Ooo! More robot kit fun! I like it except that I feel very poor when I look at it. I guess robot kits will do that to you, it’s like looking at the prices of LEGOs.
[via robots.net ]
Author: John
Random Pixel Lights
Super nice art hack here:
“Random Screen” is a mechanical thermodynamic display which does not rely on any electricity. Each of the 12 by 12 cm pixels is an individual entity. A tea candle lights and controls each pixel. The rising heat of the candle turns a modified beer can which turns the pixel on and off. Each pixel has its own frequency. The more bright a candle shines the faster is the rotation of the can. Each pixel is built as a separate module. Random Screen keeps growing.
Looks like it would be a fun project to work on for next Christmas. Put two tea lights in each cell one with a red gel and the other a green one and you might get some no-power pseudo random Christmas goodness.
[via we make money not art]
Powermoon – Portable Light
I’ve seen these in movies and videos before, you get a nice high brightness (moderately) low heat light like an HMI and stick it in a big white balloon. Fill with helium and strike the light. Bam! Instant moonlight. Not only is it good for making moonlight but it’s great for making soft lighting over a large area where a crane or the smaller China Balls arn’t practical. Plus they look real cool.
[via we make money not art]
Retrievr – Search by Sketch
Here is the deal. You draw (or in my case scribble) a few shapes in a little window and all of a sudden you get to see Flickr images that match what you, er.. drew, Ok, it only deals with basic shapes, colors and light values but as you can see from the above example it works for the most part. I was trying to draw the Apple logo (I’m going to blame the hardware, I can’t draw with a mouse for crap) and I got this. I also got a few photos of the moon (Earth’s moon, you gutter heads) and lots of portraits in black and white. Pretty cool, if you want to know more about the program or the company that makes it check out the System One Labs pages.
[via BoingBoing]
Tire Sculptures
A very impressive but short series of photos of sculptures made out of old cut up tires. Makes me think I’m slacking off in life.
[via neatorama]
LEGO NXT
LEGO has announced the next generation of the Mindstorm robotics line of learning toys. The NXT will have more input and output ports (3 in and 4 out), a cleaner design (no bumps, just holes – I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not), and a simpler programming language. Where the old Mindstorms used an optical IR tower to communicate with a PC for programming , the new ones will use a USB 2 interface. The new kits also come with sonar sensors and servo motors with built in rotational sensors and Bluetooth radio. There is no word if any of the parts will be compatible with the old Mindstorm kits but it will be programmable from both PC and Mac platforms. From what was in the Wired article it looks as if the NXT OS may be open to hackers that will want to make their own firmware revisions but that yet to be confirmed. LEGO has had a tough year and I’m quite glad that they have not scrapped the robotics product line in favor of saving money.
[via Wired, Gizmodo, NXT Blog, and Robot Magazine]