Matt McCoy tweeted this shot of his Egg-Bot in action! Looking great, it’s going to be a swell Easter at the McCoy household.
The Original Egg-Bot! – Deluxe Kit! – The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit– roughly 1.25 to 4.25 inches in diameter (3 – 10 cm).
The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses– with a bit of work. See the photos above for some examples of personalized golf balls, christmas ornaments, light bulbs, and (yes) eggs.
The Eggbot chassis is made of tough fiberglass, with integrated heat sinks for the included motors. The pen and egg motors are high-torque precision stepping motors, and the pen lift mechanism is a quiet and reliable servo motor.
The Eggbot kit is easy to assemble in a couple of hours, and only requires a couple of basic tools like miniature Phillips-head and flathead screwdrivers. No soldering required. You’ll also need a recent-vintage computer with an available USB port (Mac, Windows or Linux), plus internet access to download assembly instructions and necessary software.
The Original Egg-Bot! – Deluxe Kit! – The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit– roughly 1.25 to 4.25 inches in diameter (3 – 10 cm).
The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses– with a bit of work. See the photos above for some examples of personalized golf balls, christmas ornaments, light bulbs, and (yes) eggs.
The Eggbot chassis is made of tough fiberglass, with integrated heat sinks for the included motors. The pen and egg motors are high-torque precision stepping motors, and the pen lift mechanism is a quiet and reliable servo motor.
The Eggbot kit is easy to assemble in a couple of hours, and only requires a couple of basic tools like miniature Phillips-head and flathead screwdrivers. No soldering required. You’ll also need a recent-vintage computer with an available USB port (Mac, Windows or Linux), plus internet access to download assembly instructions and necessary software.
Painting actual eggs is an old-fashioned wholesome Easter tradition that keeps children away from the chocolate for half an hour, but for the not-so-artistically-inclined or the cack-handed, the Eggbot is the perfect device for creating intricately-designed eggs.
In another room, a demo is being run on the “Egg-bot,” a machine that decorates eggs and pingpong balls with precise patterns, simply by rotating the egg around underneath a pen. Later, the “MakerBot,” a 3-D printer that is connected to a computer and creates objects out of layered plastic, “prints” out a tiny hand.
The Original Egg-Bot! – Deluxe Kit! – The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit– roughly 1.25 to 4.25 inches in diameter (3 – 10 cm).
The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses– with a bit of work. See the photos above for some examples of personalized golf balls, christmas ornaments, light bulbs, and (yes) eggs.
The Eggbot chassis is made of tough fiberglass, with integrated heat sinks for the included motors. The pen and egg motors are high-torque precision stepping motors, and the pen lift mechanism is a quiet and reliable servo motor.
The Eggbot kit is easy to assemble in a couple of hours, and only requires a couple of basic tools like miniature Phillips-head and flathead screwdrivers. No soldering required. You’ll also need a recent-vintage computer with an available USB port (Mac, Windows or Linux), plus internet access to download assembly instructions and necessary software.
Instructables user crgfrench writes, “Build an egg-coloring robot that is completely independent of external computers by embedding a Raspberry Pi into the EggBot chassis.”
The Original Egg-Bot! – Deluxe Kit! – The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit– roughly 1.25 to 4.25 inches in diameter (3 – 10 cm).
The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses– with a bit of work. See the photos above for some examples of personalized golf balls, christmas ornaments, light bulbs, and (yes) eggs.
The Eggbot chassis is made of tough fiberglass, with integrated heat sinks for the included motors. The pen and egg motors are high-torque precision stepping motors, and the pen lift mechanism is a quiet and reliable servo motor.
The Eggbot kit is easy to assemble in a couple of hours, and only requires a couple of basic tools like miniature Phillips-head and flathead screwdrivers. No soldering required. You’ll also need a recent-vintage computer with an available USB port (Mac, Windows or Linux), plus internet access to download assembly instructions and necessary software.
The Original Egg-Bot! – Deluxe Kit! – The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit– roughly 1.25 to 4.25 inches in diameter (3 – 10 cm).
