Memorial Day weekend is a good time to catch up on reading, so I picked up this DIY manifesto by MAKE editor and Boing-Boing founder Mark Frauenfelder. It was an easy and pleasurable read. The book starts off dramatically with the author’s decision to move his family to a South Pacific island. He quickly learns,…
Laurel went through a rite of passage last week, her first science fair. This was a non-competitive event, an Arts and Technology Night organized by her school. She really wanted to exhibit something so we got her signed up. After looking online for ideas, Laurel chose to do food batteries. Batteries are very simple…
Holly has been begging to build her own robot ever since I made Robie. Fortunately there are some excellent options for kid-friendly robot kits. After browsing the MakerShed we decided to get the 6-in-1 Educational Solar Robotic Kit. This was a good choice. As the box states you can make six different robots. We’ve done…
During my robot build, I was constantly wishing for a drill press. I put off purchasing one because I couldn’t decide if I really needed a full-sized press, where to put it, etc. I eventually stumbled on a drill press that is small enough to fit on (or be stored under) my worktable, but has enough…
I have a great job (read: limited hours, excellent pay) but one of things I like least about it are the repetitive IT tasks I have to do. Things are stable enough that a full sysadmin would be a waste of money, but still, certain things have to get done. For a long time I…
A few days ago I put in the obstacle avoidance programming for the coasterbot. Almost immediately, he acquired a real personality. The algorithm works incredibly well. Even though the first version of my code had significant bugs — typos, forgetting that moving the sensor servo takes a finite amount of time, etc. — he was…
I was featured in MAKE Robot Dispatch #7 — thanks guys! Hard to believe that there is less than a week left in the contest. One of the requirements of the contest is for the robot to do some obstacle avoidance. The Jameco bundle came with some switches to do bump sensing. While this might…
With the electronics done, it was time to go back and work on the chassis. As before, the DVDs are linked with screws. I wanted the servos to be firmly attached. Since we removed the controller units, this left a lot of empty space in the case, allowing for this type of attachment: I still…
Today the family and I went to Robot Fest, held at the National Electronics Museum. I had been looking forward to this for a long time, and I wasn’t disappointed. There were any number of fun displays and workshops, including in no particular order: compressed-air rocket launches, Lego robots to control and build, a vocoder…
This morning, I got an e-mail from YouTube asking me to sign up for revenue sharing on my “popular video” of coasterbot folding. I didn’t think too much about this, because that was a 10 second video I shot one-handed. I hadn’t even bothered adding an audio track, or a link back here. The only…