We watched the video introduction for this little open source robot, and while we’re not 100% sure we want tiny glowing eyes watching us while we sleep, it does seem to be a nice little platform for hacking. The robot is a side project of [Matthew], who’s studying for a degree in Information Science.

The robot has little actuated grippy arms for holding a cell phone in the front. When it’t not holding a cellphone it can use its two little ultrasonic senors to run around without bumping into things. We like the passive balancing used on the robot. Rather than having a complicated self-balancing set-up, the robot just uses little ball casters to provide the other righting points of contact.

The head of the robot has plenty of space for whatever flavor of Arduino you prefer. A few hours of 3D printing and some vitamins is all you need to have a little robot shadow lurking in your room. Video after the break.

Arduino meets Ecology and Christmas. This integrations uses Arduino as a Twitter trigger for the lights, so if you tweet one of the keywords: PACE, AMORE, SERENITA’, FRATELLANZA, TOLLERANZA, GIOIA, SPERANZA, SOLIDARIETA’, FELICITA’, PEACE, LOVE, BROTHERHOOD. This is an Italian Project and the Tree can be found in  Lonate Pozzolo near Varese.

A big ( 12 mt tall ) Christmas Tree build with 34.626 plastic bottles and “powered” by Arduino and Paraimpu, feeded via twitter and site-pushbuttons. Tweet your keyword with special hastag #ecoalbero and light up a light on the tree.

More information ( in Italian) can be found in the [website]. There is also the full description of the project, the purpose and the materials used to build it up.