pac-Man. Upon determining that it has killed Pac-Man, it issues a command to Pac-Man to let it know it was killed, and then informs all of the other ghosts that Pac-Man was killed. Pac-Man performs his death, and then informs all of the other robots that they need to reset for another round."

Rockband is lots of fun. What can be more fun than rocking out with Rockband on your iPhone? Well the answer is making a robot that is better than you at it! This robot uses sensors to look for the blips streaming down the screen and cool simulated fingers to jam on the touchscreen.  The Arduino code is available so you can make your own iPhone Rockband robot.

Thanks for the tip about this cool Make post John!

"The iPhone touch screen isn’t like most PDAs. It uses a capacitive touch screen. More info about that HERE. It would seem that the iPhone is looking for a finger sized touch, from living flesh. According to the link, the screen actually looks for changes in electrical current. I had some conductive foam laying around, its usually used for shipping sensitive electronics. If I put my finger behind the foam and pressed on the iphone screen, it works. If I used something non conductive, like a plastic pen, the foam would do nothing to the screen. My solution to this was to put thin copper wires into the foam (I also used these wires to attach the foam to the servos) the other end of the wires were wrapped around the handle of an exacto knife. When the Robot is playing the game I touch the handle of the exacto and the robot fingers are able to press the screen."