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LEGO Mindstorms are very versitile but I think this is the first boat I have seen. Interested in Mindstorm? Have a look at his Youtube channel to see what else he has built. Via: Make “built by Mike and Cedric of the OSZT school in Täuffelen, Switzerland” |
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Using some assorted pieces of wood, springs, string and some odds and ends will allow you to make a cool looking Robot Hand! Looks like William Jakespear has lots more cool demonstration of what he makes on his Facebook Page. The hand straps to your wrist and your normal sized hand can then operate the huge robot hand. The springs that were scavenged form a bunch of pens allow the fingers to return the the straight position when you relax them.
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Our friend Dave from Plastibots has just completed this great looking Bluetooth Robot that has an IP Camera on board. Dave wrote an Android application called BT Bot Control to allow you to drive your robot around using commands over Bluetooth using your Android phone. The video from the camera is sent back using Wifi. I can just imagine how much fun this would be with a squirt gun connected! Connect either a powerful solenoid or a servo to squirt the target when you have them in your sights. Might need some larger motors to get the speed you would need to quickly drive away before the person you squirted tosses the bot in the pool though. |
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Thanks to Jerod Michel for sending in the details of this Armed Mobile Response RC Car that he and his students have built. It can be driven around remotely, it has an audio and video range of 100 meters. If you spot something you aren’t pleased with you can paint your target with the laser and fire the vehicle mounted gun. I have to admit, it is quite strange to see a materials requirement list for a project to include a gun. You can read the details that Jerod provided below. Some of the Build Details include some ASCII art which might not translate well on the web, here is a link to the raw text file.
Overview These RC car hacks take advantage of an RC car’s latent channels. Most store-bought RC cars come ready with forward-backward and left-right abilities via RF, but there is usually at least one channel not already being used. By exploiting these, there is no need to add additional transmitters and their batteries when making an RC car weapon. When equipped with a covert audio-video device, an RC car can do surveillance and/or safely gather information in dangerous places. Yunis, an entrepreneur from Western China, says, “I like these because I can see the inside of my office from anywhere within 100 meters. If I need to step out, I can still see what is going on.” The receiving device can also be backed up with a micro SD card for recording. In China, obtaining materials to build these is nothing. Since almost all of the parts needed are made in China anyway they are cheap, and not to mention China has convenient and comprehensive electronics markets everywhere. An extra channel can also be used to host a detinator for an explosive, or a dc motor strong enough to pull the trigger of a mounted gun. Yunis added, “Then we can at least immobilize an intruder, and so they would still be there when we get back.” It didn’t take long to learn that a 12 volt 5 amp dc motor was the way to go. Then we could use the same battery that powers the transmitter and camera to power a dc motor that can fire a gun. What we end up with is the ultimate poor-man’s robot weapon.
Build Details
<<<Ultimate Poor Man’s Armed Robot>>> You never know when you might need a robot to do some dirty work such as information gathering and/or attacking enemies. Here are instructions on how to make a robot which can trasmit long-range audio/video to a non-stationary, remote control with screen, take aim, and fire! This is the ultimate poor man’s robot weapon! Materials: 1) 1 small tv with RCA (red, yellow, white cables) Concept: We are going to set up a covert audio/video device which runs on batteries. Then we will mount the gun and laser to the rc car, and obtain use of the rc car’s extra channel (almost all rc cars have this) by a simple hack to remotely fire the gun. Then the finished project will be an armed robot with mic and camera whose remote control is the rc car’s control attached to the small tv and the switch to fire the gun. Steps: FIRST Make covert audio/video device using materials 1 – 4 as follows. Connect necessary power plugs to batteries, i.e. to be able to connect one battery to the tv and receiver and to connect the other battery to the camera/mic and transmitter. Now, as long as the receiver, transmitter, tv, and camera are all powered properly by the batteries, all that remains is to connect all of the RCA cables in the right places — red to red — white to white — etc. SECOND We will hack the rc car for its extra channel using materials 5 – 10 as follows. Using the same battery from the covert audio/video device, connect positive wire to from battery to positive pin on dc motor. Connect negative pin on dc motor to C pin on the TIP 120. Connect 1N4004 diode to also to the C pin – dc motor connection. Hack the rc car for its RX2 chip (or its equivalent) which should have 16 pins. Locate pin #12 and and connect it to one end of the 1k ohm. Connect the free end of the 1k ohm to B pin on TIP 120. (see diagram below) Almost finished with this step. We still need to get remote access to that channel. Now open up the rc car’s remote control and locate its TX2 chip. This should look similar to the RX2 and also have 16 pins. Locate pin #6 and connect it to the button (or switch). Test the switch and make sure it turns the dc motor. \\\ We will arm the rc car with the pistol using materials 6, and 11 – 14 as follows. First make a reasonable mount for the pistol on the chassis of the rc car. This can be done by using small vices, wood, tape and/or glue. Your design will depend on the shape of the chassis. Use your imagination! With the pistol mounted (at a reasonable angle), also mount the dc motor so that its gear is approximately 1 inch from the gun’s trigger. Cut a piece of string that is about 12 inches long. Tie one end of the string to the gear of the dc motor tightly. Put the other end of the string through the gun’s trigger guard, around its handle, then return it to the dc motor’s gear and tie it also to the gear. Apply super glue to the knot and the motors gear to ensure it will not easily slip. Now when the motor is activated via the rc car’s extra channel, it should twist the string applying pressure to gun’s trigger until the gun fires. If this is done carefully with very slick string, and both forward and reverse directions are employed FOURTH Lastly we will put everything together and ‘tie up some loose ends’. First get some kind of material on which too consolidate all of the following: the small tv screen, the rc remote, the button for the extra channel, the receiver, and the battery for the receiver and tv. This will be the hand-held remote control for the robot. Then mount the transmitter, camera/mic and battery to the rc car, and attach the lazer pointer to the barrel of the pistol (you might want to make sure the lazer is lined up well with the gun’s shots first by testing a few rounds). Tie up any loose wires with electrical tape and zip ties, and make a body for the robot to hide its capabilities, and enjoy. _________________________________________
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Tom from Damage Designs has Hacked his Futaba 10C Radio to accept a Spektrum DSM Module. Turns out these were not designed to function together but with a bit of effort Tom got them to work just fine. The actual protocol seems to be the same between the Futaba Transmitter and the Spektrum DSM2 Module but the sequence of commands is not consistent.
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We have seen RoboBrrd before but very soon you may be able to purchase your very own RoboBrrd kit! Check out this Indiegogo. If you can please support RobotGrrl (Erin Kennedy) in her quest to have this kit become reality since I can see this platform helping all sorts of youngsters get excited about electronics and mechanics. You can pledge as little as $1 and you will still get the warm and fuzzy feeling.
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Seems that reverse engineering remote control toys is becoming quite popular. Last week we saw an RC toy car get hacked so it could be controlled by an Arduino. Kerry Wong recently completed a project where he reverse engineered a toy helicopter. Many inexpensive remote control toys use IR light to transmit commands instead or conventional RF signals which is what Kerry is dealing with in this project. He built an IR receiver that he connected to his RIGOL 1052E scope to capture the pattern for the various remote control commands. Then he was able to generate the commands using an Arduino to send the commands to the helicopter with the original remote control. I am thinking that this will be tons of fun with a few scripted commands. Kerry has made all of the code available on his site. |
Hopefully we can get some video of this machine in action soon!
