The Robotic Nintendo DS

DSrobot

Looks as if some enterprising hacker has built himself a robot that runs off a Nintendo DS handheld. The proposed specs are here:

# 20 Digital Input/Output for multipurpose use.
# Customizable with you own Motors and Sensors
# Wireless programming and controling.
# You can use your DSRobot with NinjaDS to make the robot works alone.
# Programmable in C or C++ with devkitpro and a custom library to manage the signals.
# You can use PAlib (very easy NDS library to program you first DSRobot
# Upgradable Software & Hardware.

The prototype has six sensors and two motors on it for now. DSRobot say that they will be selling kits, I wonder what Nintendo thinks of this…

[via Robot Gossip] 

DSRobot: A Nintendo DS Robot

The K67 kiosk

K67 Kiosk 

I think I might have seen one of these in Bangkok but I’m not sure.

Patented in 1967, K67 was prepared for its serial production in 1968 with the first exhibition of prototypes in Ljutomer (Slovenia). In April 1970 K67 was published in an English design magazine with the article "Low life from the streets" and the Museum of Modern Art in New York included it into its collection of 20th century design. The K67 was sold in large quantities not only to the countries of Ex-Yugoslavia, but also to the COMECON countries and other continents (eg. Japan and New Zealand). Due to the fact that the K67 principle is copied several times by other companies, K67 came to embody the Eastern European kiosk culture.

we make money not art: The K67 kiosk

Model Rocket Altitude Predictor

Rocket day

 

 

 

 

 

 

This looks to be a handy tool. You enter the body diameter, the rocket weight, drag coefficient, and the motor type and you get an estimation of how high it will go and even how long it will take to land if you add the parachute size. You can use it for other things too, like seeing if you could launch a full roll of paper towels into the air. You can, it takes about 3 D-12 motors. 🙂

Model Rocket Altitude Predictor

Storm Photos in Kansas

Weather

Some places don’t have much in the way of weather. Yeah, it may rain sometimes or get a little windy but for the most part nature takes a break and just chills. Kansas is not one of those places. In Kansas nature saves it up and goes for broke whenever there is a change in the weather. From the picture it may look like a volcano just blew it’s top and is hard at filling the bread basket of the country with ash but it’s not. This is an advancing thunder storm that swept through the area on May 26th of 2006.  The photos are very impressive, and it’s amazing that people are willing to put themselves are quite a bit of risk to get these shot.

[via cnet] 

Backing Winds: May 26th chase