Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Check out this cool Roomba that can shoot continuous soft BBs to the target which it tracked through it’s laser sighting.

This is a current project of mine, hacking a Roomba Red. After seeing all the roomba hacks on MAKE and Hack A Day I really wanted to build my own bluetooth controlled roomba. What really finally motivated me was seeing all the different projects on TodBots site. I have an Arduino and have been wanting to learn Processing, this is my chance to do all three! For my first project I figured that I could use the camera off of the Sonarbot and find a video to usb converter for my laptop. Quick and easy remotely operated robot on the cheap.

[via]

I was at work trying to draw some stuff and Garrett came over with his USB Hid Portal device and plugged it into my USB hub (which was annoying at first) then suddenly my mouse started making circles on its own! So we decided to call this the USB Mouse Prank Device… There’s really no howto on this but you can check out Garrett’s past USB projects such as:

USB HID Portal Device

SixAxisController HOWTO using a USB HID Portal

and we will be bringing the USB HID Portal device to Maker Faire in San Mateo, California so c’ ya there!

(I am thinking about live blogging and maybe setup a live camera or somethin’… what do you think???)

You can get Youtube version here but it’s hard to see.

You can get the Blip.tv version here too which is a lot better resolution.

Tight, check out this really cool M&M Line Trace Robot! It’s awesome! They should sell these at M&M stores. (I recently bought a M&M sculpture for my dad’s birthday but this is even better!)

For the holidays, my local grocery store sold m&m’s candy containers in the shape of a racecar. The containers are painted metal (probably steel), with a thin plastic coating on the inside. A dinky package of plain m&m’s came inside, not peanut, as the yellow-color driver suggests.

About this same time, the ChiBots robot club began discussing holding a robot line-following contest. Naturally, the colorful candy tin seemed like a perfect body to motorize and drive around the course.

via

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Here’s a preview of our USB Portal Project we will be showcasing at Maker Faire 2007.

It’s basically a BASIC programmable USB device so you can connect embedded devices easily to your PC whether that be a video game, industrial application, or whatever that you can think of.

Check out our previous PS3 6AxisController DIY where Garrett got the idea to make this. (i think….)

If you use Linux, you know Xeyes is a simple program that follows your mouse movements. You can check out some web examples of Xeyes. You can even paste this javascript code on your website for Xeyes on the web.

Anyway, Hunz created physical Xeyes that stands on his window and follow people’s walking movements. Tight! We want one.

The eyes are made from large pizza boxes cardboard and rolled by RC-servos that are controlled by an ATTiny2313 that’s connected to the PC using the low-speed software usb stack. The camera is connected using USB as well. Since I disassembled my webcam and hooked it up to an FPGA for some experiments, I used an analog one and a USB video digitizer.

The video processing is done using mplayer. It’s cropped first to get only the street and no neighbour estates. Then a tiny & quick&dirty video filter plugin looks for the column with the strongest Y-component difference between the last & current frame and if the difference exceeds a certain threshold, that column is passed to the microcontroller using libusb.

[via]

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Oh, check out this cool DIY on how to build an inexpensive Hall Effect Gaussmeter!  If you don’t want to build one, you can always buy a gaussmeter here.

Have you ever wanted to find out how strong a magnet really was, or how the strength of the magnetic field varied as you changed the distance from the magnet or the temperature of the magnet, or how well a shield placed in front of the magnet worked? Voltmeters are fairly inexpensive and easy to find, but where do you purchase a Gaussmeter (also known as a magnetometer). I built a hand-held Gaussmeter for measuring the polarity and strength of a magnetic field. It uses a linear Hall effect device and some op-amps and resistors and things from Radio Shack.

via

Check out some of the cool stuff and people that are going to be at the Maker Faire! (Including us but we have no idea what to bring…yet)

We will get to play with an electric giraff (hopefully) and meet with submarine maker Mike Wernecke.

You can get some tickets for the Maker Faire in San Mateo Fairgrounds here.  And check out Maker Faire in detail here.

There’s some cool Maker Faire Pictures from back in the day here.

More Past Participants and Pics from Maker Faire’s Past

• Engadget at Maker Faire Part I
• Engadget at Maker Faire Part II
• BoingBoing and LaughingSquid
• CNET at MakerFaire