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Hackaday Podcast Ep12: Nearly Perpetual Motion, Mars Rover Carries Kid, and Doc Brown’s Cat Feeder

Editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys catch up on the past week in hackerdom. It seems as if we’re in a golden age of machine building as an incredible rocker-bogie rover is built to transport a child and mechanical simplicity automates the wet cat food dispensing process. We marvel at the ability to use G-code to decorate eggs (them being curvy in more than one direction and all). The we contemplate the ability to build and start a motor which will continue to run long after your own life ends. And perhaps it’s time to add more layers to your PCB design playbook.

Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

Direct download (52.3 MB)

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Episode 012 Show Notes:

New This Week:

• Mike just got back from China and Vietnam
  • Seeing glass replaced on cellphone screen modules was a really interesting
  • The entire trip was shared in the Hacker Abroad series of articles
• Easter Egg decorating robots
  • Elliot is building the Sphere-O-Bot (eggbot MOD) Easter Eggs creator
  • Egg-bot is a well-known design from Evil Mad Scientist

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Magnetic Bearings Might Keep this Motor Spinning for Millennia
• Building A Turbocharger Turbojet
• Automated Cat Feeder Handles Wet Food With Aplomb
• Kid Rover Is Six Wheels Of Awesome
  • From the same hacker, The Omni Wheel Robot Series is also well worth watching
• Tucoplexing: A New Charliplex for Buttons and Switches
• Full Motion Video And 3D Graphics Make This Genesis Demo Pop

Quick Hacks:

• Mike’s Picks:
  • Repairing a Vintage Sharp MemoWriter
  • Sensor-Laden Pigeons Gather Data For Urban Weather Modeling
  • Save An Old Drill From Landfill, With Some Lithium-Ion Magic
• Elliot’s Picks:
  • Raspberry Pi Tracks Humans, Blasts Them With Heat Rays
  • The Surprising Tech Of A Cheap Toaster
  • Faster Computers Lead to Slower Experiences?

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Can You Live Without the WS2812?
  • WS2813 Datasheet (PDF)
  • APA109 Datasheet(PDF)
    • Podcast Errata: Mike mentioned the APA102 is like SPI (which is correct). But the APA109 doesn’t. It instead uses an 800 kHz timing scheme like the WS2812.
• Stuck Designing Two-Layer PCBs? Give Four Layers a Try!

Hackaday Podcast Ep12: Nearly Perpetual Motion, Mars Rover Carries Kid, and Doc Brown’s Cat Feeder
Source: HackADay