Toy vehicles from plastic bottles are pretty cool. Add an Arduino, solar panel, batteries, ultrasonic range finding, a few servos, some beefier tires, and you’ll have something like Fijibot, an autonomous, self-charging robot built by Mike Soniat.

Artist Blair Neal, as many other great creators have before him, turned to children's toys as the source of inspiration for his latest project. Crayolascope is a rudimentary 3D display hacked together from several Glow Books, a light-up play on a flip-book from the titular company. The installation, currently housed at the New York Hall of Science in Flushing, layers 12 of its component clear plastic sheets to create a roughly one-foot deep display that plays a simple pre-drawn animation. The whole thing is controlled by an Arduino Mega, that can either play back the neon scribbles at varying speeds (controlled by a knob built into the console) or scrub through frame by frame. Neal isn't quite done tweaking the Crayolascope either. As it stands he's limited to between 14 and 18 frames, before it becomes too difficult to see through the sheets. And it requires near total darkness for optimal operation. To see it in action check out the video after the break.

Continue reading Crayolascope hacks toys into foot-thick 3D display

Crayolascope hacks toys into foot-thick 3D display originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The little drum playing robot designed by Steffest makes great music.

You control it like most drum computers: you draw the beats on a pattern of sixteen dots, perfectly suited for generic 4/4 rhythms.
There a 8 lines, each controlling 1 servo motor.

Most of the servo’s have a percussion item both on the left and the right, that’s why the pattern buttons have 3 states: off, left, right.
That makes 14 distinct percussion sounds for the drummerbot.

The pattern in the webbrowser is packed into a string, which get send to the Arduino via HTTP.
You can use a wifi module and a http server on the Arduino, or you can use another device attached to the Arduino through a comm port.
The Arduino receives the string, unpacks it back to a pattern and simple loops over the steps controlling each servo.

The Arduino code can be got from here. The music did make me smile!

[Via: GeekyGadgets and Steff's blog]

Ever looked at a pile of E-waste containing perfectly usable electronic spare parts? Ever cringed at the thought of such aggregated piling waste from all the countries advancing in the field of technology? And all this waste being dumped in landfills in developing countries where kids who should be in school, work here for a meagre pay of a dollar a day.

Having seen this, ThinkerToys started as an idea to reuse this eWaste and convert them into fun toys for kids. The creations by Dhairya Dand,

a researcher at Keio-NUS CUTE Center, Singapore, was noticed by everyone at the ICTD (International conference on information and communication technologies and development), Atlanta 2012.

The design is simple: E waste + Arduino =

Keyano turns an ordinary keyboard into a piano! With the keys musically mapped to notes.

Basic addition, subtraction can be an invaluable skill for any kid. RandoMath is a small LED screen connected to your computer keyboard, and asks you random math puzzles.

Storynory has recorded fun stories in your local language, plug in the headphones or speakers for collaborative hearing.

Connect any old TV or CRT monitor and make it TV++, add a keyboard or a mouse for controls. This is a power packed mini computer designed for kids to be hooked on to the TV again, but this time for good reasons!

eWaste is directly connected to these toys without any modification. The resulting combination turns the eWaste (keybaord, mice, speakers, monitors) into something totally new and unexpected.

openTOYSis an ongoing project and more people might contact the creator for further development or for collaborating ideas. More of his works can be found here.

Sphero goes modular, spins out for a drive (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Mar 2012 02:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.