Laser-TV via HaD…

Welcome to the website of the well’s first compact and fully portable, laser video projector in the world. This project has probably begun with my first visit to the IFA in the mid 90s. There I saw for the first time a laser video projection: Schneider (later Laser Display Technologies ) presented its vision for the future of television: Crystal clear pictures and extremely high contrast and excellent color reproduction. Unfortunately, these devices were prohibitive. I therefore decided a few years later to build your own laser video projector.  In 2001 I took with this project in the contest youth research part and put the finished projector in the same year (only a few years after my first visit) at the IFA , the largest consumer electronics trade show in the world. 

Why spend time in a crowded and cold times square when you can make your OWN Times Square LED ball? Perfect for new years eve, disco parties, weddings, raves, bar mitzvahs, or just a romantic night in. This DIY LED Disco Ball is made using Adafruit’s 12mm LED pixels, an Arduino and two 2.4GHz XBee’s (for wireless disco control!). The LED pattern is controlled by the open source graphics language, Processing so it works on Windows, Mac or Linux computers. The ball pattern is made of a dozen laser cut acrylic panels that are ziptied together and the hanging cord is also the power supply cable (HD video here).

We’ll have a full tutorial after the new year so stay tuned and get your leisure suit to the cleaners!

Contains:
12mm Diffused Digital RGB LED Pixels (Strand of 25) – WS2801
Arduino Uno R3 (Atmega328 – assembled)
XBee Module – Series 01 – XB24-AWI-001
XBee Adapter kit – v1.1
USB XBee Adapter

Github:
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-X2-Time-Ball

Make a Laser Ball via Arduino blog (and appeared on our weekly show and tell!)…

It’s a “programmable disco ball,” a “cat toy for humans,” and a “personal laser light show,” all rolled into one. That’s how one Matt Leone describes his latest creation, aptly known as the Laser Ball. To realize his dream, Leone drilled a set of holes into a garden variety tennis ball, and inserted about 14 laser diodes, each with an attached strip of diffraction grating. Said diodes were then synced up with an Arduino-equipped Teensy microcontroller nestled within the ball, alongside a rechargeable battery – http://leonelabs.blogspot.com/

Uses our remote and a Teensy!

NEW PRODUCT – Geiger Counter Kit Case. Protect your Geiger counter kit and keep accidental fingers from touching the high voltages with this handsome acrylic laser-cut case. Once you’ve assembled and tested the Geiger kit, you can easily install these two cover plates on using the included screws and standoffs.

This is just for the case parts, batteries and Geiger counter kit are not included!

In stock and shipping now!

Geiger Counter Kit – Radiation Sensor. Detect particles and/or make a cool random number generator with this handsome Geiger counter kit. This easy-to-make pack of parts turns a simple Geiger-Muller tube (included) into a portable blink, beeping radiation detector. You can also connect an FTDI friend to the header, to get serial output for datalogging on your computer.

We put this kit together in a couple of hours and hand lots of fun bringing it around and listening for ticking sounds near our smoke detectors, bananas, countertops, Brazil nuts, chunks of Uranium, etc. It includes all components (PCB, tube, & parts) but you will need basic soldering tools and two AAA batteries to complete it.

Get one!

RGB (RGV actually ) laser projector v2.5 – graphics and animations via HaD

This is my RGB laser projector v2.5
video part 2 – graphics and animations

Lasers used:
Red: 300mW 650nm (2x LPC-815 laser diode @350mA, combined with PCBS)
Green: Chinese 100mW 532nm DPSS laser module
Blue (violet): 280mW 405nm (1x SF-AW210 laser diode @270mA)

Total output power (after dichros and galvos): approx. 500mW

Galvos: cheap 20kpps set
DAC used: Popelscan LPT DAC
Software: mostly NLS v1.6.7

Riley writes -

I was reading Make:’s Blog and I saw the entry on laser cutting wood to make it bendable (seeSNIJLAB). See here. I set out to see if it was possible to laser cut plexiglass in the same way. To my surprise it works pretty good! You can see for yourself the results.
I also created a 20″x3″ version in 1/8 red plexiglass. This took about 45minutes of cutting. You can see a video of how flexible it is.

