Featured Adafruit Community Project: Rick Winscot’s LARS Robot

Rick Winscot shared: “Just a heads-up on completion of another robot design called “LARS” which is short for (LARson Scanner). Again… contains Adafruit parts! I’ve attached a photo and here’s a Vine to show-off all that scanner goodness.” (read more)

There are people making amazing things around the world, are you one of them? Join the 59,502 strong! And check out scores of projects they shared this week after the jump!

From the Google+ Community

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Alexis Wiasmitinow shared: “Using my turbogrill I could generate enough heat to melt some aluminum and try some sandcasting…” (read more) Very cool!

Kevin Lau shared: “Shenzhen is known as the Hollywood of Makers. And Huaqiangbei is a must-go place for visitors to Shenzhen. However, it’s not easy for visitors to find the related factories in Shenzhen. Huaqiangbei is like a huge maze to many. That’s why we make this Shenzhen Map for Makers, in the hope of helping you fully experience Shenzhen in a very short time. It is made up of 2 main parts. One is the general information about the maker-related factories in different areas in Shenzhen and the cities near Shenzhen. This is the 1st version, and we’d love to improve and update it constantly. So it is open source also.” (read more)

Pete Weller shared: “These were my thoughts on an a lightweight motorbike. Motor and mounts are rigid, pivot points are bushings and the throw of the engagement is a is a pin follower ball bearing on a lever.” (read more)

Christopher Benjamins shared: “I got some neopixels in from Adafruit Industries that we plan on using for a school project. We where just testing them out today. The plan is to make a clock that looks like a resistor using these. I will be modeling and 3d printing some transparent pla parts and paint it to look like a resistor then placing these leds inside to provide the color of the Rings.” (read more)

Manoel Lemos shared: “As part of my Connected Arduino Powered Energy Monitor I’m currently working on voltage sensors. The idea is to use an small AC-AC transformer to isolate the circuit from mains and to provide a voltage reading for the energy monitor. This measurement will be used to calculate Real Power instead of Apparent Power. My project is based on the awesome Open Energy Monitor project.” (read more)

João Macedo shared: “With the help of friends, I managed to surpass the no 3D printer barrier – we used wood to build this handcrafted little beast controlled with an arduino. Now the problem seams to lie in the electronics, namely in the power supply….” (read more)

David Bernier shared: “RX2B driven toy car controlled via Arduino PWM signals: RX2B driven toy car controlled via Arduino PWM signals. I’ve been toying around with a cheap RC toy car and an Arduino. In this video, the toy’s IC (a RX2B chip) is driven by the Arduino as it reproduces the various pulse trains required to drive it. Source is available here.” (read more)

Community Projects from the Adafruit Blog

Mark Williams shared his PiBBOT V2, a balancing, RPi powered robot: “This is my second successful attempt at a balancing robot using a Raspberry Pi” (read more)

Gordon Henderson shared an overview of Techcamp 2013: “So we started by giving a general introduction to the Pi, some command-line activities – the first “Hello world” using BASH, then moved onto some simple programming with Scratch – Hello kitty, and turtle graphics. We moved onto BASIC with more turtle graphics then got the students to start to modify some of the programs I’d written to give them experience with looking at other code – my little snake game went down well with the students hacking it to change colours and alter the colission mechanisms (ie. to cheat snake death!)” (read more)

Neil Smith shared: “More instruments ready to go, including a @Raspberry_Pi powered musical glove.” (read more)

Greg Payne’s 3x3x3 LED cube project via etchingpathways.blogspot.com: “The basic concept is this; the cube, in this case 3x3x3, is made up of columns (9) and layers (3).On each layer, all the cathodes are connected together and in each column, the anodes are connected together. Therefore, 12 ouputs are needed to control all 27 LED’s. By driving the layer output low and the column output high, the specific LED will turn on. Driving both the layer and column output low, will turn the LED off. By sequencing what LED is on when, you can draw different patterns. The bigger the cube, the better patterns can be drawn.” (read more)

Matt Stultz shared: “So a few months ago my wife’s family decided that we should all go on a beach vacation together. After searching for a destination, a beach house on Topsail Island in North Carolina was selected. We packed up and headed down and of course, a 3D printer was on the way with us. Within the first two days, I was happy to have it with me. I brought my new PrinterBot Simple with us. Its small form factor and simplicity (no pun intended) made it the perfect printer to bring along. I have had this printer for a while now and I really do love it….” (read more)

RobotGrrl shared a tutorial for creating flexible links using Sugru!: “For some tasks, robots need to be flexible but still have a form. Combining the flexible links with structural aspects (e.g., vertebrae) helps to achieve this. Going further, you can use these skills to make more complex moulds for flexible pieces. In the future when multi-material 3D printers are widely available, creating interesting hybrid pieces will be common….” (read more)

Joshua Bardwell got some help in the Adafruit Forums and shared a project: manipulating welder output with Arduino! “Thought y’all might like a peek at what I’ve been working so hard at for the last week or so (and posting questions about).” (read more)

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