So I’ve been thinking through a piece I’m working on. (How’s that for vague!)
Part of it involves developing a basic walking toy, which seems pretty simple conceptually. But I wanted to verify that the way I was thinking it through would work mechanically. So I took apart my Punisher windup toy.
… now to put it back together.
or gearLinks …I can’t decide which name I prefer.
Talking to my mom she told me about how my dad couldn’t keep his hands off the gEarings I made her for mother’s day, and how everytime they went out, he wanted her to wear them so he could show them off to people.
So for Christmas (yes, I’m way behind on uploading this thing) I modified the design to make them a pair of cufflink gears. This involved making everything larger, widening the track for the posts, and closing the hole in the center that was used to store the earrings backings.
I liked these so much that I made a second set for myself.
As usual, I’ve uploaded the design files and instructions to Thingiverse for your enjoyment.
[Update: FEATURED]
Well, they work! And I’ve got to say, they’re really fun.
But I’m onto the part where I’m ripping them apart, and praying that I don’t destroy them in the process!
In my research I found this thread over on Hack-A-Day’s forum where someone was hacking an iPod edition MyVu. He even got a hold of an engineer over at MyVu, and was able to get some information, which should be really helpful while I’m in process.
Based on what I found there, I started with cracking open the inline controller, which is where all the pin conversions happen, and things like brightness, contrast, and volume are controlled. Once I got it open, pulled out the screws, and peeled off the hotglue, I was pleased to see THIS:
All the wires were very nicely and clearly labelled.
Brown – GND
Orange – VIN
Light Green – IPOD_RX
Dark Green – IPOD_TX
White – VID
Blue – AUD_L
Grey – AVGND
Light Purple – AUD_R
Black – IPOD_DE
Red – REM_SENSE
No Shield – GND
I also popped off the casing around the Sansa 30 pin connector (mostly to verify everything…and figure out what REM_SENSE and IPOD_DE might be)
I’m really glad I did this, as there were a few surprises.
The pin/wire relationship here is:
4 – Red (D+) [REM_SENSE]
13 – White (?) [VID]
16 – Grey (?) [AV_GND]
17 – No Shield (?) [GND]
19 – Brown (?) [GND]
20 – Orange (?) [VIN]
27 – Blue (Audio Right +) [AUD_L]
28 – Purple (Audio Left +) [AUD_R]Note: Parenthesized text is documented pin responsibilities found here. while bracketed text is the wire relation listed above.
Also, while not shown in the picture, the Dark Green [IPOD_TX] and Black [IPOD_DE] wires were soldered together, while the Light Green was just hanging loose. I think that would make the IPOD_DE line something like a data clock, which is there connected to IPOD_TX (what I assume to be a serial receive line on the Myvu) to prevent it from going to sleep. I don’t know though, I’m just guessing.
The online Sansa pinout documentation is really lacking, but these connections give us some hints as to what they are.
16-19 is probably all ground pins. While 20 is likely a 3.3v line. (That seems to be what the expected supply voltage on the Myvu is. This is however not confirmed.)
Pin 14 is documented as a video pin, but it looks like 13 is as well. And it looks like either Myvu or the online documentation has the audio channels flipped on pin 27 & 28.
Finally, the mysterious REM_SENSE is starting to look like a clever way of saying “sleep sense” that monitors for device activity, or turns off the myvu in the absence of activity.
This is all pretty cleanly laid out though, which is nice. Should make the next step considerably easier.
I just picked up a set of Myvu video goggles on ebay fairly cheap.
But I wasn’t paying attention when trying to get a pair, and the ones I wound up winning were the “Sansa Edition.” …I don’t own a Sansa. (Nor would that really fit my needs.) So I’m going to be hacking these to get them to take video, audio, and power through their own connections. Should be a fun challenge!
Step 1 though, was making sure they weren’t DOA. Which required finding a Sansa to try them with. Thankfully Mr. Thomas Martinez over at ILikeLight.com has one, so we’re in business.
Certainly make me look like Geordi La Forge, don’t they?
I hate the sound of alarm clocks. They’re very jarring. Really, any synthetic sound is. …it’s just plain mean.
