October 2007

Animatronic Eye Mechanism

If I had one of these Animatronic Eye Mechanisms I could put it to good use this Halloween. “In order to make it possible for puppet eyes to be animated a puppet eye mechanism (commonly called an “eye mech”) must be constructed. Some eye mechanisms are manually controlled by the puppeteer’s hand inside a puppet’s head or externally via a cable control, string or lever. Moving puppet eyes can also

High Power Demonstrations

  Mental note, don’t short out bus bars. 🙂 “Here arcs were intentionally initiated by bridging wires across three copper bus bars in a testing laboratory. Three phase 480 volt power was then applied across the bus bars for about 1 second. The wires immediately explode, forming a conductive plasma which forms high current power arcs between phases. The actual fault current in the demonstration is not known, but is

Rand McNally GPS Hack

If you can get your hands on a Rand McNally GPS this Rand McNally GPS Hack will show you how to get the serial data out of it. Since these GPS devices are quite old now they should be quite cheap. Does anyone know of a cheaper serial GPS solution? If so please share it with me. 🙂 “Buy a RandMcNally GPS for the Palm III from http://www.randmcnally.com The GPS

Huge Rubiks Cube Subwoofer

  If you are wanting to add some bass to your home theater why build a Huge Rubik’s Cube Subwoofer! It isn’t as big as this gigantic subwoofer but it looks a lot more fun.   "Sealed Enclosure: 3 Cu. Feet Driver Diameter: 15", Aluminum Cone Outer Enclosure: 3/4" MDF Shell with 3/4" MDF ’tiles’ overlaying it, forming the Rubik’s Squares Reinforcement: 1 Y/Z-Axis piece of 3/4" MDF, cut to

Fiber Optic LED Rose Project

If you have ever wanted to play with some fiber optics here is a Fiber Optic LED Rose Project that you could try out. Nice to see some of my LEDs were used to make a cool project! Parts Needed: “Wires, solder, and soldering gun (of course) 1 green led (I used 6000mcd) – Found online 1 red led (6000mcd) – Found online On-Off Switch – (a few bucks at

Face Tracking Hexapod Robot

  Matt Denton of MicroMagic Systems specializes in animatronics for the film industry. Check out the very interesting (creepy) face tracking robot called i.c Hexapod. “i.c. Hexapod interacts with people by following them around. If his gaze is held long enough, he takes a picture and uploads it to a website: hexapodrobot.com” Some additional information (thanks Matt): “The hexapod was my fourth generation robot, and took around 2 weeks to

PIC 12F683 Microcontroller Based Logic Probe

Have a look at this cool PIC 12F683 Microcontroller Based Logic Probe. “The purpose of this device is to test a wire to determine the logic state. Two LEDs show the logic state as either high, low, or high impedance (aka floating). Simply attach the ground probe to any ground connection of the circuit you want to test, then touch the test probe to the signal you want to test.