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Cool, check out the steam powered R2D2 that also got some servos!

The first robot that I ever built, was a R2…. out of legos when I was 5 years old. So after building over a dozen steam powered contraptions, when I “grew up”, I knew I had to visit my old friend R2. I love machines with personalities and charm. You can love or hate StarWars, but everyone loves R2. To many of us, R2D2 was our first introduction to robots, he’s a swiss army gadget bot with charm, who always saves the day. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

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Check out this cool DIY on adding LEDs to your car interior switches. Although the instructions are in another language, I think you get the idea here…

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This is freakin’ awesome!

We started experimenting with “row/column scanning”. This term refers to how the columns of shared anodes(+) and rows of shared cathodes(-) in an LED matrix can be quickly turned on and off to control a single LED within the matrix. Because the number of LEDs with in a matrix will always be fewer than the total number of rows and columns, it is more efficient to quickly address the columns and rows than each individual LED.
We first soldered a 4×4 matrix of LEDs by hand.
By sharing the cathodes of LED in a row and the anodes of each LED in a column we were able to address the 16 LEDs by connecting only the 4 rows and 4 columns to my microcontroller. By quickly changing the states of the pins on the microcontroller from high(+) to low(-) we could create animations and motion across the LED matrix. An individual LED could be lit and its neighbors darkened by quickly turning that LED’s anode(+) column pin high and its cathode(-) row low, then grounding the surrounding anode(+) columns by bringing them low and shunting the surrounding cathode(-) rows by bringing them high.

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Tight, check out this video on how to drift an RX-7. It’s in Japanese (yeah, i don’t understand it either) but you could probably just see and learn.

Keiichi Tsuchiya shows us how to get “sideways” in a Mazda RX-7. Continue reading to watch.

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Check out some pictures of the new swimming center for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. It looks like a giant watercube, which is what it’s supposed to look like.

“Our ‘Watercube’ concept is a simple and concise square form that ultimately uses the water bubble theory to create the structure and building cladding, and which makes the design so unique. It appears random and playful like a natural system, yet is mathematically very rigorous and repetitious. The transparency of water, with the mystery of the bubble system, engages those both inside and out of the structure to consider their own experiences with water,” says Andrew Frost, Director of Sydney-based design firm PTW.

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Ooooohhhh, check out this cool LED POV! You can do current time, signs, and more! Nicely done!

From the pictures you can see there’s a motor on the rotor shaft (with the blue housing), and an additional one below the mounting plate. The first motor turned out have too little power to give the rotor enough speed. So I added another motor and a gear, and put stream line wings on the LED bar. The first motor had the rotary encoder attached, so I left it where it was. The second motor came from a tyre pump that runs from a car cigarette lighter outlet. When I first connected the motor to a 6V lead acid battery, it drew 20 amperes and the rotor almost took off like a helicopter! I figured the motor would run hot in less than a minute and burn out. 6 volts, 20 amperes, that gives you 120 watts! So now it’s running from a power supply on a 3 A current limit, and the supply voltage is around 3 volts.

Check out some of these cool light sculptures from Berlin. Thanks again to Crustea for the link!

Here’s an event for bloggers and people with innovative inventions or ideas around the San Francisco Bay Area.
Goto this party and find some hot cute chicks who digg geeks like the ones above if you are a blogger and you want to promote your blog.

Sign up HERE!

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Holy crap, this is some tight tesla coil action!

The 6 inch coil has performed better than expected with sparks reaching 8 feet (0.5 million volts). The photo above shows 7 foot sparks to the closest point of the ladder. This is with a large topload and a tank capacitance of 92 nF (0.092 uF) at a power in excess of 5 kVA. A lot of smoke comes from my spark gap at runs of over 5-10 seconds at the highest powers. I suspect it is metal oxide from the tungsten stationary electrodes and the brass dome nuts and steel bolt heads that form the rotary electrodes. There was no sign of any polycarbonate frame or Tufnol wheel overheating. Despite the leaf blower cooling, the tungsten rods become hot enough to have a visible glow though the yellow polypropylene box after turn off. The 8 foot (96 inch) spark is exactly 3 times as long as the 32 inch secondary coil that generates it.

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