Surely, this is a glimpse into the future. No? Ok, its a glimpse into 1983. A small chinese fast-food restaurant in California put two 4.5 foot tall, 180 pound robots to work delivering food. Tanbo R-1 and Tanbo R-2 were their names and delivering food was their game. At least, when there wasn’t radio interference …
Sassy disco bots of the 80s
An easy to build cat feeder driven by a DIY linear actuator
[Will Finucane] of Revolt Labs/Mad Science Blog was looking for a way to keep his cats happily fed while away on a short vacation, so he put together a cheap and easy automatic feeder to ensure that his pets didn’t go hungry while he was away. We’ve seen different iterations of automatic pet feeders here …
Visible Kitteh project keeps mice out of the house
[Aaron] and his wife have a wonderful cat that likes to contribute to the household by bringing field mice, shrews, and voles into the house as a ‘present.’ Obviously, this leads blood, fur, and viscera staining the carpet, and chasing around mortally wounded rodents isn’t [Aaron]‘s idea of fun. To stop the cat from bringing small …
Science and engineering festival comes to DC
If you’re around the Washington, DC metro area next weekend, here’s something for you. It’s the USA Science and Engineering festival, and if you’ve ever wanted to talk to [Adam] and [Jamie] from Mythbusters, [Bill Nye], and several astronauts, this is where you should be next weekend. This is the second USA Science and Engineering …
Using a touch sensor as a telegraph key
[Sebastian] is learning Morse code and CW radio, and of course he needed a telegraph key. Instead of using the terribly unergonomic paddle style key, he built a capacitive touch iambic key over the course of a few evenings. An iambic key usually has two switches. When one switch is closed, it will transmit a …
Valve scoops up bright young electrical engineers
Several bright young engineers have been swiped up to work for Valve. Yes, that Valve, the game company. Amongst them are [Jeff Keyser] aka [Mighty ohm] and [Jeri Ellsworth], both names that we have seen on these pages many times. We’ve heard that Valve is a fun and very unique company to work for. Apparently …
Chumby is no longer selling hardware
Hearing that Chumby will no longer be selling hardware makes us a little sad. We’ve seen this thing used for so many different things, like shooting people with missiles, spitting out composite video, web serving, stomping around bipedially, and being a 3g router. We knew it wouldn’t be long, since they actually stopped manufacturing last …
Sparkfun Electronics launches an educational site
Sparkfun Electronics has launched an educational web site with a full curriculum of classes being held at Sparkfun Headquarters. If you don’t live nearby, no problem. You can download the entire curriculum as well. It appears that they will have a tutorial section for those who prefer a per-project approach, but that area is still “coming …
(Model) Helicopter Physics
If you’ve ever wondered how a helicopter is able to fly, or would just like to see some awesome RC piloting, the four videos after the break should be just the thing! Although the basic physics of how one works is explained in the last three, one would still be hard pressed to explain how …
[Linus] wins the Millennium Technology Prize
[Linus Torvalds] pumped out Linux roughly 20 years ago and has now won some pretty major recognition for his contributions. We’ve seen different flavors of Linux installed on virtually everything you can think of, even on a dead badger. This prize is being compared to the Nobel Peace Prize, since there isn’t a Nobel prize …
