Over at 50 Watts, Will Schofield has showcased a beautiful collection of vintage Dutch safety posters.

Head over and check them all out.

Hat tip to Chris Gammell of The Amp Hour (via Reddit).

We helped build the gold, silver, and bronze medals for this year’s RoboGames competition, which finished up yesterday in San Mateo, California.

Read on for a bit about how we designed and built the electronics for, and assembled these pretty-darned neat medals.  It’s a story involving LEDs, some remarkable adhesives, and a how to operate a small-scale surface mount production.

Continue reading →

We are super-excited because Super-Awesome Sylvia, who we have been working with on the WaterColorBot, has been invited to this year’s White House Science Fair to show off her project!  Way to go Sylvia!

Tune in Monday, April 22 starting at 11:30 am EDT, at wh.gov/sciencefair, to watch the event live!

Jonathan Foote over at Rotormind is at it again with our Art Controller. This time, he is using it to thermostatically control a ventilation fan.

He has wired up a TC74 temperature sensor on board and reprogrammed the microcontroller to trigger the relay when a temperature set point is reached. The temperature is set using the DIP switch. He has posted his code and shared in detail all of his modifications. Head over and check it out!

Over at How 2 Today, Chris Connors has written about his Egg Lathe project, which was inspired by the Egg-Bot. It’s made with recycled materials and he has published design files and posted a video of how it works. Looks like a great project, and a fun way to decorate eggs.

A group of scientists and engineers at Harvard are using Bristlebots to study swarming behavior. They have published an article titled “Swarming, swirling and stasis in sequestered bristle-bots.” They have a couple of supplementary videos up on youtube as well. There’s a nice writeup of it at New Scientist, with a link to a full pdf at arxiv.org.

A conspicuous contemporary trend in “traditional” dead-tree junk mail (the snail-mail equivalent of online spam) is to follow the basic format of phishing e-mail: it comes in disguise as legitimate “important” mail, to trick you into clicking on opening it.

And so for a while now, we’ve been amassing a collection of what we call “Envelopes That Claim to be Important.”   Here are a few prime examples of what to watch out for.

Often times, these envelopes are quite well done.   Above is an example that might cause a genuine double take— with its “FINAL NOTICE ENCLOSED“ — and bank-PIN style tear tabs on the sides.

And then, there’s the fine print, so that you really take it seriously.  A $2,000 fine or 5 years imprisonment(!) are threatened under §1702 should you fail to deliver this fine specimen of junk mail letter to its intended victim.  (This penalty is true but somewhat misleading; the law refers to obstruction of mail in general, not this “final notice” in particular.)

To complete the illusion, envelopes like this often come complete with security printing on the back side.  Is this really for privacy, or just so that you can’t quite as easily make out the advertisement lurking within?  (Also, our bet is that everyone gets the exact same red-printed number on the back side.)

Another sleazy trick is to make the envelope look like the work of some (generally implied but unspecified) government agency.  Official looking seals, IRS style typography, or an implied return address in the state capital aim to create the impression that this is a critical document, to be stored with your important papers.  Sprinkle on a few §1702 threats here and there to complete the picture.

This time, it’s personal. And confidential.  And, what exactly is a “secured document,” anyway?

“Registered Documents” is probably meant to be evocative of Registered Mail (which tends to actually be important), but comes off more like the previous “secured document” instead.  Again with the security printing, too!

And nothing shouts “Important Information” more clearly than the words “… or Current Resident.”  

We have not yet noticed any envelopes with both the §1702 threat and the address of  ”Current Resident,” but it stands to reason that they’re out there.

And finally, here is a truly over-the-top example of (yes) presorted first class mail.  In their defense, printing technology has come a long long way, and all those printed permanent marker marks look pretty darned real.

Editor’s note: Super Awesome Sylvia has been visiting Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories for the last week and is guest blogging about her experience and project.

Last year I got to go to RoboGames and watch the competitions. This year I wanted to enter a robot of my own. I looked at the different types of robots you could enter and found out you can enter in a drawbot!

I drew a few sketches of what I wanted my robot to look like. I asked EMSL if I could come over to their shop for a week and make this bot!

When I got there I thought that I would start immediately making the base to my bot but instead we worked in inkscape making detailed drawings.

For the first couple of days I worked on doing a great detailed model on what this bot would look like. This bot was going to be a Watercolorbot!

Also, we visited a FIRST Robotics team while EMSL helped out with their robot named Oddjob. Oddjob is a Frisbee throwing pyramid climbing robot.

Once we had a good set of drawings for my watercolorbot we used the router to create the basic pieces of the bot and laser cut the carriage that holds the paintbrush. We also used dowel pins, screws, nuts, washers, and string to make a cool amazing bot. I will write more about the robot later but it took four different versions of the carriage to fit it in, three different pulleys, and two different ways to tie the string.

I am so surprised at how fortunate I was to go to EMSL and build this bot. I had some amazing meals, great experiences and had a lot of fun. I hope to come back soon and build another revision or build another bot! I really liked hanging out and playing games during my free time. Thanks Evil Mad Scientists!!

Michael wrote in to say:

I ordered a Bulbdial Clock kit from your company on Wednesday Feb 7, 2013; it was waiting for me at the door on the 9th. Suffice it to say that I was extremely pleased with the rapid shipment of the product.

Following the html instructions I was able to assemble the project without errors the first time and got a working Bulbdial clock in about 2 hours (my whole family thinks it is cool).

Once again thanks for being there for an old kit builder.

Thanks, Michael!