Buildlounge and Full Spectrum Lasers are giving away a laser cutter! @ BuildLounge.

Every builder/maker/hacker has a deep dark desire to harness a freakin’ laser in their craft. You know it, we know it, and Full Spectrum Lasers knows it. Now’s your chance to win this 40 watt deluxe laser cutter!

The Theme: Light
Your project must focus on light in some way. Maybe you’re building an interesting solar oven, or possibly transmitting data using lasers. You could build a light show out of old projector parts, or make solar fiber-optic lighting for your home.  Who knows, surprise us! The project somehow just has to deal with Light.

How will the winners be determined?
After the contest entries are all in, we will put up a vote for 1 week. Your votes help us decide, but ultimately we will choose based on who impressed us the most with their presentation and documentation.

When and How Do I need to submit my project?

All entries must be in by January1 . The most important part of the submission is being documented well. We don’t care if you host it on your page, on Make projects, or send it to us in a pdf. As long as it is easy to follow and full of pictures/videos. We would LOVE to have updates as you go. Let us know what you’re doing!

You must be at least 18 years old to be eligible. All shipping costs will be covered inside the continental US. If you’re outside the US, you can enter, but you will be responsible for shipping of the laser if you win (roughly.$300-$500).

When will you announce the winners?
Winners will be announced Friday, the 13th of January.

Tell me more about the prizes!
First place: Full Spectrum Lasers 40watt Deluxe CO2 laser cutter .
Second place: A WickedLasers Core series green laser.

Third place: Adafruit’s EL wire starter pack.

Bonus prizes?
yep, we’re giving away two bonus prizes! We are going to get a couple extra EL wire starter packs and send them to some lucky people. We will select one random twitter follower, and one random commenter from any post on our website for these additional prizes. These will be announced on January 1st.

4th Epilog Challenge

Back for a fourth installment is the wildly-popular Epilog Challenge, sponsored by Epilog Laser and Instructables. The contest opens Aug. 18 and closes Nov. 14, 2011. The grand prize winner receives a Zing 16 Laser engraving/cutting system. Entrants will display their creativity and inventiveness by posting amazing, inspiring projects, and will also explain what they’d do with an Epilog Laser system should they win the challenge.

“When it comes to the DIY community, a laser engraving and cutting system is immensely valuable in helping create prototypes, one-of-a-kind inventions and so much more,” said Mike Dean, vice president of sales and marketing for Epilog Laser. “We’ve seen such an array of wonderful, useful, creative projects from the past three challenges and we’re excited to partner with Instructables once again as we anxiously await all the unique instructables that people dream up.”

“I absolutely love giving away fantastic tools like laser cutters,” said Eric Wilhelm, founder of Instructables.com and director of communities at Autodesk. “Previous winners of the Epilog Challenge say that it’s changed their life, and I can’t wait to see what this year’s entries bring.”

Previous Epilog Challenge winners include the DIY High-Speed Book Scanner, the 8x8x8 Animated LED Cube, and most recently the Arduino Powered Chess Playing Robot.

Instructables is the most popular project-sharing community on the Internet that provides easy publishing tools to enable passionate, creative people to share their most innovative projects, recipes, skills and ideas. For more information on Epilog Laser, visit epiloglaser.com. To learn more about Instructables and the Epilog Challenge, visit instructables.com/contest/epilog4/.

Good luck, we hope an Adafruit friend/fan/customer wins!

Laser-cut project box tutorial @ Ponoko Community Hub. Rich writes -

Lately I’ve been learning about laser-cutting my own project boxes for the electronic gear I build. The process took me a little while to get my head around, but now that I know what I’m doing, I’m hooked. The finished product looks great and works great. For about the same price as I would pay for a generic plastic box from an electronics retailer, I can get my own enclosure made with every hole cut out perfectly and all the labelling included.