The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses– with a bit of work. See the photos above for some examples of personalized golf balls, christmas ornaments, light bulbs, and (yes) eggs.
The Eggbot chassis is made of tough fiberglass, with integrated heat sinks for the included motors. The pen and egg motors are high-torque precision stepping motors, and the pen lift mechanism is a quiet and reliable servo motor.
The Eggbot kit is easy to assemble in a couple of hours, and only requires a couple of basic tools like miniature Phillips-head and flathead screwdrivers. No soldering required. You’ll also need a recent-vintage computer with an available USB port (Mac, Windows or Linux), plus internet access to download assembly instructions and necessary software.
NEW PRODUCT – Alpha Clock Five – WHITE – From Evil Mad Scientist Labs! – Evil Mad Scientist Labs never disappoints with their fantastic kits and clocks. The Alpha Clock Five is no exception: An awesome alarm clock soldering kit– featuring five crazy-bright, crazy huge 2.3″ alphanumeric LED displays in dazzling white, a Chronodot RTC (for precise quartz timing, complete with battery backup) and a handsome laser-cut acrylic case.
These big 18-segment alphanumeric LED displays are notoriously difficult to drive– there are 54 LED elements inside each LED character and the different segments take different amounts of current. We’ve now made it easy to drive five at a time, and wrapped it all up in neat package with classic alarm-clock styling.
Standard Features of Alpha Clock Five:
Extremely wide display brightness range. All the way from very dim (for dark bedrooms) all the way up to annoyingly bright
Huge 2.3″ (5.8 cm) tall digits are easy to see, even if you normally wear glasses
Alarm on-off indicator
Four standard alarm tones
Snooze function
12-hour (AM/PM) and 24-hour clock modes
Rear-panel white LED nightlight; can be turned on or off from the options menu
Sturdy acrylic case features subtle, laser-engraved button labels
Transparent rear panel lets you show off your handiwork
Comes complete with plug-in power supply and backup battery
Microcontroller comes pre-programmmed; no programming is required
Hacker-friendly Design:
Open source hardware design– easy to hack!
Open source software design– easy to reprogram (if you want to)!
Upgradeable firmware
Based on the ATmega644A microcontroller with 64 kB of flash, with plenty of room to grow.
Comes pre-flashed with Sanguino bootloader; can be programmed through Arduino IDE (with extensions).
6-pin TTL-serial connector, can be used to display data or time sent from computer
Unused I/O pins are broken out from the microcontroller, including one ADC and 5+ GPIO
Open-frame case design gives easy access to serial connector and reset button
Alpha Clock Five kit configurations:
The full (non-basic) Alpha Clock Five kit– available on this page –comes complete with the beautifully made Alpha Clock circuit board, the five alphanumeric LED displays (ultrabright white, 2.3″ character height, with upper and lower decimal points), machine pin sockets for those displays, pre-programmed ATmega644A microcontroller with Sanguino bootloader, 5 tactile button switches, 20 ppm quartz crystal, universal-input plug-in power supply, stainless mounting hardware, alarm buzzer, all of the the LED driver chips, transistors, resistors, capacitors and other little parts needed to build the kit, plus a Chronodot real-time-clock module and a handsome laser-cut acrylic case.
The Alpha Clock circuit board is 9.430 X 2.736″ in overall size, and extra stiff at 0.094″ thick. It has a black soldermask and gold plated finish. Once assembled with its case, Alpha Clock Five is approximately 9.44″ wide, 3.78″ tall, and 2.80″ deep.
ChronoDot Alpha Clock Five comes complete with a Chronodot real-time clock module. It provides your clock kit with (1) a higher accuracy quartz crystal oscillator, (2) a backup battery, and (3) extra geek cred for having a TCXO-based RTC. The included battery is estimated to last for 7 years.
USB-TTL Cable You may be interested to add an optional FTDI USB-TTL converter cable, which provides an optional interface between your computer and your clock. It can be used (1) to sync the clock’s time to the time on your PC, (2) to reprogram the clock through (a modified version of) the Arduino IDE, or (3) to send serial data to display on the five-character LED display. Note, however, that these are entirely optional operations– no programming is needed to build or use an Alpha Clock Five clock kit!
