Kilobots are small, low-cost, open source vibrobots designed by the Self-organizing Systems Research Group at Harvard to study swarming behaviors. A group of these bristlebot-inspired robots were demonstrated at the Open Hardware Summit.
Photo by Michael Rubenstein.
This Friday, September 6, we’ll be at the 2013 Open Hardware Summit at MIT. The schedule looks great, and the event is now sold out. Those of you lucky enough to get tickets will love this years e-badge by WyoLum, featuring a programmable e-paper display.
This past week we introduced our “Three Fives” discrete 555 timer kit, which comes with a set of “legs” to make it look like a (DIP packaged) integrated circuit. In that introduction, we mentioned that the legs are machined and formed from PVC foam. But what exactly does that mean? Here (in gory step by step detail) is how we make them!
We’re pleased to announce our newest kit, the “Three Fives” Kit, a kit to build your own 555 timer circuit out of discrete components. Here’s a way to re-create one of the most classic, popular, and all-around useful chips of all time.
The kit is a faithful and functional transistor-scale replica of the classic NE555 timer integrated circuit, one of the most classic, popular, and all-around useful chips of all time. The kit was designed and developed as a collaboration with Eric Schlaepfer, based on a previous version (pictured here), and adapted from the equivalent schematic in the original datasheets for the device. There have been a few other examples of circuits like these (such as the one that we featured in our article about the 555 contest), but we really like how this one has come together.
The kit is designed to resemble an (overgrown) integrated circuit, based around an extra-thick matte-finish printed circuit board. The stand— which gives the circuit board eight legs in the shape of DIP-packaged integrated circuit pins —is made from machined and formed semi-rigid PVC foam.
To actually hook up to the giant 555, there are the usual solder connection points, but there are also thumbscrew terminal posts that you can use with bare wires, solder lugs, or alligator clips.
One of the really cool things about having a unintegrated disintegrated discrete circuit like this is that you can actually hook up probes and monitor what happens at different places inside the circuit.
So that’s our new “Three Fives” Kit (shown above with an original NE555 for scale). It’s not quite as big as our 555 footstool, nor as tasty as our edible version, but it’s a great little circuit, and it’s got legs.
Our friend John made Sconic Sections for a dinner party, with a slight variation: he baked the scone dough in ice cream cones. That led to a little bit of extra difficulty in slicing them, but the cone also provided an outline for the ellipses, hyperbolas and parabolas.
We’ve put together a roundup of our simplest LED projects; easy things to put together mostly with a bare LED and a coin cell.
Pictured above, Basics: Simple LED Pumpkins
How to hack LEDs into Lego minifigures for Halloween, and LED Ghosties for Halloween
LED-lit sea urchin shells, RoboGames Awards
Picking resistors for LEDs and Some thoughts on throwies
Quick, easy, temporary, and beautiful LED garden lights
Paper Circuitry at Home: Electric Origami, and the Soft circuitry merit badge
Edge-lit holiday cards and part II, Refining edge-it holiday cards
Over on buildsmartrobots, Sai posted about a mechanical maze solving project. He uses an EBB (the same controller board we use on the Eggbot and the WaterColorBot) to control a couple of steppers to tilt the bed of the labyrinth using OpenCV to see both the path and the ball.
Alex Ray (@machinaut) has been playing with our Octolively open source interactive LED kits and says, “Physical computing interfaces are fun.”
Instructables user alstroemeria has lovingly documented a clock build inspired by the D/A Clock by Alvin Aronson.
Each of the paper segments is moved in or out by a servo motor to make the mechanical digital display. The whole thing is run off of an Arduino with a servo controller board and a clock module.
Amazon today decided to remind me about some of our past projects through book recommendations. We contributed a bunch of projects to The Hungry Scientist Handbook and were interviewed for Cooking for Geeks. Well targeted, Amazon— perhaps too well…