Laser cutting from the command line

One of NYCR’s most popular weekly classes is in using our Epilog mini-35 laser cutter. The only supported system is Windows with CorelDRAW and Epilog’s closed source driver, which doesn’t seem right for a hackerspace. Luckily, AS220 Labs has figured out how to talk to the Epilog using PJL. I’ve written a command line tool, epilog, that will translate the Postscript file into commands for the cutter.

There are a few differences from Epilog’s driver — the most significant is that with the epilog command line tool the home position is always the upper right of the page, not the center of the bounding box as in the Windows printer driver version. The other major difference is that the lines to be cut are distinguished by color, not width: anything that is #FF0000 will be translated into a vector cut.

To use it from inkscape you will need to write out a Postcript file by selecting “Print to file” and writing the output.ps file. Then you can run it through the tool like this…

The question of laser kerf comes up occasionally in Adafruit’s weekly Ask-an-Engineer chat, so I figured this would be of interest to some folks. James Williamson shares his method for finding the kerf of a laser cutter in different materials and material thicknesses. He writes:

Kerf is determined by material properties and thickness, the focal length of the lens and the gas used while cutting. Our laser cutter uses a lens with a 50mm focal length and uses compressed air to push out the vapourised/molten swarf.

By cutting a rectangle of material and then cutting 9 rectangles within it you get 10 cuts. When these 9 rectangles are pushed together at one end of the “frame”, the resulting gap at the other end is the sum of the kerfs. Dividing this gap by ten gives the average kerf for that material and material thickness.

He uses a feeler gauge to measure the width of the gap and then divides by the number of cuts (10, in this case) to get the kerf for that particular material/thickness/feedrate/power combination on his cutter.

Josh Judkins of Ponoko added this in the comments:

We’ve found that kerf widths can vary even on the same material sheet, depending on whether you’re cutting a straight or curved line, or the laser head is moving on the x or y axis.

Good info to keep in mind.

You can check out James’ blog post about it here. Nice work, James!

[via Ponoko]

Fun with lasers…

What if we could bring the magic of ANIMATED GIFs into the physical world? Well, now, using modern LASER TECHNOLOGY, we can. We specialize in transforming the finest in designer-crafted animated GIFs into physical zoetropes, bringing the animated glory of the old-timey web onto your actual desktop or COFFEE TABLE.

The World’s Most Complex Architecture: Cardboard Columns With 16 Million Facets @ Co.Design….

Michael Hansmeyer uses algorithms invented by Pixar and painstaking handicraft to generate columns with dizzying detail. When people mistake photographs of your physical prototypes for computer renderings, you know you’ve achieved something amazing. That’s exactly what happened when Michael Hansmeyer showed off his “computational architecture” column, created by iterating a subdivision algorithm over and over again and then fabricating it out of cardboard.

Hershey Text: An Inkscape extension for engraving fonts @ Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Hershey Text is an Inkscape extension that can render a line of text in one of several stroke-based “engraving” fonts. This extension solves a persistent problem, and one which we have come across in many different contexts: How to easily create simple and readable vector representations of text.

Duck Consommé with Sous Vide Potato & Laser-Cut Nori @ Seattle Food Geek via NOTCOT. Scott writes -

Having access to a laser cutter has made me think differently about food.  Although I’ve lasered more edibles than I care to mention, one of the most successful substances for laser cutting is nori – the seaweed paper used in sushi making.  Although nori cuts well, it is extremely delicate and brittle.  Inspired by that delicateness, I decided to use the nori as a garnish for duck consommé, a crystal-clear soup made from duck stock.  The potato creates a dramatic color contrast and allows the Japanese maze design cut out of nori to sit just above the level of the liquid.

More:

HOW TO – MAKE:sushi…

One of the folks who works at EPILOG told us… “We had a record-setting number of laser sales in the month of June, 2010 – the highest we’ve had in our company history. Part of our success is due to the tremendous amount of support we get from the industry and that certainly includes both MAKE and Adafruit”.