Power supply The Alpha Clock Five kit includes a universal-input power supply that will work with worldwide voltages. The plug is a power-strip-friendly US type, so you may need an inexpensive “grocery store” plug adapter to fit the wall socket in your country. If you need to provide power from an alternate source, Alpha Clock Five requires (and provides hookup locations for) a regulated 5 V dc power supply with 1 A capacity.
Here’s something we never thought of: John Fisher is using an EiBotBoard (EBB), a Raspberry PI and a camera to create “inverse panorama views” of cylindrical objects. It’s a little bit like using an Eggbot as a scanner. His in-depth article covers everything from hardware set up to code.
The Original Egg-Bot! – Deluxe Kit! – The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit– roughly 1.25 to 4.25 inches in diameter (3 – 10 cm).
The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses– with a bit of work. See the photos above for some examples of personalized golf balls, christmas ornaments, light bulbs, and (yes) eggs.
The Digi-Comp II: First Edition is a modern, fully-operational recreation of the Digi-Comp II, the classic 1960′s educational computer kit. It’s an automatic binary digital mechanical computer, capable of conducting basic operations like adding, multiplying, subtracting, dividing, counting, and so forth. And what’s more, all of these operations are conducted by the action of balls rolling down a slope, directed by mechanical switches and flip flops, and all powered by gravity.
Overall, it is slightly smaller than the original (mid 1960′s) Digi-Comp II, which used half-inch diameter glass marbles. Rather than marbles, we’ve opted for pachinko balls, which are shiny steel balls 11 mm (about 7/16″) in diameter. Using the smaller size has allowed us to reduce some of the feature sizes, and reduce the overall size of the machine from 14×28.5″ to 10×24″, while retaining all of the original functions and remaining finger-friendly.
The Digi-Comp II: First Edition is CNC carved from rock-solid half-inch hardwood plywood, laser-engraved to provide it with labels, and hand fitted with over 60 laser-cut parts. It comes assembled, tested, and ready to use.
Octolively Kit – Blue – Tileable Interactive LEDs – Octolively modules are tileable, digital interactive LED surfaces filled with ultrabright LEDs that respond in complex and gentle ways to stimulus provided by human interaction.
Today we’re releasing a major update to Alpha Clock Five, our alphanumeric LED desk clock, alarm clock, and data display device.
Alpha Clock Five still has five remarkably bright, remarkably huge 2.3″ alphanumeric LED displays. But for version 2.0, we’ve rewritten the firmware from scratch. It’s packed with new features and it is simply a joy to use.
The firmware is upgradable and we’ve still got some Alpha Clocks Five in stock!
One of the perennial problems that we come across in a variety of contexts, including CNC artwork and producing artwork for the Egg-Bot, is the difficulty of creating good-quality toolpaths– i.e., vector artwork representing halftones –when starting from image files.
One of the finest solutions that we’ve ever come across is Adrian Secord’s algorithm, which uses an iterative relaxation process to optimize a weighted Voronoi diagram, producing a set of points (stipples) that can closely approach the appearance of a traditional stipple drawing.
Another important technique is “TSP art,” where the image is represented by a single continuous path. You can generate a path like this by connecting all of the dots in a stipple diagram. Designing a route that visits each dot exactly once is an example of the famous Travelling Salesman Problem (or TSP). From the standpoint of toolpaths (for the Egg bot and most other CNC machines), a “TSP” path is even nicer than stipples, because little or no time is spent raising and lowering the tool.
Today we’re releasing a new program, StippleGen, which can generate stipple diagrams from images, using Secord’s algorithm. StippleGen saves its files as editable, Eggbot-ready Inkscape SVG files, which can in turn be opened by other vector graphics programs, or re-saved as PDF files for use in other contexts. It can also generate a TSP path from the stippled image, and either save that path as an SVG file or simply use that path as the order of plotting for the stipple diagram.
In stock and shipping. If you choose OVERNIGHT shipping in the USA today (weds or thurs 4/5) it will arrive on Friday JUST in time for easter!
