Author Archives: mechatronicsguy

I’m quite fond of cellular automata, in particular the simple 1D cellular automata. I was playing around, drawing them on graph paper, when I decided to make something a bit more easy for newcomers to see how it worked, and how … Continue reading →

Apparently I didn’t write this one up already. Here’s a build from a couple of years ago: It’s a coffee table with a bed of sand, and underneath is a CNC plaform and a powerful magnet to drag around a … Continue reading →

I recently got a bunch of aluminium extrusion so that I can rebuild the Turquoisebot in a more accessible way.   I’ve used OpenBeam before, but not 8020 style extrusion. As a quick test project, I decided to make a standing … Continue reading →

  This was inspired by a pic, of a screenshot, of a photo sent to a friend of mine. No idea where the original came from. (If it’s you I’d love to give you credit). I couldn’t resist immediately going out … Continue reading →

I had a good find a few months ago when I picked up that rack for holding my time goodies. It’s an old bulb display unit for showing the time. Before we had LCDs, TFTs, and even LEDs, there were very limited options … Continue reading →

This project was inspired by James, who was inspired by Dave from EEVBLOG: https://www.eevblog.com/2016/04/22/eevblog-871-find-aliens-with-your-raspberry-pi/ It’s a lasercut rack to hold all the Raspberry Pis I could get and make them do distributed computing. (Rather than the standard application for a raspberry pi, … Continue reading →

No more needing to argue about whether a particular design is ‘golden’ or not. Measure it and know that it isn’t!   Files here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1548369  

So many devices we work on have stepper motors in them. It occurred to me that it would be handy to have a device to allow quick testing of whether the motor was working or not. The user interface is really … Continue reading →

I picked up an 80mm glass sphere the other day. I have plans to eventually turn it into a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder, but it’s quite fun to play with regardless. It’s occurred to me that it’s actually quite a dangerous object to leave … Continue reading →

At the space recently we’ve had a few rounds of Settlers of Catan. People seemed to like it, so I figure we should have a set living on a shelf in the workshop. Some late night lasering later, and we have … Continue reading →