Epilog Laser, the leading designer and manufacturer of CO2 and fiber laser engraving and cutting systems, today announced record-setting laser sales in the month of June, 2010. In addition to being the highest-selling month in the company’s history, June also capped off a record-setting first half year for Epilog.

“We’re very excited to see such growth in system sales”, said Mike Dean, director of sales and marketing at Epilog Laser. “A few years ago, we recognized that to maintain our dominant position in the lower-power, small-format laser industry, we would need to broaden our product line and diversify our markets. That decision has been paramount to our strategic growth.”

One of the reasons we continue to point folks to EPILOG is their involvement & investment in the DIY community – from Maker Faire to working directly with many small businesses, they’ve been a great company to watch grow as the maker movement has grown along side them. Congrats EPILOG!

As always we have a lot of info on our laser wiki, check it out!

Here’s our first laptop etched 11/2005 (wow almost 5 years ago!).

Photos from a “laser party” via NOTCOT.

From Ponoko:

Andrew Plumb (aka aplumb and clothbot) has been experimenting with making LEGO-compatible blocks for awhile. We talked about his work on here back in December, and he has done some more great work since then. Our last post mentioned the laser cutting files he uploaded to Thingiverse, and above you can see some of those digital files made real with our own beloved laser cutting service, Ponoko Designmake.

He has also had some parts 3D printed through Shapeways, and they are even available for sale through his Shapeways Shop.

Custom LEGOs… oh to be 7 years old again (with access to a 3d printer).

Laser etched brain model! via MAKE.

Here’s the first iPad we etched earlier today (Thanks Dan!) – we used 100% power and 100% speed with an Epilog 35W laser. It looks great! b00m, more here!

When my EPSON 830U decided not to work for me anymore (printing heads clogged) I thought I could make some use of the still working mechanics of the printer. It’s based on a couple of stepper motors for both axis of motion (print head and paper feed).

So I replaced the original power supply and drive electronics for an arduino board and an stepper motor driver from Adafruit industries. Now I could move the printhead
anywhere on a page. Next step was to add a laser on the printhead and to control it using a PWM output from arduino (so laser power could be modulated from the computer).

Though it only cut thin back color cardboard, it has may uses. I wrote a C program for arduino to control the stepper motors and laser. It receives data from the computer and
interfaces with the old printer guts.

Data format is very simple: each line contains a sequence of integer numbers separated by blank space. Each pair of numbers represents one XY coordinate. Line ends with a CR (0x0d) character (that also shuts down the laser to stop cutting). First coordinate of a line sets the starting point (before reaching that location the laser is off).

I wrote some software running on my iMac that reads a Inkscape SVG file (only straight lines are supported though, use Flatten Bezier on curves to get a sequence of straight line segments) and translates it to the desired data format for arduino and it shows a preview on the screen. Data is sent through a USB port to the arduino. iMac code was written using Processing language (Java-based) so it can run on Windows or Linux too.

If you have an old EPSON printer, you may want to give it a second thought before putting it to the trash.

New Super-Silent™ Fans are one of the highlights of the new feature set. Providing a 10-decibel drop in most of the systems, these fans make Epilog lasers the quietest operating systems on the market.
An even more robust Vector Cutting Table is now included with the series.

The updated table is over one inch thick and removable from the system. When not in use, the table can be placed in the convenient new storage rack that has been built into the stand. The Engraving Table has also been reinforced for the flattest, most even engraving surface on every job.

Beneath the Vector Cutting Table is a new removable Crumb Tray that has been built into the table pan. Users lower the Easy-Access Drop-Down Door on the front of the system and pull out the Crumb Tray to remove the debris that has fallen through, eliminating a fire hazard and making system maintenance even easier.

The updated machines in the Legend Elite Series by Epilog include the Epilog Mini 18, Mini 24, and Helix. They feature Epilog’s Accupoint™ Motion Control System with linear encoders, NeverWear stainless steel bearings, and high-speed servo motors. The series also features Epilog’s Laser Dashboard™ and Photo Real Engraving™ with dithering patterns that produce the highest quality photo engraving in the industry.

