Bottom view of quad with motors and ESC’s mounted Hobby type RC electronic speed controllers usually have some degree of programability built into them to do things like set the battery type, motor timing, startup mode, etc. One of those features is a low voltage cut-off function which is designed to prevent the over-discharge of [...]

Like everyone else, I wanted a VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) UAV for aerial photography and all-around fun that I could fly FPV (first person view) via onboard camera and wireless video downlink to a head-mounted display at my ground station. Well, watching the great videos by Youtuber Juz70 pushed me over the edge, and [...]

Superheros, Evil Mad Scientists, Supervillains, Trilateralists, Bilderbergers, Meteorologists, Oligarchs, Generals, Demographers, Spymasters, Epidemiologists, and well, who couldn’t use a retro sci-fi command console to monitor and control their worldwide concerns? My son Harlan and his friend love to play “agents” and he asked me if we coud build “a panel that has a bunch of [...]

I ran the first machining job with my newly operational Lumenlab Micro CNC robot (did you hear the champagne cork pop?). I say newly operational, since I won’t consider this thing “finished” for a long time, if ever. I anticipate fitting new tools to the machine to do different things for years to come. Lithophane [...]

I am now so close to joining the desktop fabrication/manufacturing revolution that I can smell it. Unfortunately for me, that smell is the reek of burning semiconductor, but I’ll get to that later. I got the PC controller (EMC running on Ubuntu) and stepper motor driver boards all wired up and working great. The Micro [...]

I started assembling my Lumenlab Micro (no longer available) desktop CNC gantry robot and “personal manufacturing workstation”. All your base are belong to Lumenlab I was originally going to save a few dollars by making a base for the machine out of MDF, an idea that I never really liked that much. So I started [...]

I love building things from kits almost as much as I love building things from scratch, and I think that it’s safe to say that the latest kit to show up on my doorstep is going open up a whole new world of scratch-building for me. MicRo The micRo is a 3-axis CNC robot being [...]

Taken – read Flickr notes. ”The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk is a progressive lending library of electronic components. An internet meme in physical form halfway between P2P zip-archive sharing and a flea market. It arrives full of wonderful (and possibly useless) components, but you will surely find some treasures to keep. You [...]

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.

UPDATE:

The final laser blast effect was leaving me a bit limp, so I decided to add a little motion in the form of a 10 LED chaser that will run down the side of the blaster as it fires.

The Chaser is supposed to be some sort of “pulse generator” ramping up to discharge a laser bolt.

You can see the effect in action In this YouTube video. Now THAT’s excitement!