Posts by Chris Kiick at Hack a Day

How-To: Binary clock using a Freeduino SB 2.1

Posted Jun 6th 2008 7:00PM by Chris Kiick
Filed under: misc hacks, how-to, daily

Solarbotics recently released its own version of the Arduino microcontroller development board. They based their board on the Freeduino design. We thought this would be a good opportunity to review the new board as well as present a How-To about building a simple binary clock. Along the way we'll cover some basics on attaching LEDs and switches to a microcontroller.

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How-To: Scavenge a mouse for parts

Posted May 16th 2008 6:00PM by Chris Kiick
Filed under: peripherals hacks, how-to, daily

Chris Kiick posted about swarm robotics earlier in the week and today publishes his first Hack-A-Day How-To.

Old computer mice are being abandoned in droves. They're tossed out because of dirt, obsolescence, or for being entirely too beige. Anyone who has a computer usually has more than one mouse and you can get them for pennies, if not free just for asking. Fortunately for the discriminating (read: cheap) hacker, these little widgets are chock-full of project parts. Today's How-To will dissect a computer mouse, extract the useful parts, and give some ideas about how to use them.

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Swarm robotics

Posted May 13th 2008 7:00PM by Chris Kiick
Filed under: robots hacks

Uber-geek [James McLurkin] was in Austin recently demoing his robot swarm. He's on tour with EDA Tech Forum. [McLurkin] has multiple degrees from the MIT AI lab and worked at iRobot for a couple of years. Lately, he has been working on distributed robot computing: robot swarms.

[McLurkin] was an entertaining speaker and had an interesting view of robotics. He is optimistic that robot parts will become more modular, so it will be easier to build them, and more importantly, faster to design them.

Some quotes: