Sometimes I do love my hoddy as it really allow me to browse something incredibly cool that’s there already without me knowing at all. Like the tech borrowed from insects that possibly allow to grab anything reliably (and even land drones onto the ceiling).
Continue reading “Fun Tech: Microspines!”Consumer FDM printer conversion for high temp plastics
The thing I love about the additive manufacturing is the fact that this stuff is really something straight out of the sci-fi and there’s little but a full time employment at Roscosmos or NASA that could bring you closer (given you do push this hobby far enough).
Continue reading “Consumer FDM printer conversion for high temp plastics”LonLab Femisapien: A controller bot
Some might have noticed my sincere passion for the WowWee robots design. Indeed, initially manufactured to be toys, the Robosapien lineup is both sturdy and neatly designed. And speaking of design – Femisapien is the top of the list.
Raspberry Pi as a 3D printing server
Every 3D printer owner, after the initial fascination is gone, starts toying with the idea of setting up a dedicated device for the purposes of remote control of printing.
Besides, keeping the only computer at home busy with the printjob that would take hours to complete is a generally annoying practice – not to mention the fact that you do not want to ruin the print with the forced Windows update.
And the problem gets even worse when you have dual printer setup and want to have this rig monitored, automated and optimized. This is when you get your prototyping boards out and start examining the best practices offered by open source hardware enthusiasts.
RPi Robosapien V2
A robot that once was once topping the lineup of the WowWee robots (until the Robosapien RS Media arrived on scene), this large and neatly designed robot could be still used as a base for robotic projects – especially given the fact that design quality and the functionality of the Robosapien V2 surpasses the needs of an average robotic enthusiast.
Unfortunately, the manufacturing process of Robosapien V2 involved using the crappiest wiring ever found on Earth, so all the secondhand RS V2’s sold currently need a lot of soldering to be done before you get the robot restored to an original functionality of an advanced toy.
This is exactly most people give up and go with a full revamping of the internals.
RPi RS Media hack
Since my times at the high school I was fascinated by the WowWee toys as their dedication to creating extremely well-designed robotic toys was matched only by the swiftness of dropping the support for this toys, making them almost useless.
The indisputable gem of their lineup was the WowWee robotics Robosapien RS Media – a 55 cm tall walking robot with embedded Linux, not to mention other features inherited from its predecessor, the Robosapien V2.
Even nowadays, with no support and a hard to find software, I feel no regrets using this magnificent piece of machinery as a mobile robot, rigged with a RPi Zero co-pilot unit and converted to LiPo batteries for ease of Maintenance.
Apple Macintosh Classic
At some point in time I’ve been presented with the leftovers of the 1990-manufactured Macintosh Classic.
Even if it was not vandalized by some teenagers shortly prior to me getting my hands on this piece of IT heritage, a Motorola CPU was already a bit outdated by 2010s, so I had no hard feelings about gutting out the rest of the internals to save the outer shell for the later DIY project.