This is pretty cool
From DIY Drones, the founding dude of which is now one of the Ponoko Advisory board people?
Being the roll-only stabiliser version, the one below being two-axis
The previous post had a quadracopter balancing a tall pole with a ball on the end of it… while doing vaguely acrobatic stuff… I think it all turns on this – feedback-loops between servos (or whatever) and sensors. I really ought to start playing with this stuff myself, but I want to use one of these…
… just go straight to using a full-blown computer (with the brain the size of a planet) to do simple electronic tasks… because I’m too lasy to learn how to do things with arduinos and such. I’ve actually got one as well. I should stop pranneting about and give it another go I guess. I need to make myself a little project that is specifically to do with fitting a genetic algorithm between a sensor and an actuator. I know how to write them… just never really had a reason to. The only thing I can think of right now is helio-sensitive sensitive/tracking mirror matrix… which is a little more doable now that Ponoko does mirrored acrylic.
On Addiction
And The Void Mooned Back...
The Spirit Of The World
A Machine to Steal Souls
More Anti Digital
Thync
Robotic Sensory Loops and Whatnot
Cartestian Robot Roundup.
Post-Scarcity Link-Dump
Servo Bender
If you do decide to do a tracking mirror array you might want to get in touch with these guys
http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/2011/05/solar-fire/
so they can tag it on.
I don’t know if you’ve seen their project but in the last 3 months it has really started to move along.
Yea – I’ve been keeping 1/2 an eye on the open-farm thing for a while. It’d be quite good to have an urban-version (once the rural one gets underway)… not that urban can (probably) be off-grid… but I’m envisaging something like a solid square-meter of stuff that people can unpack and set-up in an urban environment to take themselves off-grid. Can’t be that hard, surely.