But, seeing that my inability to wake up at a set hour far out weighs my hate of alarm clocks, I have 3 set around my room (bed side, cell phone on the bathroom counter, and clocky) and while they irritate me every time they go off, I’m a fairly spiteful person while I’m sleeping, so I wind up hitting the snooze button on all 3 of them for about an hour. Yes, this involves getting up, hitting snooze, and then going back to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat 10 minutes later.
Maybe the issue though is the terrible, spite inducing, noise? If that’s the case…. maybe this woodpecker alarm clock by Natalie Duckett (site down at the moment) is the solution.
It at least sounds fairly pleasant while I’m already awake.
[via MAKE]
In my last year of working for Big Printing and Shipping Co* I working in a high volume center that printed large orders for the retail stores. One of the main recurring jobs we got was printing, gluing, and cutting paper back books, often between 100 and 10,000 at a time.
I hated it.
There was a lot of labor involved, and when you sit and think about it, the environmental aspects of all that paper being shipped about (Let alone how long those book were actually going to be used before they went into hopefully the recycling), not to mention the waste aspect (a good number of books failed quality assurance for one reason or another), is just horrifying.
It’s one of the reasons I’m really into PDF documents for most things, and think the Kindle is really snazzy.
But, for those that love the dead tree medium, I really like the idea of the Espresso Book Machine from On Demand Books, LLC.
It’s a pretty sexy robot, and takes a big chunk out of the problems with the printing model I described above.
Instead of having a bunch of paper shipped to a printer, and then a bunch of books shipped out, you can ship a bunch of paper straight to where the books are being distributed from (a book store for example) and have books be created as needed. AWESOME.
Also, talk about an easy way to improve selection in small book shops. (Or for that matter, talk about a sweet way to make a book store in a mall kiosk…)
Anyway, I just think this is a really cool robot. (That had I not already left Big Printing and Shipping Co* would be a threat.)
[via Make]
*fictionalized name, just to be safe.
This is a crazy long info graphic. But it’s also crazy awesome. So there is that.
Via: Online Schools
[Via BotJunkie]
Is there anything better than getting a bunch of people together to dance?
Yes. Getting a bunch of robots together to dance! Clearly.
[via adafruit industries]
So I’ve been playing around with the idea of building something for The Make: Robot Build and decided that if I do, I want to go as minimalist as possible, using only prefabbed components and things I can make by hand.
As my first experiment with this, I put together the Hermit Bot from a couple of servo motors, popsicle sticks, and hot glue.
He’s only programmed to walk forward right now, and has no sensors, but I’d say as a first experiment in walking, he works pretty well.
MoMA has acquired @!
Is @ Design?
The appropriation and reuse of a pre-existing, even ancient symbol—a symbol already available on the keyboard yet vastly underutilized, a ligature meant to resolve a functional issue (excessively long and convoluted programming language) brought on by a revolutionary technological innovation (the Internet)—is by all means an act of design of extraordinary elegance and economy. Without any need to redesign keyboards or discard old ones, Tomlinson gave the @ symbol a completely new function that is nonetheless in keeping with its origins, with its penchant for building relationships between entities and establishing links based on objective and measurable rules—a characteristic echoed by the function @ now embodies in computer programming language. Tomlinson then sent an email about the @ sign and how it should be used in the future. He therefore consciously, and from the very start, established new rules and a new meaning for this symbol.
Why @ Is in the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art
Tomlinson performed a powerful act of design that not only forever changed the @ sign’s significance and function, but which also has become an important part of our identity in relationship and communication with others. His (unintended) role as a designer must be acknowledged and celebrated by the one collection—MoMA’s—that has always celebrated elegance, economy, intellectual transparency, and a sense of the possible future directions that are embedded in the arts of our time, the essence of modern.
Another interesting quote from the acquisition post is this:
Being in the public realm, @ is free. It might be the only truly free—albeit not the only priceless—object in our collection.
While I don’t doubt the significance of it (I mean it is @!) I do wonder how anyone can “acquire” it.
What an awesome world we live in.
[via swissmiss]
