Pcantin : Over 11000 iterations and still... LEGO stress test machine. Pcantin : My son just got the Blob game... LEGOtiny. LEGOtiny. After my last Mini RC Car project I knew I wanted to make a smaller better one.
Some months later and this is the result: The reason why this one is in a LEGO body is because of this question on LEGO Stack Exchange where it was asked if it was possible to power the small LEGO City wheels. At that point I had already started playing with micro DC motors and I also started using the ATtiny chip. This was a perfect storm. I had to build a super small LEGO vehicle. Here are all the parts needed to make this build: Set of gears from a race track carLEGO wheels setLEGO brick 2x2Micro motor0.1uf capacitorTransistorDiodeATtinySocketPower adaptor I'll go over the small details in an Instructables ASAP. Pcantin : Just finished a nice little... Week TechVideo, 2012 #06 - LEGO Prosthetic Arm. It is not the first time we share magnificent attempts to replicate the human hand (with or without the respective arm) by several builders, using LEGO Technic or MINDSTORMS [1, 2, 3].
Today just another great example, which takes the challenge some steps further, with amazing results. As the author (Max Shepherd) explains in the video description, - Hand movements and wrist abduction/adduction are controlled with LEGO pneumatics. - Wrist pronation/supination, wrist flexion/extension, and elbow flexion/extension are controlled with LEGO motors (Power Functions). The main purpose of this project was to accurately mimic the full range of motion of a normal human arm and hand. The secondary goal was to maximize speed and power, yet maintain a consistent ratio between the two for demonstration purposes.
Snow balling. I admit I'm still buying Legos and a vast majority of those are Lego Technics and Mindstorm that I use for prototypes and robots.
But, from time to time like any 37 year old kid, I get a kit simply because it looks cool. Hence I have the Lego X-Wing. This magnificent piece of design dating from the back-when-lucas-was-good era was siting on my work desk and my son, playing with it, said “Dad, can you make the ladder to climb in?”. Any reason to get my Legos out is a good reason, so Voila! My son was happy but, like any good geek would, he had the obvious thought; what about the cane gizmo to get R2 in and out of the ship?
The rotation is powered with gears and the up-down motion is done with a pneumatic piston and a switch to select up or down (directing the air flow to the top or bottom of the piston). The base is resting on gliding 'skis' and stays in place because two of them are sitting in a groove. In conclusionThe main problem with this crane is the pneumatic switch. Arduino & Lego. I'm using Legos a lot to build quick prototypes (e.g. my robots).
Now that I have an Arduino UNO, I had to find an easy way to mount the UNO board on any Lego constructions. I wanted this 'attachment' to be as light as possible. Leguino. WIP: testing the onboard LEDs before soldering the PCB Micro-controllers and electronics are taking over my spare time... did I say spare time?
Robots and flashing lights being 'sooOOoo cool', my kids are always coming in to see the crazy things I'm working on and asking half a million questions while working at my side. There's nothing like the hands-on approach. Some weeks ago, my 6 years old son came to me with his favorite Lego robot and started telling me is plan to put flashing lights in the chest and in the head. A new life for RCX 2.0. My LEGO Mindstorm had been unused for years now especially since I started using micro-controllers like BasicStamp and now Arduino.
It had a short revival last winter when I used it to build a Star Wars R2-Unit crane for my twins. It was a real success and they played with it for two weeks straight. Initially I was happy that my RCX was being used again but very puzzled that, after that playing stint, they had not included this new motorized brick into their regular LEGO play. Why? Lego RC car. Lego. Well, that didn't last long.
The machine did 1 full test and then died at about 1/3 of the second test. The first test result is 32,066 iterations, supporting the result from the Test Machine #1 which ended with 37,112 iterations. So the average is at 34,589 for the moment. So, why is the machine #2 dead? It didn't died as much as it was slaying DC motors and it all came down to a bad design. For something like this build, every molecules in my body was screaming stepper-motors or, at least, servos.
The following video was made after the machine killed its first motor. Here is my sad video when I decided to stop the machine for good: What now? R.I.P. *Again a big thanks to The Little British Robot Company for the 2 Makeblock kits that were used for building this project.