Toy Hacks

Autonomous RC Car Drifting

  This RC Car project shows you the perfect method of allowing your RC car to get a drifting workout without you having to do all the work! "The Autonomous Drifter spawned from a project/tutorial suggestion in the forums. Namely from Simplywel. In the most simplest of terms, it’s a hacked rc car, but really only the remote control has been hacked. The car itself wasn’t altered in any way.

Robomagellan - GPS Guided Robot

  Have a look at Robomagellan from the guys at the Ottawa Robot Enthusiasts. It was inspired by the DARPA Challenge! Videos after the jump. "Robots traverse a pre-defined course dealing with various obstacles along the way. Waypoints may be marked with objects that the robot must touch or come within a specified distance. The robots will be guided primarily by GPS and vision systems. Robots will be fully autonomous,

LED Hula Hoop

    Jeffkobi shows us a simple way to make a popular toy much cooler. Seems like the hula hoop is not as popular as it once was but what if the ones in the store were LED Hula Hoops? I think they would be selling like hot cakes! "Some friends wanted a lighted hula hoop for burningman, and when they turned out to be about $200 each, I decided

Amaizing RC Demonstration Videos

  Some of these videos look a bit suspicious… Any fakes amongst them? I could see how the RC car that is tethered to the center pole could achieve some tremendous speed but I wonder if the video was simply sped up?    

Oscilloscope Tetris - Scopetris

  We know that you can make a cool clock scope, but have you ever seen a video game played on a scope? Well have a look at Scopetris! It seems that one scope manufacturer actually put the game in the firmware of the scope.   "The two resistor ladders, interfacing ports on the AtMega32, were connected to an oscilloscope in X/Y mode. The position of the beam was thus

LEGO NTX Assembly Line System

  There are few words about the LEGO NTX Assembly Line System that superbird28 has put together but after watching the video you can get a good sense of what it does and how it works. The mechanical timing is superb! If this thing were spray painted with silver paint I would think I was watching a machine that was ready for installation on a factory floor.

Autonomous Sound Finding Robot

  Angela Israni, Hemanshu Chawda and Seth Spiel from Cornell University made this Autonomous Sound Finding Robot as their project for the ECE 476  Designing with Microcontrollers course. They have source code posted if you are interested in having a look. Total cost was $361 which included a $325 Acronome PPRK Robot . Video after the jump.   " The PeanutBot robot consists of three microphone circuits, three servo motors,