Huh, we’ve not seen “Epilog’s Laser Dashboard™ and Photo Real Engraving™” – likely their own software since COREL is good for a lot of things, likely not so good for just running a laser.

REMINDER! Enter our iPad laser contest with Gizmodo!

Epilog Laser, the leading producer of CO2 and fiber laser engraving, cutting and marking systems today announced the company is teaming with Adafruit Industries to sponsor the iPad Contest, presented by Gizmodo.

“Engraving tech-gadgets is unbelievably popular right now”. Beginning March 15, Gizmodo will start accepting design entries for possible laser engraving on the highly-anticipated iPad. Two winners will be selected and each will receive a laser engraved iPad featuring each participant’s respective design. Finalists will be picked by the Gizmodo staff, Adafruit and Epilog. After the top 10 are selected, Gizmodo readers will vote for the two grand-prize winners. Adafruit will donate the engraving services on their Epilog Laser, and Epilog will donate the iPads for the contest.

“Engraving tech-gadgets is unbelievably popular right now,” said Mike Dean, director of sales and marketing for Epilog Laser. “We’re happy to donate the iPads for the competition and are excited to team with Gizmodo and Adafruit. It’s a perfect fit because we can connect with people who really understand what our product can do – the designers, the DIY crowd, the inventors – all of those who genuinely appreciate what lasers are capable of.”

The iPad Contest opens March 15 and runs through midnight PDT April 3. The competition is open to all U.S. residents 18 and older. Complete rules can be found at gizmodo.com and adafruit.com. For more information visit www.epiloglaser.com.

From the ARA International Awards Market in Las Vegas, Epilog Laser, the leading producer of CO2 and fiber laser engraving, cutting and marking systems today announced the release of the Zing 24 Laser Rotary Attachment. The highly-anticipated accessory makes the Zing 24 a popular choice for those seeking entry-level systems capable of engraving cylindrical-shaped items.

“The Zing 24 continues to raise the bar for entry-level laser engraving equipment,” said Mike Dean, director of sales and marketing for Epilog Laser. “The availability of this desirable accessory will allow small businesses and hobbyists to accomplish the same goals as larger, more expensive systems. It will allow engravers to greatly expand their product line and in turn, their profit potential.”

The Zing 24 Rotary Attachment was designed with productivity and ease-of-use in mind. Operators can switch from one item to the next in seconds, without removing the attachment from the engraver. Additionally, the attachment allows for accurate image scaling, so there’s no need to input diameter or circumference calculations.

Cylindrical items such as flashlights, glasses, vases and mugs have always been popular items for customization, and highly profitable for engraving shops. The new attachment for the Zing 24 Laser was engineered to be user-friendly and allows business owners to not only offer more to customers, but to maintain throughput while doing so.

The Zing 24 Rotary Attachment can accommodate items up to 5.25 inches (133.4 mm) in diameter and is now available from Epilog Laser. For more information visit www.epiloglaser.com.

So, an entry-level system is now capable of marking cylindrical items like mugs, flashlights, wine bottles, shot glasses, beer mugs, all that. Good stuff for a small biz to pay for itself.

Using a 35W Epilog mini, 60% power 100% speed. The beans should be placed in some sort of soft holding bed both to even them out as well as to stop the air assist from moving them. We used lentils and eventually made a jig with cardstock to mass produce the beans.

If you’ll recall, some months ago we held a little competition for readers to submit artwork destined for laser-etching on the backsides of Amazon’s Kindle. After everyone voted on the top five out of the mountain of selections, we took the gaggle of readers down to our friends at Adafruit Industries (headed up by the lovely and delightful Limor Fried and Phil Torrone) for some time under the laser. While we were there getting our etch on with their massive laser, we convinced Limor and Phil to show off some of the other crazy kit they’ve got in the labs — and we’ve captured it all on film… er, video. Take a look at our excursion into the world of dynamic DIY’ing — we think you’ll like what you see.

