TeamDroid | Cool

Posted on 04.21.10 by John @ 7:22 am

Very neat. I once did this with an old VHS-C camcorder and was fascinated by the results. Watching video shot with a wide angle lens that is only six inches off the ground is actually quite captivating.

“We booked a trip to Tanzania and set about designing, building and testing BeetleCam. The first step was to get up to speed on the necessary robotics and electronics that would be required to build such a vehicle from scratch. Having conducted some research, we sourced components from around the world. Construction then began in earnest with sawing, soldering, sewing and super gluing taking place around the clock in Will’s garage.”

Burrard-Lucas Blog Wildlife Photography.

via MAKE

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The Awesome Beauty of Time Lapse DSLR video…

Posted on 04.04.10 by John @ 7:24 pm

Stomacher – Untitled/Dark Divider from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

Using well over 20,000 photos (most are three photo high dynamic range composites) photographer Sean Stiegemeier used the motorized head from a telescope (broke two doing the entire video) to create these beautiful motion control shots for this music video. The video for the band “Stomacher” was shot on Canon 5D, 5DmkII, Anamorphic 35mm. I hope to have more information about this video in the future. Make sure you see the high def version of the video!
More of Sean Stiegemeier’s videos on Vimeo.

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Marx Generators

Posted on 03.22.10 by John @ 10:26 am

Ah, the Marx generator. I have fond and not so fond memories of building my first one. It worked very well, I knew this because of the sort of out of body feeling I had when I got zapped by it. Anyway, it works by charging up a bank of capacitors in parallel and then are discharged in series. It will turn a few wimpy volts into something that will quite literally take your breath away. This site has a nice semi tutorial on how one is built. Go have a read and start scrounging in your junk box for some parts (mind you, keep a hand in your pocket to avoid making a dead short across your chest and through your heart. It’s not a sure thing but it helps)

Marx generators at madlabs.info
More info over at Wikipedia

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Filed under: Cool andDIY andMad Science andScience andTechnology andTo be used for Evil
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Cube.ly 3D Printer

Posted on 03.19.10 by John @ 7:34 pm

I went to the bi-monthly hackerspace meeting last night. They had a guy there giving a talk about an open source 3D printer that he and his company is working on. I posted photos of it on Flickr. The thing is called ‘Cube.ly‘ and will, once finished, print 10cc of volume per hour, cost under $1000, takes a weekend to build, and is made of off the shelf parts. The frame is made of this stuff called ‘80/20′, think adult sized Erector set and the other bits like motors are available from McMaster-Carr or the guys that build the Makerbot (electronics).

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Filed under: Computers andCool andDIY andMad Science andRobots andScience andTechnology andTo be used for Evil
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The Sandpit

Posted on 03.13.10 by John @ 4:16 pm

The Sandpit from Sam O’Hare on Vimeo.

Such a wonderful mix of tilt-lens camera work and time lapse technique.

“It is shot on a Nikon D3 (and one shot on a D80), as a series of stills. I used my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 and Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8 lenses for all of these shots. Most were shot at 4fps in DX crop mode, which is the fastest the D3 could continuously write out to the memory card. The boats had slower frame rates, and the night shots used exposures up to two seconds each. The camera actually has an automatic cut off after 130 shots, so for longer shots I counted each click and quickly released and re-pressed the shutter release after 130 to keep shooting.”

For more info about the making of this short visit: “The Sandpit” – A short film by Aero Director, Sam O’Hare!

[via MAKE]

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MONOCHRON – Monochome display clock kit

Posted on 02.27.10 by John @ 11:04 pm

Another very cool clock kit to lust after. I swear, if I had my way my room would look like Doc Brown lived in it…

The second clock kit from ladyada & Adafruit Industries, we present MONOCHRON!

We wanted to make a clock that was ultra-hackable, from adding a seperate battery-backed RTC to desiging the enclosure so you could program the clock once its assembled

128×64 LCD (KS0108) – we special-ordered the black and white display

ATmega328 processor (we even stuck an ‘arduino’ stk500 bootloader on there too)

Laser cut enclosure in black acrylic

Beeping/blinking alarm with 10 minute snooze

Battery backed-up real time clock (DS1307) keeps time even when power is lost for years

European/US 12 or 24 hour time display as well as date

Completely open source hardware, all firmware, layout and CAD files are yours to mess with

Plenty of space for mods, a prototyping area for soldering stuff in

Soothing animation of retro arcade style table-tennis for two

MONOCHRON – Monochome display clock kit.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Filed under: Artistic andComputers andCool andDIY andTo be used for Evil
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