Innovative and Unusual Robotics

[Jack Jones]

We made cord reels out of stuff from Home Depot to feed power to the FP motors on our lift mechanism - maybe you saw them at Rah Cha Cha.

We pulled out the slip rings from a pair of 14/3 triple tap power cord reels and put them into the PVC cases from clothes line reels, which we wound with speaker wire. They lasted us through 72 matches and who knows how many hours of practice, but they were starting to fail in Rochester. Not sure whether is was old age or the abuse they took at the YES! Exposition, where we let kids drive it and they persisted in trying to lift immovable objects. We expect the post mortem inspection will show burn spots on the slip rings - but what the hay, it was worth it to give the YES! visitors a taste.

[mechanicalbrain]

I used wire coils from a bunch of hard drive to make a medium power electromagnet. I was inspired when my friend made a rail gun for a school project but nothing ever came of my tinkering. Lets see..... um..... oh yeah! I made an external wireless antenna for my computer out of paper clips and a Popsicle stick.

[John Gutmann]

Originally Posted by mechanicalbrain

I used wire coils from a bunch of hard drive to make a medium power electromagnet. I was inspired when my friend made a rail gun for a school project but nothing ever came of my tinkering. Lets see..... um..... oh yeah! I made an external wireless antenna for my computer out of paper clips and a Popsicle stick.

haha niice.

[Cuog]

I've always wanted to try and get the recycled handheld devices they always have at those stores(oh what i could build with a few old PDAs and sonehobby motors.

But for inovative stuff our team is building a robotic dolly with numerous attachements. We are going to use the camera that FIRST gave in the KOP to have a turret with a marshmelow gun auto aim at colors, and there may be GPS tranking equiped depending on if our school will give us one of the old laptops they dont use anymore. Plus a webcam attached to that computer which will have basic controls over the drive motors so we can drive it wirelessly via an ad-hoc network.