After making “Boxie the Creepster” (a robotic box-thing) functional, here’s another “test” that I put it through. No dogs or robotic boxes were hurt during the making of this video:
Evie, our resident test-dog, was joined by Dunkin for Read more »
Monthly Archives: May 2011
Ping Pong Ball Eyes for “Boxie the Creepster”
Posted by Jeremy Cook
on May 26, 2011
2 comments
As part of “the creepy box” project, which I’ve now decided to call “Boxie the Creepster”, I needed to control a couple LED lights with a RC helicopter remote control. These lights would go inside a ping-pong ball and form light-up “eyes” of some kind. These LEDs did a good job of evenly lighting the ping-pong balls for a creepy effect. Additionally, I made the eyes move back and forth. I’ll go over that as well. Here’s a video of “Boxie” in action with eyes that are able to change color:
The helicopter controller that I had available had four channels, two of which controlled servos, two controlled “normal” DC motors. I used one of the servos to move the eyes and both of the Motor outputs to control the color of the eyes. Originally I was thinking about using one of the motors to actually spin the box around, but that’s on the back burner for now.
The first part of this post is how I got Read more »
The Creepy Glowing Remote Control Box or “Boxie the Creepster”
Posted by Jeremy Cook
on May 21, 2011
14 comments
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a 45 second video should be worth approximately 1,080,000 words. This video should be a good introduction:
After struggling with what to do with poorly adjusted RC helicopter that had sat in my closet in the guest bedroom for over a year, this was the best idea that I came up with so far. This project really combined several concepts that I used in some other posts such as how easy small wooden boxes, like the one I used in the “even more useless machine” are to come across, and how a RC car can apparently be recycled for just about anything. Using servos remotely and controlling LEDs with the motor output from a helicopter was new for me, so I’m pretty happy with the results.
I really like this photo of the partially disassembled box, and as it says, you should visit JCOPRO.NET.
After I decided to take apart my helicopter, possibly never to be put back together again, it took me Read more »
The Double-barrel Pneumatic Air Cannon
Posted by Jeremy Cook
on May 8, 2011
9 comments
After restoring my mine bolt-action potato cannon, I decided that the double-barrel cannon that resided in my garage would be interesting to get working again. It hadn’t been fired in several years, and one of the valves no longer worked. Additionally, it leaked badly, so I had my work cut out for me. Here’s a picture of the gun partially restored before any sort of leak testing or firing (Read on for another video at the end):
The principle behind this gun, or most pneumatic air cannons, Read more »
Dropbox – A Simple File Sharing and Backup Utility (Free for 2 GB)
Posted by Jeremy Cook
on May 7, 2011
4 comments
A week or so ago, a friend of mine introduced me to a program called “dropbox”. Although I don’t know everything about it yet, it’s a great way to backup files on the “cloud” as well as share items with your friends or even people you don’t know. You can easily share folders with other Dropbox users. From their and your point of view it behaves like the file is locally on your computer (and whoever else it’s shared with). Naturally, you can also share these files with yourself on several computers. Really great tool, and has kept me from using my thumbdrive as much.
Get 250 Extra MB here!
You can use their 2 GB service for free (which I do and really like) or you can upgrade to 50 or 100 gigabytes if that’s not enough. You’ll have to pay $9.99 or $19.99 per month for this larger storage. If you’d like to try it, use my referral link here and you’ll get an extra 250 MB free! Think about how much money 250 MB of storage would have been worth in 1990. No need to thank me though, I get 250 extra MB too!
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Update: I’ve used this program to help transfer files around to my CNC router, so check that out here!
