todbot blog

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!

(click for larger)

My design requirements were:
- assemble without any tooling or fasteners
- fit on a single 1′x2′ sheet of the 1/4″ plywood I already had
- be stable enough to hold a 7lb laptop
- be wide & tall enough for the oscilloscope to fit underneath and be usable.

The 1/4″ (0.20″ really) plywood is cheap, from a big box hardware store. I think I paid $10 for a 4′x8′ sheet of it, and they nicely cut it down to 2′x4′ sheets for me.

It ended up fitting pretty exactly on the 12″x24″ cutting bed of the laser.

If you want to make your own based off this, here are the vector files:
- todbot-laptop-stand-1.eps
- todbot-laptop-stand-1.pdf

What prodded me into doing this was the great Cardboard Laptop Stand I saw the oomlout guys had just received. Also, there are so many great DIY laptop stands on Instructables, they created a whole category for it.

hardware-hacking, lasercut | 1 Comment »

I’ve been exploring various types of gearmotors. DC motors by themselves spin too fast and have low torque. Gearmotors are motors with a gearbox that slows down the high speed of the motor and produces higher torque. Most gearmotors are pretty expensive though. I want a really cheap, almost throw-away, source of gearmotors. It turns out cheap servos can be made into continuous rotation gearmotors.

Modding servos for continuous rotation is not a new hack. You can find many examples of it. You can even buy a nice continuous servo made by Parallax. But I wanted a micro servo version. I’ve been getting cheap servo motors from Hobby City, and they have several super-tiny servos for less than $4. The ones I use here are the Hextronic HXT500 available for $3.49 each.

Here’s how to modify one of those servos to make it into a tiny little gearmotor.
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arduino, hardware-hacking, toys | 21 Comments »

Most cars nowadays (especially rentals, which I’ve been in a lot lately) have 1/8″ AUX inputs for an MP3 player.  When I had just an iPod, this worked great.  Now that I have an iPhone I found my standard 1/8″ to 1/8″ extension cable  that I’ve had in my cable go bag wouldn’t work.  There’s no way I’m going to spend upwards of $20 on an iPhone adapter cable to get around Apple’s design mistake.   Five minutes with the Dremel and I’ve got a handy DIY iPhone adapter cable (and lots of little rubber bits all over the place)

hardware-hacking | 1 Comment »

Woohoo, my little Wiichuck adpter for experimenting with the Wii nuchuck made it on TV, thanks to my buddy John Park and Make: TV.

See the Makezine blog post with the segment, or watch it here:

Maker Workshop - Personal Flight Recorder on Make: television from make magazine on Vimeo.

arduino, hardware-hacking, thingm | 2 Comments »

BlinkMs are a lot of fun by themselves, but they’re also little network devices, each having its own address on an I2C network. Here’s where I think BlinkM can really shine since it makes controlling multiple RGB LEDs pretty easy. For Maker Faire, I wanted to show off this facet by having a single Arduino control a dozen or so BlinkMs on a single I2C bus. The result is shown in the little video below.

Read on for how this was put together.

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arduino, blinkm, general, hardware-hacking, ideas, thingm | 9 Comments »

I just received some colorful tiny mini-breadboards from FunGizmos.com. They are pretty great. Now quickie ideas prototyped with Arduino can be even smaller than the “1¢ Arduino under-shield”.

They appear to be the same quality as the other breadboards I have, just different color plastic. I can already tell the colors will help me differentiate projects, which all tend to look alike from 10 feet away. Normally when you buy these from Digikey or similar places, these little ones cost $7 a piece. FunGizmos has them for $5.40. And that’s cheap enough to get a few. Note that all these tiny breadboards don’t have the side power busses like the larger breadboards do. That’s the price you pay for tininess.

arduino, hardware-hacking | No Comments »

Want to hook up a Wii Nunchuck to an Arduino but don’t want to cut up the cord on your Nunchuck? Yeah me too. So I made some of these:

It’s a small PCB that adapts the Wii Nunchuck connector to standard 4-pin header. I call it the “wiichuck adapter”. It plugs directly into the Arduino, no wiring necessary. You can get one too for $4.

Available from the following wonderful shops:
- FunGizmos.com. International shipping for $1 more.
- Tinker.it (UK)
- Little Bird Electronics (Australia)

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arduino, blinkm, general, hardware-hacking, ideas, programming, thingm, ubicomp | 123 Comments »

This is a laser-cut acrylic bezel for Sparkfun’s Monome-like Button Pad PCB and Button Pad. These 4×4 Button Pads are great: big chunky buttons with a PCB that can take an RGB LED. JMG is making a “monomuino”, a Monome work-alike using this pad and an Arduino. And he’s extending the Monome functionality since his indicator lights can display 3 dimensions of data instead of the normal 1 of Monome.
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hardware-hacking | 12 Comments »