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Martin Landwehrmann from Germany sent in a ton of great build pictures of this BIG DIY LED Matrix and an English description on what André Zibell, Tobias Mc Fadden and Martin have been working on. By the pictures you can see that this creation wasn’t a simple task to put together but the results are great! More Video Links: “I want to tell you about the project we have realized here in munich, germany. I have built a LED Matrix with 1470 Pixels from scratch. Most work was done with the help of many friends in my living room. Each Pixel is a 32×32 mm² sized self desinged PCB with 6 PLCC6 RGB LEDs, a WS2801 IC and all the small parts you need. In total we’ve soldered 26460 pieces by hand. We’ve did most of the soldering in our pizza oven using the reflow method. The slodering paste was brought up using a template and a credit card. Afterwards all the parts were assembled by hand using tweezers. The Pixels were assembled on on a self built 70×70 cm frame made of black coated 2×1 cm aluminum profile. The 4 wires (clock, data,vcc,gnd) between each pixel are hidden under a black heat shrink tube. At the end each of the 30 70x70cm frames got a small connector panel with two (in,out) neutik speakon connectors, a fuse for the current and bus driver for clock and data. The power consumption of each frame is 3A, 24V. For controlling the matrix we are using an Onumen Live-Controller 2100 but we are working on a solution to control it by ARTnet Most Work was done by André Zibell, Tobias Mc Fadden and me.”
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Laser Soldering is an interesting concept, instead of heat from an iron or hot air heat a laser with a specific pattern is used to heat the lead, pad and solder to create a perfect solder connection. I can imagine the next generation of soldering system where the pick and place machine will both place the part on the PCB but it will also immediately fuse it in place permanently.
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This thing looks like a ton of fun to fly. I am not sure if a simple helmet would be sufficient for me to take the e-volo for a spin though. It’s one thing to fly a small toy multicopter around using a remote but when it comes to strapping yourself into the center of one that weights in at 90 kg! I hope that the e-volo is what it takes to make the flying car a reality for the everyday person. “The e-volos sixteen propellers allow it to take off and land similar to a helicopter. Its massive plus points compared to a helicopter are the simplicity of its engineered construction without complicated mechanics and its redundant engines. Should anything go wrong, e-volo can still safely land even if up to four of its sixteen motors should fail. Flight time can last between ten to thirty minutes, depending on the payload and the capacity of the lithium batteries. With an empty weight at 80 kg (including batteries), e-volo fits into the class of ultralights. Thomas Senkel developed the concept as a graduate physicist. He did the complete mechanical and electrical construction of the e-volo multicopter. His specialties are research & development of electric drives and ultralight vehicles and aircrafts. He is an enthusiastic paragliding and ultralight pilot. Stephan Wolf developed the software from scratch, which controls the e-volo’s onboard flight computer. He has more than 25 years of experience developing core drivers and embedded software development in the industry. Alexander Zosel is responsible for marketing, sales, and public relations. He has developed several patents and utility modules and is an avid paragliding pilot and flight instructor.“
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Eli Hughes developed this Active Pickguard project for a Freescale Kinetis contest. He unfortunately didn’t win the contest but that doesn’t change the fact that the project is totally cool. The contest had a ton of entries and with a quick look at the prizes you will see why, a first place prize of $10,000 isn’t too shabby! I love the cat6 cable that is used to plug it in. You aren’t a real geek unless your guitar has a programming/debugging port. Thanks for the tip Tony. “The processing has FIR based comb filters, IIR filters (cascaded biquads), Look up tables (overdrive effect) and some funky time domain stuff for pitch shift. I don’t have it in the video (limit was 1.5 minutes for the contest) but one of the patches shifting the guitar down an octave.”
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If you have see the DIY Pulse Laser Gun or the Iron Man Repulsor Light Laser Glove Project then with one look at this Laser Targeting Wrist Mounted Crossbow you would know that Patrick Priebe was the mad man behind it. Watch the video below to see it shooting balloons, cans and light bulbs. I would think that a micro video camera mounted on the glove would make for some good looking video. Via: Make, Geeky Gadgets “Selfmade crossbow. Solid metal, as always. Started as a weekend-project, as always. Took 10 days. Every part is homemade. Bolts are made from Carbonfibre-tubings with brass and steel tips.”
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Luis Cruz just graduated from high school but don’t let his young age fool you, he is already developing some very serious systems. His low cost eye tracking system uses Electrooculography to detect the movements of a person’s eyes. This then allows a person to control an electronic or computer system just by looking around. He has also received some CNN coverage, see the CNN video below. “The eyeboard is an open source project that I built in order to help people with disabilities. My circuit detects the eye movements using the technology called “Electrooculography”. Which consists in detecting the resting potential that exists between the retina and the cornea by using skin electrodes around the eyes. Using analogue and digital electronics, and applying the correct interface to this concept, I can control anything I wish just with the eyes!”
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This Hot Glue Climbing Robot from the Bio-Inspired Robotics Laboratory at ETH Zurich isn’t exactly practical but it is an interesting concept. The robot can climb almost any surface by attaching itself by using glue. The biggest disadvantage of this method is that hot glue takes a long time to dry where it can support the weight of the robot. Via: ieee Spectrum
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