todbot blog » toys

Tiny Servos as Continuous Rotation Gearmotors

todbot — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 07:10:27 +0000

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 [...]

Magic wands do exist, as gyro mice

todbot — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 01:33:37 +0000

ThingM‘s own Mike Kuniavsky was featured on BoingBoing today. Woot!

Mike spent some time getting a Gyration Air Mouse to work on Mac OS X as a gestural input device. The Gyration stuff is interesting because it’s based upon a two-axis gyroscope. It’s not accelerometer-based like some of the old game console controllers (or like the Sudden Motion Sensor in the new Mac laptops)

I got a few of those mice as well to experiment with, thinking it would be a cheap way to acquire a gyro, since dual-axis gyros are pretty pricey.

Except when you take it apart, [...]

ReadyNAS Rules

todbot — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 20:38:57 +0000

I recently obtained a ReadyNAS NV by Infrant, on the recommendation of my friend Ben Franco, who’s done much research on large disk arrays. The ReadyNAS pretty much rules. I think my long-standing storage woes may finally be over.

It’s a dedicated Network Attached Storage (NAS) box that does RAID-0, RAID-1, RAID-5, or a proprietary combo of the three called “X-RAID”. X-RAID allows you to start with one disk, move to two, then three, then four, all without rebuilding the RAID or changing RAID levels.

It has a really nice web-based GUI. You would hardly know that deep-down it’s [...]

Digital Cameras, Remote Capture, and Linux

todbot — Sat, 04 Dec 2004 19:48:00 +0000

As the result of helping out some nascent space rover guys, I did a little write-up on some research into which digital cameras support remote capture and work under Linux.

Sony Ericsson P900 / T-mobile Redux

todbot — Fri, 09 Apr 2004 18:43:00 +0000

So after six weeks T-mobile was finally able to wrest control of my number from the cold dead hands of Cingular. And thanks to MobileWhack’s P900 pages for providing the correct settngs to get the P900 on the Net. It is very cool to be able to web surf, IM, and check email anywhere I can get a cell connection.

T-Mobile unlocking after 3 months?

todbot — Sat, 13 Mar 2004 04:15:00 +0000

I read this on Slashdot, so it must be true: T-Mobile will allow their phones to be unlocked after about three months of service. Just send email to simunlock@t-mobile.com with your name, phone number and IMEI number and they’ll hook you up.link

P900 and T-Mobile notes

todbot — Tue, 17 Feb 2004 08:45:00 +0000

I’m beginning the process of switching to T-Mobile (from Cingular), because “Tmo” has very cheap all-you-can-eat data plans: from free to $19.99, depending on the level of studliness you want.

I’ll be using a Sony-Ericsson P900.

There are apparently 4 different “Internet plans”:

$0.00 – “free/unlimited internet”, aka “basic WAP” “just ports 80 (web), 25 (smtp), 110 (pop3), 143 (imap). ” all others blocked (and some reports say only port 80 is allowed as of late 2003) access to the t-zone portal sites. NATed? uses [...]