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Posts Tagged ‘DIY’

Giger DIY $10k walking robot [Video]

By Chris Davies on Wednesday, Nov 4th 2009 1 Comment

giger robot 1 263x350 custom Over at Let’s Make Robots! Tyberius is showing off Giger, his two-foot tall DIY humanoid ‘bot. A roughly 100 hour project so far, Giger runs embedded Linux and has both an integrated camera and WiFi, and apparently cost around $10,000 to build.

Now that might sound like an awful lot – probably because it is an awful lot – but you can blame the pro-quality servos. Tyberius used Dynamixels RX-64 and RX-28 units, which come in at $300 and $200 each, respectively; however unlike cheap servos they put out a whopping 1,000 ounces per inch of torque.

We’re not sure what we like most about Giger: his classic Cylon-style eye, mean looking pincers, or how easily he segues from a butch fighting stance to a reasonably camp wave. Tyberius’ next job is tightening up the dynamic balancing and getting the walking gait more natural; right now Giger looks a little drunk.

Video demo after the cut

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DIY Medium-Format Camera built from scratch

By Chris Davies on Monday, Nov 2nd 2009 No Comments

Nothing like an ambitious project to get the juices flowing, and Peter Johansson has certainly picked a particularly saliva-stimulating one. He’s decided to build his own pro-grade medium-format camera from scratch, and when we say “scratch” we mean literally: he’s fashioning the whole casing himself, using cardboard, basic lenses and LEGO.

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Gumstix-based wearable Linux computer packs WiFi, digital compass

By Chris Davies on Tuesday, Oct 27th 2009 1 Comment

Tempt you with a difficult-to-pronounce acronym, sir? No? Well how about a wireless head-mounted embedded Linux wearable computer? The work of Pascal Brisset, the WXHMD takes a pair of Vuzix VR920 video eyewear and straps to them a Gumstix Overo Fire computer-on-module stick, making for – with some wireless networking, a battery and a few other gizmos – a self-contained heads-up display ideal for telepresence work and augmented reality guidance.

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DIY Virtual Reality headset is bizarre genius [Video]

By Chris Davies on Tuesday, Oct 27th 2009 No Comments

I think it’s fair to say that if you make one of these DIY virtual reality headsets, your kids will definitely be the coolest in the playground. The handiwork of Recombu’s Andrew Lim, the cardboard headset takes advantage of an accelerometer-packing HTC Magic, an old pair of lab goggles and some boyish enthusiasm to create a head-tracking view of the world.

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Video demo after the cut

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DIY Samsung Q1UP Android 1.6 UMPC

By Chris Davies on Tuesday, Oct 20th 2009 No Comments

Android is slowly but surely appearing on a number of UMPCs and MIDs, but if you actually want to buy one – as opposed to just read about it – your options are still pretty limited. Over at jkOnTheRun our friend Kevin C. Tofel’s patience has expired and so he’s loaded Android 1.6 onto his Samsung Q1UP UMPC, courtesy of the Android-x86 project.

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Reverse Geocache Puzzle doles out presents depending on location

By Chris Davies on Monday, Oct 19th 2009 No Comments

Weddings are reasonably good fun for those attending, but being expected to provide an often-expensive gift can sometimes irk. So how about giving a present that demands a little more than simply scribbling a thank-you card; that’s just what Mikal did for the friend who introduced him to Arduino tinkering. He constructed the Reverse Geocache Puzzle, a wooden box that would only be unlocked when within 2km of a location Mikal preprogrammed into it.

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monome turned into DIY low-res Twitter display [Video]

By Chris Davies on Friday, Oct 16th 2009 No Comments

In an ideal world someone would read this and send me a monome of my own to play with, but the button-encrusted control surfaces are in short supply (and not too cheap). Since controlling music isn’t the sole use of a monome, but still the task most people connect them with, some owners are pushing forward their DIY projects showing that a monome can be pretty much anything you have the imagination for: here, Robert Böhnke repurposes his as a low-res Twitter display.

Video demo after the cut

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Secret furniture gets brilliant, elaborate physical mechanism [Video]

By Chris Davies on Thursday, Oct 15th 2009 No Comments

It’s hard to find a single screengrab to illustrate this great video of craftsman Brian Grabski’s work-in-progress furniture: that’s because it hides a fiendishly clever mechanism by which you can open a secret drawer. The hand-crafted chest-of-drawers demands you pull open each of the visible drawers, before a hidden control springs out and allows you to trigger the secret compartment built into what looks like a normal molding.

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Video demo after the cut

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Dell datacenter-in-a-briefcase prototype demo’d [Video]

By Chris Davies on Thursday, Oct 15th 2009 No Comments

Remember the talk of datacenters-in-containers last year and earlier? Google were even tipped to have patented the idea; now, though, a datacenter is simply too large to be fashionable, hence Dell’s datacenter-in-a-briefcase. To be fair, it’s not quite the briefcase you might take on your daily commute – think 40lb toolcase instead – but that’s still good enough to impress GigaOm.

dell datacenter in a briefcase

Video demo after the cut

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Dell Mini 9 DIY netslate: most polished netbook tablet-conversion yet?

By Chris Davies on Tuesday, Oct 13th 2009 No Comments

Dell’s Mini 9 netbook may be a little old in the tooth these days, but its angular casing makes it a great donor machine for a netslate project. That’s just what MyDellMini forum member Rob did (to his Dell Vostro A90, the business-rebrand of the Mini 9), adding a touchscreen layer, flipping the display and relocating the power button.

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