We posted some additional photos of the etched Kindles here – and you can also view the Engadget show M4V here…

We started this project looking at some of the interesting variations amongst common fonts. Blowing them up to this size lets you start to see those differences more clearly than usual. Cutting them out as tangible forms takes it a step further– you can feel the curves. Also, they make pretty good coasters.

My grandfather used to make portable stools from a couple of thin pieces of wood that tied together with a simple string. Growing up we usually had a couple of these “tie stools” conveniently stashed around the house, and we always got them out for backyard barbecues and took them with us when we went camping.

Although my woodworking skills are nowhere near what my grandfather’s were, we’ve been inspired by that stool to play around with making small, lightweight furniture that can be disassembled, stacked flat and tied together for easy transport. My first try was pretty wobbly, and felt like a little twist would splinter it. A couple of revisions later, I have a reasonably sturdy stool that is held together with a nylon strap. The leg pieces are notched on the sides so that when they are stacked together, the strap on the seat piece can be used to hold all the pieces together. There are handles cut into the leg pieces as well for easy carrying.

The votes are in, dear readers, and you’ve spoken loud and clear: from our original 23 finalists, your votes have boiled it down to five well-deserved winners who’ve clearly put time, effort, thought, determination, and old-fashioned elbow grease into their designs for gracing the metal back of Amazon’s 6-inch Kindle.

So what happens next? We’ll be working with winners and coordinating with the good folks at Adafruit Industries to turn these designs into reality thanks to some insanely high-powered precision lasers — picture that scene in Goldfinger where the film’s namesake tries to cut 007 in half to get an idea of just how high-powered we’re talking about here — and rest assured, we’ll be posting plenty of pictures as they come out of the workshop! Follow the break for the lucky five (presented in order with the most votes first).

A huge word of thanks to Amazon, Adafruit Industries, everyone who submitted entries, and the voters who figured out where these Kindles belong!

Our Kindle contest that we’re running in cooperation with our good friends at Adafruit Industries and Amazon has drawn to an epic conclusion, and there’s simply no other way to put it — we’re blown away. We received literally dozens upon dozens of incredible, art gallery-worthy entries and it was all but impossible to narrow them down to a group of finalists — but after an entire weekend of mulling, debating, and hand-wringing, we’ve done the dirty work and narrowed it down to a group of just twenty-three. Now, dear readers, the fate of five Kindles lies in your hands and your hands alone. The laser awaits.

So here’s what we need from you: pick your favorite by 11:59PM ET on Monday, August 3rd. That’s it. We’ll take the five top vote-getters and award each with a 6-inch Kindle engraved with their design — and of course, we’ll post pictures of the finished products before they go out to their lucky owners.

Follow the break to see the entries (which you can click to see in larger form). Below each design, you’ll see a number — these correspond to numbers in the poll, which you’ll find directly below the entries. Just choose your favorite by number and we’ll take take care of the rest.

Good luck, contestants — and good luck picking from all of these amazing entries, readers!

We were recently contacted by a mathematics instructor, who suggested that it might be interesting to have a program like Snowflake, but with the option of picking and choosing different symmetry properties. Natural snowflakes have (approximate) sixfold rotation symmetry plus reflection symmetry. However, a lot of things that you can draw by hand have absolutely no resemblance to snowflakes at all– and it is somewhat fun to explicitly play with the rules. Our new program, SymmetriSketch, sticks to the same basic design principles as Snowflake: it’s cross platform, open source, and able to export a true vector drawing with a closed path. However, SymmetriSketch is a much more flexible program that allows you to play with different symmetries, and create all kinds of different things that would never be mistaken for frozen water.

Reading isn’t just about the text that you’re reading, it’s an intimately personal experience in every sense of the word — the way the book feels, the crease of the pages, the wear on the cover, it’s all totally unique to your copy at the time that you’re reading it. Put simply, it’s an experience no one else will ever have. Between three models, dozens of accessories, and countless e-books, no two Kindles are alike, either — but Engadget has partnered with Amazon and the DIY experts over at Adafruit Industries to hook up five extraordinarily lucky readers with truly unique reading devices. These guys are the laser etching experts — see one of the Kindles they’ve done here!

