Ramblings

I couldn’t believe my eyes this morning when I saw that Botbench had reached 400,000 views! Some other stats: On the busiest day (8 Jan 2013) I had almost 3000 views.  This was mainly caused by the announcement of the EV3. I’ve written 412 posts in total. About a quarter of views come in via search engines. 19% of all ...

A quick tour of my new and improved LEGO Lair with nice storage system and large desk space.  This is where I do my thing, where I write my drivers and build my robots.  I even tidied it up a bit before I took the video.

BotBench can now also be found on Tumblr! It won’t replace this blog, but it’s a good place for me to put small titbits of news out there that would otherwise just clog up this main site.  I’m busy working on the appearance of it, so it’s likely to change over the next few days. This site will continue to ...

I was approached last week by TechWeek to take part in a competition to design an office device. My device is a fairly simple one, maybe not to make, but certainly to use. What is it? It’s the iPIckU, a RaspberryPi based device to help you pick a volunteer for the job that nobody wants.  The device consists of a ...

Pepijn de Vos, who runs Studle.es, has made all of his building instructions available to everyone for free.  His reason?  Simple: …I concluded that I feel better about sharing them with as many people as possible than sharing them with a handful and making a few bucks. Despite all the effort that went into making them, he’s decided that it’s ...

Dexter Industries have launched a Kickstarter project for the BrickPi!  Become a backer and get one of these super cool shields for your Raspberry Pi.  I wrote about the BrickPi not that long ago and I think this a really awesome addition to the Raspberry Pi ecosphere! As of writing this article, the project is at almost 25% of total ...

The BrickPi is Dexter Industries latest project.  It’s an interface board, or shield, for the super popular Raspberry Pi, a cheap ($25) and small but very powerful processor board that runs Linux.  The BrickPi allows you to easily interface your NXT motors and sensors with the RasPi, without having to cut up cables or otherwise damage your precious LEGO parts. ...

There is an exciting new challenge for kids between the ages of 13 and 17.  How can you enter? First you must create a 2 minute video, explaining how you would tackle two global issues that affect Planet Earth.  You also have to outline a plan of how you would use an unmanned rover to explore an new planet, to ...

The summer of 2013 is gearing up to be more than just a time for chilling by the pool! The 2013 Summer of Learning is sponsored by Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Academy and uses their Computer Science Student Network (CS2N) Project to host all training plus resources provided by The Robotics Education Foundation, VEX Robotics Inc., and Robomatter Inc. This summer ...

Today, my friends from DHL brought me some new toys!  Thanks to Yassine from Generation Robots for sending me these to play with: A pre-production model of the Wheelphone robot – a robot frame that can be connected to either an iPhone or an Android phone A Seeedstudio DSO Quad, a 4 channel digital storage oscilloscope The Wheelphone The Wheelphone ...