A couple weeks back I got Romotive’s Romo cell bot from a project I sponsored on Kickstarter. Cell bots use an onboard cellphone as their controller. As with other cell bots I’ve built, audio out is used to communicate with the robot platform. Some of the earlier cell bots actually directly controlled servo motors using the audio out. Romotive executed this far better with their robot base and it’s the best such small cell bot [...]

I happen to have some old 12 inch optical disks made of glass. So when I saw Terry and Adam Clarkson’s ClockOS project on Kickstarter, I recognized the potential for an awesome clock! The ClockOS board is Arduino compatible and hosts a ring of 180 surface mount RGB LEDs (in 3 concentric rings of 60).  Modes can be set through 3 buttons on the back side of the board.  The onboard Atmel168 can be programmed [...]

In December I received and mounted the Moore Pattern Kinetic Sculpture that Jeff Lieberman designed (from a KickStarter sponsorship). Although the motor is very quiet, I used an X10 module and motion sensor to only activate the sculpture for a couple of minutes when people approach. I used the X-10 MS16A sensor (for about $15). These later generation X10 motion sensors are nice in that they have a programmable internal timer and can send the [...]