Here’s the deal: we’re asking you to think of a design that would look great on the Kindle’s brushed metal back — something that means a lot to you, something that’ll make passers-by drool with envy when you casually hold up your new toy while reading The Economist from the comfort of your train, plane, or bus seat. Draft up that design (seriously, make sure it’s awesome, because you’ll be facing some stiff competition) and send it to us. We’ll post some of our favorites and hand the reigns over to you — our dear readers — to select five finalists who will have their designs laser-etched into reality on the backs of their very own Kindles!

Check out the rules, post and more at Engadget, good luck!

George W. Hart is a professor at Stony Brook and is one of our favorite artists, making a wide variety of stunning geometric sculptures. On his of his many works that has particularly captivated us for some time is a sculpture called Frabjous.

When we realized that George had posted a template for this sculpture we dropped everything, grabbed the cardboard and hot glue, and raced to build our own.

You’ll need papercraft type building materials: Paper, cardstock, or cardboard, and tape or glue. Also good scissors and/or a hobby knife with sharp blades. You can also build this with wood, plastic, or other materials, of course, but cardstock and cardboard are inexpensive and effective. Hot glue also proved to be excellent, providing sufficient strength and flexibility, and good working time.

You can download the PDF template for Frabjous on its web page.

I have one of those USB-based logic analyzers that needs Windows software to make it go. I had been doing Windows-in-a-window with VMWare, but it’s kind of a pain. If I were to use a real Windows laptop, I’d need a shelf or something for it. I wanted it above my oscilloscope, which meant a laptop stand that was taller and wider than most. Time for the laser cutter!

What you see here is Beta 1 of the Jansen walker, a laser-cut robot, based on the Jansen Mechanism. It has 8 legs and scuttles similar to a crab walking sideways. The brain is a Arduino, and the legs are powered by 2 micro-servos modified for continuous rotation. This project is heavily influenced by Theo Jansen’s natural gearing mechanism, it’s a very efficient mechanical leg design for converting rotary motion into leg movements, and is very elegant in my opinion.

The basis is the relative distance of the 12 joins, Jansen calls them “The 12 Holy Numbers”. The numbers were developed with a genetic algorithm. In a couple of interviews that he wrote the evolver on a Atari STe computer and it took literally months of 1990’s processing power to find the solution (files on Thingiverse).

Here’s the back of our business cards

Click here to see the photos (larger versions)…

And here’s a video of the entire process! You can check it out on YouTube, vimeo, blip.tv and direct download (MP4).

Ask nicely and maybe he’ll post up details on how he did it!

If the mass media are to be believed, there is nothing more useful to today’s heroes-in-training than bomb-defusing know-how.

Blue wire? Green wire? All wires? Once you figure all that stuff out you’ll want to carry around a pocket bomb defusing tool. Where to get such a thing? Well, you are in luck! We have them in stock right now at the Adafruit webshop

In this case, exactly 35 Watts of power!

Check out the new Laser Information pages for all of your $20K laser cutter setup needs!

Its another Wiki embedded page: it looks like a normal web page but if you click the link at the top it will take you to the Wiki where the data is kept. That way, the 99% of people who just want the info don’t have to deal with the strange look of a wiki.

Tired: Your name engraved

Wired: Your custom artwork permanently laser-etched!

I’ve just started a new service under the Adafruit Industries umbrella: Adafruit Laser Services. Its like a tattoo parlor, but for your gear. Customize your goods with your artwork, not stock images, not some lame character-limited engraving. We can do just about everything, including every sort of iPod, laptop, cellphone, PDA, game console, etc.

By appointment only, in New York City. Read the latest on the ALS page, check out some examples in our Flickr account, and then purchase your gift certificate today from the adafruit webshop.