The Original Egg-Bot! The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit– roughly 1.25 to 4.25 inches in diameter (3 – 10 cm).
The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses– with a bit of work. See the photos above for some examples of personalized golf balls, christmas ornaments, light bulbs, and (yes) eggs.
The Eggbot chassis is made of tough fiberglass, with integrated heat sinks for the included motors. The pen and egg motors are high-torque precision stepping motors, and the pen lift mechanism is a quiet and reliable servo motor.
The Eggbot kit is easy to assemble in a couple of hours, and only requires a couple of basic tools like miniature Phillips-head and flathead screwdrivers. No soldering required. You’ll also need a recent-vintage computer with an available USB port (Mac, Windows or Linux), plus internet access to download assembly instructions and necessary software.
The standard pen holder included with the EggBot kit is designed to fit various art pens including Sharpie Ultra Fine Point pens, one pen is included. It can fit almost any pen of similar size.
The Eggbot is normally controlled through a set of open-source extensions to Inkscape, the excellent, popular and free vector graphics program.
Basic operation is much like that of a printer driver: you import or make a drawing in Inkscape, and use the extensions to plot your drawing onto whatever object you’ve mounted in the Eggbot. It’s all handled through an easy to use graphical user interface, and works cleanly on Mac, Windows and Linux.
The kit is based on the original design by Bruce Shapiro, dating back to 1990. Our version, the “Egg-Bot 2.0,” is a modern and friendly update, designed with the assistance of Bruce and his team.
In stock and shipping. If you choose OVERNIGHT shipping in the USA today (weds or thurs 4/5) it will arrive on Friday JUST in time for easter!
As we are approaching that time of year when conifers tend to sprout up in living rooms, here are some techniques and tips for making awesome personalized ornaments with the EggBot.
The Original Egg-Bot! The Eggbot is an open-source art robot that can draw on spherical or egg-shaped objects from the size of a ping pong ball to that of a small grapefruit– roughly 1.25 to 4.25 inches in diameter (3 – 10 cm).
The Eggbot is super adjustable, and is designed to draw on all kinds of things that are normally “impossible” to print on. Not just eggs but ping pong balls, light bulbs, mini pumpkins, and even things like wine glasses– with a bit of work. See the photos above for some examples of personalized golf balls, christmas ornaments, light bulbs, and (yes) eggs.
The Eggbot chassis is made of tough fiberglass, with integrated heat sinks for the included motors. The pen and egg motors are high-torque precision stepping motors, and the pen lift mechanism is a quiet and reliable servo motor.
The Eggbot kit is easy to assemble in a couple of hours, and only requires a couple of basic tools like miniature Phillips-head and flathead screwdrivers. No soldering required. You’ll also need a recent-vintage computer with an available USB port (Mac, Windows or Linux), plus internet access to download assembly instructions and necessary software.
The standard pen holder included with the EggBot kit is designed to fit various art pens including Sharpie Ultra Fine Point pens, one pen is included. It can fit almost any pen of similar size.
The Eggbot is normally controlled through a set of open-source extensions to Inkscape, the excellent, popular and free vector graphics program.
Basic operation is much like that of a printer driver: you import or make a drawing in Inkscape, and use the extensions to plot your drawing onto whatever object you’ve mounted in the Eggbot. It’s all handled through an easy to use graphical user interface, and works cleanly on Mac, Windows and Linux.
The kit is based on the original design by Bruce Shapiro, dating back to 1990. Our version, the “Egg-Bot 2.0,” is a modern and friendly update, designed with the assistance of Bruce and his team.
What’s just like an Eggbot but quite a bit larger? The all-new Ostrich Eggbot! So yes, just like the Eggbot, it’s a machine capable of drawing on the surface of all kinds of spherical and egg-shaped objects. As the name implies, the Ostrich Eggbot is big enough to (very easily) fit ostrich eggs– one is shown above with a (rather large) chicken egg for scale. And, like the Eggbot, we’re releasing it as an open source kit. Given all that, we feel confident to suggest that the Ostrich Eggbot may already be quite possibly the worlds finest open-source CNC ostrich-egg decorating machine.